The Secret Lives of Buildings: From the Ruins of the Parthenon to the Vegas Strip in Thirteen Stories
Authors: Edward Hollis
The
Secret Lives
of
Buildings
The
Secret Lives
of
Buildings
From the Ruins of the Parthenon
to the Vegas Strip in Thirteen StoriesEdward Hollis
METROPOLITAN BOOKS
Henry Holt and Company
New York
Metropolitan Books
Henry Holt and Company, LLC
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are registered trademarks of
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Copyright © 2009 by Edward Hollis
All rights reserved.
Published simultaneously in the United Kingdom by Portobello Books, London.
Distributed in Canada by H. B. Fenn and Company Ltd.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hollis, Edward.
The secret lives of buildings: from the ruins of the Parthenon to the Vegas Strip in thirteen stories / Edward Hollis.—1st ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-0-8050-8785-7
1. Architecture and history. 2. Architecture and society. I. Title. II. Title: From the ruins of the Parthenon to the Vegas Strip in thirteen stories.
NA2543.H55H66 2009
720.9—dc22
2009018715
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First Edition 2009
Designed by Meryl Sussman Levavi
Printed in the United States of America
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
To my mother and my brother, without whom
this book would never have been undertaken; and to Paul,
without whom it would never have been completed.
The Basilica of San Marco, Venice
In Which a Prince Steals Four Horses and an Empire
In Which a Sultan Casts a Spell and Moves the Center of the World
The Wondrous Flitting of the Holy House
In Which a Dead Body Brings a Building to Life
In Which Two Cousins Marry Each Other
The Tempio Malatestiano, Rimini
In Which a Scholar Translates a Temple
In Which Nothing Happens at All
In Which the Temple of Reason Is Restored
The Hulme Crescents, Manchester
In Which the Prophecies of the Future Are Fulfilled
In Which History Comes to an End
In Which History Is So, Like, Over
In Which Nothing, and Everything, Has Changed
The
Secret Lives
of
Buildings
T
HE
A
RCHITECT’S
D
REAM
Thomas Cole, 1840
.
HE
A
RCHITECT’S
D
REAM
Once upon a time, an architect had a dream. The curtain of his bourgeois parlor was rent, and he found himself reclining on top of a colossal column overlooking a great port. On a nearby hill, the spire of a Gothic cathedral rose above pointed cypresses in a dark wood; on the other side of the river, a Corinthian rotunda and the brick arches of a Roman aqueduct were bathed in golden light. This aqueduct had been built on top of a Grecian colonnade, in front of which a procession led from the waterside to an elaborate Ionic shrine. Farther away the austere form of a Doric temple crouched beneath an Egyptian palace, and behind them all, veiled in haze and a wisp of cloud, was the Great Pyramid.
It was a moment of absolute stillness. A perspective in time had become a perspective in space, as the past receded in an orderly fashion, style by style, from the parlor curtain of the present all the way back to the horizon of antiquity. The Dark Ages partially obscured classical splendor; Roman magnificence was built on the foundation of Grecian reason; the glory that was Greece lay in the shadow of the ur-architecture of Egypt. The array of buildings formed an architectural canon, each example dispensing inspiration, advice, and warning to the architect from the golden treasury of history.
All the great buildings of the past had been resurrected in a monumental day of rapture. Everything had been made new, and neither weather nor war nor wandering taste had scarred the scene. Everything was fixed just as it had been intended to be: each building was a masterpiece, a work of art, a piece of frozen music, unspoiled by compromise, error, or disappointment. There was nothing that could be
added or taken away except for the worse. Each building was beautiful, its form and function held in perfect balance.
The scene was what architecture was, and is, and should be. But just before he awoke, the architect realized that he was dreaming, and he recalled the words of Prospero renouncing his conjured dominion at the end of
The Tempest
.
The cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind: We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.
