Creating Places: A Citizen Observer's Look at Nashville's Built Environment


Writer's Note: William Williams' interest in the manmade environment dates to 1970, at which point the then-young Williams started a collection of postcards of city skylines. The collection now numbers 1,000-plus cards. Among the writer's specific interests are exterior building design, city district planning, demographics, signage, mixed-use development, mass transit and green/sustainable construction and living. Williams began his Creating Places column with The City Paper in February 2005. The column in its original form was discontinued in September 2008 and reinvented via this blog in November 2008. Creating Places can be found on the home page of the website of The City Paper, at which Williams has worked in various capacities since October 2000.

Monday, July 29, 2013

Creating Places: Musings on modernism

After having recently watched The Fountainhead, a 1949 film about an architect who steadfastly advocates a modernist aesthetic in the face of traditionalism, I got to thinking about some of Nashville's best modernist buildings.

Here is a fine example (courtesy of Google Streetview): The Doctors Pavilion building located at 1916 Patterson St. in Midtown. I've always rather liked this building, finding it very underrated. Clad in brick, the structure offers a clearly defined entrance on Patterson and a cap featuring a pronounced eaves. The color scheme is tasteful, and the vertical window columns (a feature I typically don't care for on buildings of this style) provide the building a needed sense of height.

Grade: B




 

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