Hey, there! Log in / Register
A tree grows in City Hall
By adamg on Sun, 07/05/2009 - 6:23pm
What species of tree is so hardy it can grow in this most barren and desolate of landscapes, two or three stories up the front of City Hall? Can mountain goats be far behind?
Neighborhoods:
Topics:
Free tagging:
Ad:
Support Universal Hub
Help keep Universal Hub going. If you like what we're up to and want to help out, please consider a (completely non-deductible) contribution.
Comments
Finally!
A bit of charm to the bleak face of city hall! I welcome our new mountain goat overlords.
Ash?
Juvenile taxonomy is hard but that kind of looks like an member of the ash family?
Compound simple? Fraxinus? The samaras are very aerodynamic.
Apparently Adam wouldn't scale the wall to get a better look.
the omnipresent ailanthus?
the omnipresent ailanthus?
Nature reclamation
I wonder if you could make some sort of amalgam like the blue stuff that they use on the highways to plant grass along recently redone bluffs after construction finishes. This mixture would contain tree/grass/ivy seed, fertilizer, some sort of moisture-holding compound to simulate soil/dirt and be packaged into a deliverable that could be tossed/slung onto hidden surfaces and spawn trees like this one on "solid" concrete and sustain the plant until it could build a foothold.
It would preferably not be *too* detrimental to the structure, but be something that would simply add to the otherwise boring structure...like this sapling. Hmmm.
Freddy Langone
Used to grow tomatoes in one of those balconyish things, back when he was on the city council.
They've supposedly got plants growing on the roof, so yeah, would be cool to have hanging ivy cascading down the sides!
I saw various plants on upper levels
Incidentally, I finally did a "self-guided tour" of the building several months ago, and the architecture is not as bad as it seems from the monstrous outside, IMHO.
The access to various outdoor balcony/patio things was especially nice, and some of them have great views of bits of Boston. When I was there, they were hardly used at all, unfortunately.) I hope they put out lots of tables and chairs in good weather, so people can get out of their concrete-and-partitions offices for part of the day. If it were a private-sector high-tech today, they'd have WiFi coverage on the balconies, and those employees who wanted would have laptops instead of (or in addition to) desktops.
I did notice what seemed like visible deferred maintenance throughout the building, mostly on small things. Didn't look like there was an "expense no object, keep everything in top shape" policy.
While adding more plant life to the building, they could also add some to the plaza itself. The big empty plain brick space in front is great when that's what you need for staging an event, but other times it's like an undeveloped *blah*, with random ugly barriers scattered about.