Casa Walsh

My new home means a new route to work. Or, rather the choice of several routes. I can take the loud and bustling Mass Ave, the architecturally diverse Green Street, or throw myself into the residential maze of Riverside and hope I emerge somewhere near Harvard University.

I like Green Street, probably because it’s so different from my old routes of Broadway and Harvard Street. Those wide streets are lined with grand, old single family houses, set back of the road with landscaped yards. On the other side of Mass Ave, Green Street is a hodgepodge of smaller houses with over-grown gardens and wooden fences, the backside of the churches and community centers of Mass Ave, and some beautiful details:

Next door to this house with gorgeous fan pediment painted in variegated tones of blue and green you’ll find the recipient of the Casa Walsh award for the ugliest residential building ever:

This picture shows only half of the building. One thing I’ll say for it, it sure looks the same from both sides. It’d be even more symmetrical if it didn’t look like it was about to collapse in on itself. You couldn’t get me to walk under this structure, let alone park my car under there. The builders tried to get fancy with the vinyl siding. Note the horizontal application on the first floor of the building, while the other three floors get the vertical treatment – it looks like spray-painted, corrugated cardboard.

This is a tribute to the Eyesore of the Month  – check out Mr. Kunstler’s site.

I like approaching Harvard from this direction. No iron gates, no Yard, no massive collegiate buildings like the museums and libraries. The neighborhood moves from single and multifamily houses with kids’ artwork in the windows to the institutional brick, straight-backed structures of Harvard swiftly but not abruptly, for there are small pockets of homes among the brick on this side of campus, including this house:

Bound on all sides by four-story Harvard dorms, this feels like the last outpost of residential property in a fortress of ivy-clad brick. It’s also a billboard for the “Friends of Kerry Corner”, a group trying to prevent Harvard from swallowing up the neighborhood.