An article appeared in yesterday’s Republican, by Stephanie Barry, about a "triple shooting" over the weekend near 37 Longhill Street, not far from the five-building Longhill Gardens Condominiums complex (pictured). The piece located the incident in the South End—it was technically in Forest Park—and contributed to a thick fog of paranoia for the city that at any moment one might turn around and get shot:
"It’s crazy. The city’s changing … There was another man killed right over there a couple of months ago," said [a neighbor who lives two blocks away], who refused to give his name, pointing to 86 Longhill St.
Ronnie Hannas, 31, was shot dead in a third-floor apartment there Dec. 7. Rafael Guzman, 30, of 37 Longhill St.—the scene of [Saturday’s] shootings—was charged with that murder along with Filiberto Guzman, of Hickory Street. Both pleaded innocent in January.
"I’ve lived here one year. I want to move," said another Longhill Street resident, who also refused to give his name.
Such sentiments are understandable, perhaps, given the kind of concentrated problems that seem to occur in and around Longhill Gardens. But why doesn’t Housing Court get any play here? What a drama has been unfolding in the courtroom for the last several months. No bullets are flying in that courtroom, though, and there’s no bloodshed, so maybe it’s not as enticing.
All the same, efforts are underway to address the safety concerns in this area, and it’s surely not limited just to Housing Court, either.
In the next paragraph of the article, the complex is called "ugly." From the piece:
[Jennifer] Flagg [of the Springfield Police Department] called the lower Longhill neighborhood—an avenue of ugly, dense apartment blocks at the foot of a street that also is home to stately Victorians at the upper end—a "notorious site for drug activity."
Notorious site for drug activity, yes, but "ugly" and "dense" are relative terms.
The complex could be said to be modeled after the International style, innovated largely between the two World Wars, in which lines are simplified, and metal and glass are relied upon more than masonry, especially at weight-bearing structural locations, in an effort to appear to defy gravity.
As decades passed and especially where funds were not necessarily flowing abundantly, the style was imitated in a pared-down manner. Longhill Gardens might be said to be an example of this—not exactly on the cutting edge, but sufficiently modern at the time so as to be attractive.
The late, celebrated architect Philip Johnson was lauded for his aspirations toward this incrementally "pure" design aesthetic. His famous Glass House in New Canaan, Connecticut will be open to the public for the first time starting in July, including all of its 47 acres, featuring an underground library, an art gallery, a guest house, and of course the centerpiece itself, a house made of walls entirely of glass, set in the woods on a promontory. Johnson’s architecture gets to be revolutionary and his furniture (pictured below)—all by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, another proponent of the International style—all collector’s pieces at this point, museum-grade.
But Longhill Gardens Condominiums, which are arguably not all that densely-built, and which, at one point, were considered attractive and modern, get relegated to "ugly." On my recent visit, I mentioned finding the buildings rather handsome, if in serious need of repair. But why don’t we kick ’em in the gut while they’re down? Throwing in such editorializing adds that extra edge to crime reporting.
