Letters: Good that firehouse design is no copycat

Posted 1/27/21

I would like to comment on the recent negative comment by a reader about the addition to the Engine 37 firehouse that is not yet complete.

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Letters: Good that firehouse design is no copycat

Posted

I would like to comment on the recent negative comment by a reader about the addition to the Engine 37 firehouse that is not yet complete. The architecture firm led by Cecil Bacon designed an addition to the original firehouse that is appropriate for 2020 when it was designed.

I learned in architecture school that designs are like fingerprints and generally show the time in which it was designed. That one reason is why a Romanesque building of the 11th century does not look like a Georgian building of the 18th century. In the late 19th century. when the original firehouse was designed, there was a revival of interest Romanesque architecture. The original firehouse was designed and built in something called the Richardson Romanesque style when the interest in Romanesque style was common. There is a ban of copying a former style in federal buildings so we don't have a trove of 18th-century Independence Halls.

Diane Fiske
Chestnut Hill

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