DIFFERENT STROKES
For many years my office in the Barnett/ NationsBank/BOA Plaza was catty-corner from this building. I suffered through the pile driving when it was "erected," and then it blocked my view of the Bucs' pre-season at Pepin-Rood. I must admit that I've never liked the "Rappunzel Tower," or whatever old bank/new bank names it's stuck with now. So maybe I'm prejudiced or a bad judge of art.
I still can't see how this marvelous conception of architecture is anything inspiring, except maybe for those with a prostate problem. It eliminates the possibility of a wonderful river-walk joining the Performing Arts Center all the way up to the Channelside area. It blocks the public's access to the river and it seems to focus a lot of pedestrian traffic at one of the busiest downtown intersections. It's a sty in the eye of a Fine Arts District.
As architecture, it probably is an honest reflection of the Republican 1980s of its birth: an overt phallus shooting its male-seed into the night sky in attempted psychological impregnation of downtown. It is full of "insider" architectural conceits which (as Ms. Edwards writes) are inaccessible to the "blind" masses too unsophisticated to appreciate the enchantment — maybe not too dumb, though, to savor the irony of the cubes being "empty and forlorn." (Say, maybe it is a brilliant statement on the infertility of post-modern globalism; all this irony in a bank's building!) Say, what ever happened to that bank? It was bought by another bank which was bought … oh, yeah.
"Can't get past the resemblance to their own genitals"? What garbage! My balls aren't square. "Ivory" colored? Try sandstone. And all this conceit used to be tied together with the park's fabled "mosquito-breeding" ponds (what else is 2 inches of water in Florida good for?), and a wall hiding the river and its banks from the street which seems like it must have been designed to enhance raping and mugging. Yes, that does fit in with the phallus theme real well.
This is architectural kitsch, pure and simple. Built today, it would have to be red, white and blue. They can't tear down this pseudo-sophisticated junk soon enough for me.
—John McCue
Brandon
Susan Edwards' article about Harry Wolf's building and Dan Kiley's sculptured garden is painfully on point. The tower and base buildings are the very best of downtown's newer buildings, and perhaps the only really good high-rise architecture we have here; and the gardens, however defaced by the city's past unwillingness to maintain the fountain and water areas, are a long under-promoted local treasure.
It is certainly, as Susan pointed out, at least ironic that we, as a community, are choosing to demolish an exquisite urban park designed by the most famous (living) landscape architect in the United States, to build a giant roof with an art museum under it; rather than accommodate it in our new plans.
Such decisions are not intellectually or ethically consistent with our desire to be a community known for respecting and nurturing the arts, historic preservation and cultural traditions of all kinds. Incorporating existing treasures and important cultural icons into new ideas is only impossible if we choose to make it so.
—Michael M. English
Via e-mail
CORRECTION
In our May 7 issue, a helpful (but misinformed) editor inserted an error into Susan Edwards' otherwise accurate column about the cylindrical building at the corner of Ashley and Kennedy in downtown Tampa. The editor assumed that the limestone shelf under Tampa, referenced in the building's facade, is called "Florida" limestone. It is not. It is called Texas limestone, and the same stuff underlies the coastline from here to there. (So our local rock is named for another state. Can't we Floridians get any respect?)
This article appears in May 21-27, 2003.