Corner of Princess and High, Shepherd campus

While checking to see if I would be taking The Boy™ to pre-school, I came upon the link to the Shepherd University master plan of 2004, by Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer Associates. I am pleased to see in that plan, a structure at the corner opposite Blue Moon Café, one of the weaker corners in the architectural fabric of Princess Street.

It was either 9 or 15 or 18 years ago when I first started thinking about this corner, imagining a structure which echos the simple industrial language of Blue Moon, a former filling station. I imagined an aesthetic matched to some artists studios for the University. The new arts center renders that suggestion moot. The idea was not for studios alone, but to play upon the rough-and-ready nature appropriate for studios with parking above — after all, building in that location takes precious space from that ever expanding need.

Traffic flow in and out of that part of town is, however, problematic but so is access and use of the admittedly limited businesses on that section of Princess Street, never mind the river. A small parking deck*, with the potential that it meet up with the grade as vehicles enter from East High Street (imagine at the corner, for example, a ground floor lower than the sidewalk), might still be appropriate, especially if the university joins the growing trend as a private services provider. Imagine a combined retail space (geared toward river visitors, perhaps) instead of studios with commercial paid parking above.

The rock ledge along Princess Street as it descends toward the river is formidable. How much of that edge along the campus could be given over to any construction would remain to be seen.

*The university master plan shows a proposed rectangular structure with the long frontage on High. I imagined a much longer rectangular structure with it’s long side on Princess. With the intended effect of shielding the parking area from neighbors on the south side of Princess Street.

The A-B grid

Shepherdstown is a grid. Grids are inherently non-directional. Right? Not in this case. Why is that? The grid of Shepherdstown is more of a tartan — heavier in one direction than another. Let’s call this an A-B grid. The “A” part of the grid is German Street (E-W) and other streets parallel it. The “B” grid is King Street (N-S) and streets parallel to it. There is a “C” element as well, the alleys parallel to the “A” streets.

A viewer might find it odd that the architecture of Shepherdstown readily reveals this grid — one not even be aware of the alleys to be aware of it. German Street is an easy example, nearly all corner buildings have their fronts on German Street and sides on the cross (or “B”) streets. The Sweet Shop building is a classic example of this. On the surface, this might seem not worth mentioning, except for the one exception, the Yellow Brick Bank.

The Yellow Brick Bank stands out as one of the few “corner buildings” in town* — and I use the term now as an architect would, where the design of the building is a reflection of its unique position in the grid, not just a building on a corner in the urban sense. Even then, the longer facade of Princess Street is still the secondary facade — its late 20th century addition exaggerates this effect.

Looking at additional historic photographs, I realize now that I have this last item wrong. The long facade does exhibit a stronger effect than the shorter, if only by length alone. The late 20th century addition alone is what spoils this reading.

Notes:

*Two other corner buildings that come to mind are the old Fire Hall and the Lutheran Church. Oddly enough, the corner architecture of the Lutheran Church is sited incorrectly — it’s corner faces not the street corner but the south-east corner of its site. The Fire Hall as an example is barely so — really only its tower makes it a “corner building”.