Its a better picture to be sure............I'll confess it doesn't leave me taken by its architectural beauty.......... but such is subjective.
Well, what always intrigued me about it was its 1940s "transitional" quality--a foot in both the prewar-Moderne and postwar-Modern camps. And I even figured it out in youthful family visits to NOTL; that is, it may be an iconoclastic acquired architectural taste within the historic context of NOTL, but by way of counterpoint, it's a taste worth acquiring.
And maybe it's that "dateability" that's key here--and I believe there's some kind of dedication date on the facade. By contrast, the properties directly opposite that you have pictured here might be in various "historic" styles and in many cases exist as some form or another of original fabric, but presently give off something of a generic "dateless" impression--that is, how much is "authentic" and how much recent modification is unclear (and this is a more "peripheral" part of old NOTL where there's less pre-Confederation and presumably a certain amount of leeway for homeowners to advance a prettied-up picture-postcard impression).
I mean, there's nothing *wrong* with that, in and of itself. But it does strike me as reflective of how truly incompetent, or just wilfully indifferent, too many people are at architectural judgment when it comes to visualizing buildings in actual historical space and time (as opposed to generic "styles"; i.e. the notion of PoW-style Second Empire as a vocabulary for the present). All that matters is that they're presented with an entropy of Hallmark Christmas "timelessness"--whereas to really appreciate Parliament Oak School *for what it is*, "the 1940sness is the point". (Which also gives--and has *always* given--appreciation of Parliament Oak School a certain invigorating iconoclasm against the grain of all that Hallmark treacle. But it's also involved in appreciating the *1840sness* of other NOTL elements, and what gives *them* that certain "edge" that post-Confederation NOTL often lacks)
Thus the "before" and "after" here might as well be accompanied by the cloying, tacky yawning and heart-eyed emojis deployed within "Architectural Uprising" memes--and *that's* a realm that's likewise pandering to wilful indifference t/w actual history as opposed to a pretty tableau. (Or, a Hallmark Channel Utopia, Evropa-style. And for all their "Beauty Matters!" beseeching, all that emoji-driven cheeseball is rather profoundly...un-beautiful.)
www.notl.com
www.parliamentoakhotel.com
