The Broken Angel
A story in today’s New York Times by Robin Pogrebin describes the recent travails and planned revival of a house in Brooklyn. The house is called the Broken Angel, a distinctive building for the modifications and additional construction created by Arthur Wood, the owner and resident. After an October fire, the building was deemed structurally unsound. But a group of architects and students affilliated with the nearby Pratt Institute’s School of Architecture are converting Wood’s designs into code-compliant plans. (Some of their work is visible here, in a NYT photograph by Liz O. Baylen.)
Brent Porter, a professor at Pratt, is playing a major role in this effort. One reason:
Mr. Porter’s efforts also reflect his memory of how the Broken Angel affected his daughter, Christina, who died at 21 in 2005 after a skiing accident. “I saw in my daughter’s eyes the joy that she and her friends drew from this building,” he said. “And I see a similar kind of respect my students have felt for the avant-garde in their lives.”
These names might sound familiar for those who follow the news from Dartmouth. Christina Porter was in the class of 2006. In February 2004, she hit a tree during a skiing class; the collision broke the left side of her skull into 12 pieces and left her in a coma for six months. Although she regained consciousness and some ability to communicate, she died in January 2005. The Times fails to mention–though the college’s newspaper did–that Christina was Brent Porter’s only child.
Filed under: Architecture
Tags: Broken Angel, Brooklyn, Dartmouth, New York
