Answers to the quiz

As of writing this post, I only had one response on the quiz. William Nobles, your answers are almost completely right--rock on!  Let's see:

A is the office building.

This is the Monadnock Building, the tallest masonry-structure commercial building. The top of the exterior walls are 18 inches thick, but the bottom of the walls are six feet thick.  See why people would rather use steel for a tall building's structure?  You use a lot less space to hold up the building, which means you can rent more of it to tenants.  Originally, the design included brick that would fade from dark purple at the bottom to golden yellow at the top.  The dark purple ended up being used for the entire exterior.  Some students thought this was a government office building because a government building would be a kinda plain-looking skyscraper.

B is the church.

This is the nondemoninational chapel at MIT, by Eero Sarinen, one of my favorite Modern architects.  Honestly, MIT is a great place for architecture tours.  A good pal of mine from grad school who lives in Boston took Guy and me on a tour of MIT and Harvard a couple of years ago when we spent our birthday weekend in Boston.  If you can ever go, do so.

C is a government building.

This is the Denver Public Library in Denver, Colorado, a little something by Michael Graves.  Graves is mostly known by nonarchitects as the guy who designs all those cool kitchen and house gadgets and stuff at Target.  However, he was an architect first, and I for one actually like his stuff.  It's a bit like Facadism and a little on the two-dimensional side, but I like it.  Unlike a lot of PoMo architecture, it's got a sense of humor.  Speaking of sense of humor, someone in this year's class thought this was a government building because it might be a prison.  Someone else thought it might be a government office building, because each piece of the building might hold a different department.

D is a residence.
This is not just a residence, people: this is the Glass House by Philip Johnson.  Mmm.  That queen knew how to do some crazy shizzle.  Behind the photographer of this shot is the Brick House, which has solid walls except for a few small circular windows.  I can't even tell you how much I want to see this house, this place.  I'm sure if I ever get to New Canaan, CT, I'll just fall to the ground and weep.

Building E is also a government building.
This is the Phoenix Public Library in Phoenix, AZ, by postmodernist and really-good-but-reputedly-kinda-vain architect Will Bruder.  I had to do a project on the unusual structure of this building, and it's pretty cool.  I only got a B on the project.  Shoulda had Bruder present it for me.  In the lecture last year, some students thought that this was the church because it looked like the megachurches you see these days.

Finally, F is a train station.  It was also built before the Civil War.
St. Pancras in London, England is also a hotel.  In the lecture, this was seemed to be the easiest for everyone to get as built before the Civil War because the students associate Gothic architecture with really really old buildings. 

Later this week, the story of some EPIC FAIL public housing.