Re: (rshsdepot) Dresden Station

["Paul Luchter" <luckyshow_@_mindspring.com>]

In the newspapers after the IRT opened in 1904, there was much discussion in
editorials and opinions and letters to the editors that were very critical
of the advertising marring the station walls, ruining the esthetic look,
disrupting the flow of the mosaics; as well as similar about the advertising
within the subway cars...

So this discussion (and the ignoring of it for the commercial value) has
been going on for at least that long..I wonder if this might be true of
France or Germany back in "those days," as a lot of the advertising was
actually actual art (Mucha for instance, and many more famous names)....So a
Degas might have been on a Metro wall...

Paul Luchter
- ----- Original Message -----
From: "Karen L. Lindsey" <kwillowby_@_kermantel.net>
To: <rshsdepot_@_lists.railfan.net>
Sent: Friday, October 24, 2003 1:10 AM
Subject: RE: (rshsdepot) Dresden Station


> >>>>>Here is a post-modern touch...somehow this station survived the
> bombing/fire storms near end of WW II, and here since the West German
> Mark came to Dresden in 1990, a Burger King intrusion..does it add or
> subtract from the view or is it just that fin de sieclé new millenium
> touch that future historians will love?:>>>>>>>
>
> An interesting and rather amusing question. :)   Depends on your
> definition of "art," I suppose.  It reminds me of the old "Mail Pouch
> Tobacco" signs painted on the sides and roofs of barns here in the US.
> Ugly, intrusive, and garish, they are now prized as nostalgic examples
> of early 20th century commercial art and even more so since few
> authentic examples now remain.  While it is hard for me to imagine the
> obnoxious sign tacked onto the Dresden station as an example of fin de
> siecle art, who knows?  Maybe future generations will long for the days
> when Burger King signs graced their public architecture...
>
> Of course, commercial art and design has long had a place in and on
> railway stations.  When you look at old photos of the London
> Underground, for instance, you see many posters and so forth advertising
> various things.  Although I can imagine other things I'd rather see when
> experiencing a rail station, they DO serve their purpose of helping to
> subsidize the station's (and rail line's) existence, so I've never
> complained much.  Still, I am quixotic enough to wish that some of the
> advertisers showed a little more aesthetic sense when designing their
> large public-display advertising for rail and bus depots; grease-laden
> fries don't add much at Dresden, do they?
>
> Blake H. Lindsey
>
> Kerman, CA, Just down the block from Kerman Yard, SJVR (which has no
> depot, Burger King-graced or otherwise, alas...)
>
> ___________________________________________
>
> Cool your heels on the rail of an observation car. Let the engineer open
> her up for ninety miles an hour. Take in the prairie right and left,
> rolling land and new hay crops, swaths of new hay laid in the sun.  A
> signalman in a tower, the outpost of Kansas City, keeps his place at a
> window with the serenity of a bronze statue on a dark night when lovers
> pass whispering.
>
> (Carl Sandburg, "Still Life")
>
>
>
>
>
> =================================
> The Railroad Station Historical Society maintains a database of existing
> railroad structures at: http://www.rrshs.org
>

=================================
The Railroad Station Historical Society maintains a database of existing
railroad structures at: http://www.rrshs.org

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End of RSHSDepot Digest V1 #779
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The Railroad Station Historical Society maintains a database of existing
railroad structures at: http://www.rrshs.org