A third-generation stone carver and calligrapher, Nick Benson (b. 1964) creates elegant hand-carved tombstones and architectural lettering for public buildings, memorials, and monuments. He owns and operates the John Stevens Shop, a historic stone carving establishment in Newport, Rhode Island. The shop was run by eight generations of Stevenses until 1927 when it was purchased […]
Author Archives: Judith Dupre
Sunshine Skyway Bridge
July 26, 2006 – 10:38 pm
From a distance it looks like a futuristic schooner, sails aloft, barely skimming the surface of the water as it crosses Tampa Bay. Compared as well to the strings of a harp or an open fan, the triangular plane of stays that support the sleek Sunshine Skyway Bridge are, however described, a triumph of engineering […]
First Clothes
July 5, 2005 – 10:36 pm
Given how old I was feeling on my 42nd birthday, it was probably a mistake spending the day sorting through my son Emmet’s baby clothes, three bags full or, as he once sang the nursery rhyme, three bag fool. I was a three-bag fool all right, crying from the outset of this unavoidable rite of […]
One Soldier’s Story
January 5, 2005 – 10:34 pm
One Soldier’s Story is about my childhood neighbor, Rickey Caruolo, who was one of the first to die in the Vietnam War. It is a snapshot of a more innocent time in America and an intimate portrait of one soldier who stands in for all the great guys killed in Vietnam. Those who visit the […]
Painting as Prayer: an interview with Father John Giuliani
July 5, 2004 – 10:31 pm
After reading Thomas Merton’s Seven Storey Mountain while an art student at Brooklyn’s Pratt Institute, John Giuliani’s life changed. He put down his paintbrush, entered the seminary, and served as a diocesan priest for two decades. Inflamed with the desire to communicate the dignity of all persons, especially those whom society has marginalized, he began […]
Cesar Pelli on Skyscrapers, Monuments, and Memory
May 5, 2003 – 10:26 pm
Cesar Pelli was born in 1926 in Tucumán, Argentina. After graduating from the University of Illinois, he worked, most notably, in the offices of Eero Saarinen and at Gruen Associates. In 1977 he became Dean of the School of Architecture at Yale University and established Cesar Pelli & Associates in New Haven, Connecticut. In 1995, […]
Mario Botto Interview Excerpts
April 15, 2003 – 10:22 pm
To celebrate Mario Botta’s 60th birthday on April 1, here are some gems culled from his comments during our Lugano interview in March 2000. The excerpts are from Churches, HarperCollins, 2001.
To quote you, dear Mario, “architecture lasts more than the life of man. This is the measure of a man’s life and his mark.” You […]
1000 New York Buildings
January 5, 2002 – 10:20 pm
[This essay comprises the Foreword to 1000 New York City Buildings by Jorg Brockmann and Bill Harris, Black Dog & Leventhal. May 2002]
Tall masts of Mannahatta! Superb-faced Manhattan! Beautiful hills of Brooklyn! Vast, unspeakable show and lesson! My city! Has anyone since Walt Whitman done justice to the ecstatic inventory of New York? This book […]
Why We Need Churches
September 19, 2001 – 10:19 pm
“God is dead,” wrote Nietzsche, famously, in 1882. Less well known is the rest of his sentence, which continues, “but considering the state the species Man is in, there will perhaps be caves, for ages yet, in which His shadow will be shown.”
In the wake of events that were, by every human measure, incomprehensible, […]