It’s one of York’s loveliest listed buildings (Grade II*).
It was first constructed in 1568.
Many of its rooms are high-ceilinged and impressively wrought with stucco (and gusto and brio).
Its busy history includes being the headquarters of 64 Group, Bomber Command.
It is a jewel in the University’s crown, a stunningly handsome piece of architecture, glowing with charisma.
It would be an amazing venue for seminars or lectures. Coffer-filling tourists would wedge solid at the gates if it was converted into something a little more historically reconstructive. It draws the eye and pulls at the heart.
And it’s currently being used for office-space.
Marquette Hall was the first permanent building at loyola University in New Orleans. And, while it’s a gorgeous Gothic looking building, it actually only dates from 1910. But if you could see the atrocious 60s fake wood panelling with cubicles inside of half glass walls, it would break your heart. I feel sure that wasn’t the original configuration.
Oh, and I love the way Wikipedia sums up the origin of the school: A young Jesuit was give a nickel for the streetcar and told by his superiors to go uptown and start a college.
Wow.
injected.org/neworleansphotos/pages/Marquette.html
Hope that link works, I’m experimenting with traveling without my computer, since I’m only away for a few days and have a brand new HTC Touchpro 2 to break in.
Sounds grim. That kind of wanton disregard for the underlying architecture makes my flesh crawl and my blood-pressure spike. No excuse. There are ways to modernize without traumatizing the aesthetic. Always.
I’m deeply jealous of your new TouchPro 2, which I was checking out the other day in reviews, and by checking out I mean drooling over.
Personal review, please.
Wrought with biro you say?
A few years ago I did a stint at the head office of the Scottish YMCA. They had a whole tenement block in the centre of town (4 floors maybe?) and a maximum staff of about 6, most of them part time or who regularly worked from home. It had been gifted to the Association about a hundred years ago by some doting old lady or something. It is sad and inevitable that it will eventually be sold off so the association can keep their heads above water and move to some god-awful industrial estate on the edge of town.
Heheh. Although ‘wrought with biro’ isn’t so ridiculous when you see this…
Nothing more poignant that a mostly abandoned building. Even sadder than a fully abandoned one, I’d say.
What are we saying? That people who work in offices have to work in crummy poorly designed nasty looking buildings? The nice buildings have to kept for voyeuristic tourists or hungover students? Spare a thought for the people who have to work in the building. Working in a nice building may be all that keeps them sane… I went from King’s Manor to a bleak industrial estate in south London. It fronted on to a scaffolding yard and backed on to a railway line! I know where I’d rather work.
No ‘we’ about it. It’s just me saying it.
*readers sidle away from Mike*
Nope, I don’t think office workers should have to suffer concrete monstrosities – in fact, nobody should. It shouldn’t be either/or. Crappy is crappy, and crappy buildings shouldn’t be inflicted on anyone. Office buildings don’t have to be vile. I’ve seen some terrific office space that looks good inside and out, yet is thoroughly modern – the Aviva headquarters at Wellington Row by Lendal Bridge is a good example. Once the sandstone colouring loses its just-minted look, it will blend in beautifully, and inside, it’s arranged round a central hub of plate-glass elevators. Impressive stuff.
But returning to the real world, there are lots of awful buildings that need to be filled. I’m not saying that they should be filled by administrative employees. (That would half-damn myself, and therefore be half-hypocritical).
No, what I’m *actually* saying is that I’m jealous of people in HH because I currently work in a concrete box with no air-con.
I’d hate anyone to think I was offering some kind of coherent general philosophy here – it’s specific sour grapes, and nothing more. Yep. Ta.
Here’s a plan:
First stop posting photos of parts of Yorkshire looking cold, drear and dire.
Convince others to do so as well.
Encourage global warming.
Install a museum of early costume in tjhis edifice.
It’s a lovely building. I live in a modernized building of about the same date. (Modernized only in that there is plumbing, central heating and tight windows.) My first winter here had me stymied as to how people survived before the advents of stoves and boilers. Then I read a history book and learned that they wore fur underwear.
Recreate what people wore to keep from freezing to death in near-arctic Yorkshire! Charge money to see it. Make a movie showing people putting it on so we can understand how separate sleeve worked. I’ll come.
Yorkshire, not cold and dreary?
Might have to wait 6 months for that one.
Unless it snows, in which case it’s transformed into something magical and crisp.
Fur underwear? Well, there are places round York where that kind of thing is encouraged, but I’m afraid I know little about them. And haven’t been invited. (Not bitter, though. No).
I have it on good authority that in the dead of winter, Yorkshire people took to wearing sheep, live sheep, tucked into specially reinforced belts. All that woolly struggling kept a body nice and toasty. Tend to kick, though. So I’d need stuntmen for that movie. And security, to keep PETA at bay. But it’s doable, certainly. Thanks for the suggestion…