Category: Art & Architecture

The tabernacle at St. Theresa of Avila Church, West Roxbury (Boston), MA.
(Photograph by Domenico Bettinelli.)

Boston City Hall has been rated the “ugliest building on the planet” in a survey on a travel web site:

A national travel Web site is telling the world what many Bostonians already know – City Hall is ugly.
VirtualTourist.com put City Hall atop its list of the ugliest buildings on the planet, based on a poll of the site’s editors and readers.
The California site offered a sharp-tongued assessment of the Hub’s center of power.
“While it was hip for it’s time, this concrete structure now gets routinely criticized for its dreary facade and incongruity with the rest of the city’s more genteel architecture. Luckily, it’s very close to more aesthetically pleasing attractions.”

What can you expect when the architectural style is called Brutalism? That sounds like something invented in Mordor.

Really, I’m not sure that City Hall deserved the title. I bet the people conducting the survey didn’t even know about this competitor, an airplane hangar — I mean, UFO — I mean, parish church — in Waltham, Massachusetts.

Update: Eric Ewanco reminds me of another very strong candidate, St. Malachy Church in Burlington, MA. He writes:
“At least Sacred Heart is ensconced in glass, instead of this cheap white concrete you see them construct amusement park rides from. Nor does it look like some segment of a gross body part. (SH does kinda look like an eye though.) And it doesn’t have the little polyps in front (is the foyer a time machine, transporting us back to the foot of the cross?) or the space antenna in back.
“No, this place should be the ugliest building in the world. I retch just looking at it as I type.”

Just for the record, the roof at Sacred Heart looks like aluminum rather than glass. St. Malachy’s deserves extra points for its interior: the sloping walls of the exterior paraboloid shape have the same slope within the church, giving sensitive parishioners the impression that the whole building might collapse on them at any time. If that doesn’t draw hearts and minds to God, what does?

The new Cathedral in Oakland was dedicated in September, so here are some links to photos, videos, and articles about the church.
Design by the Bay blog (photos, diagrams, explanations of design)
Contra Costa Times newspaper (video, slideshow)
World Architecture News (photos)
NikiOmahe architecture and design news (photos, diagrams)
Inhabitat (photos)
InsideBayArea.com (video)
At his Rifugio San Gaspare blog, Fr. Jeff Keyes gives a first-hand appreciation for the new mother church of the diocese, and even scolds the scoffers who disrespected it in their comments on various blogs.
I really can’t be a whole-hearted fan of a church that departs so radically from the traditions of the genre, but there are certainly some beautiful things about the new cathedral, so I urge you to give the photos a chance to impress you.

Every once in a while the local secular media asks me to write a story on the practice of religion within our community. Yesterday’s assignment was one of my favorites; I was asked to do a photo-essay of the Ukrainian Catholic church’s Feast of Jordan (Epiphany). Our local Ukrainian Catholic parish is the only Eastern church – Catholic or Orthodox – in the city.
Here’s a pic of Fr. Jaroslaw blessing the water:

Here’s a link to the story, complete with photo-gallery:

Ukrainians gather for blessing and borsch (photos)

Dropped in at Mary Immaculate of Lourdes parish in Newton for the Monday evening Perpetual Help novena, followed by Benediction. Here’s how the sanctuary looks (click the picture for a full-size version).
There are some aspects that could be improved, of course. It would need a sanctuary rail for the distribution of Holy Communion; and, yes, the ambo on the left looks cheap and blockish compared to the dignity of the altar and the reredos. Still, in general this is a decently well-preserved parish church.