"The Poskanzer Departure" bears more beef

I had forgotten my considerable pique from a few years back when news came of the demolition of the solar house on the SUNY New Paltz campus. Poskanzer apparently had washed his hands in the matter by allowing some central SUNY agency to handle the tear down. The excuse was that rehabbing this small building would have been exorbitantly expensive, quoting a dollar cost that was, I thought at the time, intentionally and ridiculously inflated.

Irritated, I wrote a very brief letter to the New Paltz Times noting that the house, which had been built back in the 1970s by students and faculty, was a good example both of passive solar architecture and of handbuilt houses that were significant of that era. It was a twofer, and should have been recognized and preserved on its unique merits.

Bureaucrats have trouble thinking beyond their noses, of course, so it's no surprise that this annoying old shack was simply dispensed with.

Recalling that event in the context of Poskanzer's prospective move to Minnesota reminded me that I had been up there long ago to cover, you guessed it, one of the original solar projects in that region, and that led me to find this blast from the past. It's an article by the architect Dennis Holloway, who oversaw the Ouroboros Project. The article, as you will see if you check the editorial note on the bottom right of the first page, is based on an interview with him by some obscure reporter who specialized in the solar and alternative energy field and had his first job with that odd-looking, going by the cover, magazine.