Chicagoist Wonders: Is It Worse to be "Parvenu" or a "MoMo"?
By Andrew Peerless in Miscellaneous on Mar 18, 2005 1:37PM
When Chicagoist looked for condos throughout the spring of 2004, we often caught ourselves gazing at tangled masses of red brick and limestone and wondering, "Could we really live in something so ugly, even if we love it on the inside?" We luckily found a place that begged no such question, but admittedly never considered this similarly pressing issue: "Could we live in a place that bears a simply ridiculous name?"
Low interest rates and a booming urban market means real estate developers are pushing new residential projects at unparallelled levels, and that makes some of these buildings' senseless monikers even more perplexing. Chicagoist has noticed a few from the north side to the Loop... let's start in Edgewater after the jump, and work our way south for a few examples.
A hulking residential mass is currently rising on the corner of Bryn Mawr and Sheridan, at the edge of the Bryn Mawr historic district, and will be known to all as "Atelier". Well, this word has clearly been the "go to" name for hip boutiques and restaurants in the past year or so, but it essentially means "an artist's space or studio," and is most often used to refer to experimentation, collaboration and innovation in such a settting. Does it really fit for average-looking condos that will likely be sold to account executives and marketing managers? Are the folks from HGTV planning on dropping by for some designers' challenging? We think not, and therefore, Atelier gets a B-.
Moving south on Sheridan, we come across the soaring glass and steel construction of Uptown's newest high-rise, the "Parvenu". Not a bad looking building, truth be told, but Chicagoist winces at the name. Babel Fish will tell you that "parvenu" means "arrived," which is pretentious enough as it is, but the word is generally used in this country to imply nouveau-riche raffishness and money without class. This whole thing could essentially be a twisted joke or unsettlingly self-infating, so Parvenu gets a C-.
We'll make a quick detour onto Sheffield as it nears Clark St., for a different-but-related blunder. Chicagoist would hope that developers could actually spell the names of the streets they're building on, but noticed that a new construction six-flat temporarily boasted a concrete frieze reading "The Scheffield." We can't even give this one a grade.
Finally, we'll emerge from the Red Line station to find the greatest horror of all, courtesy of four simple letters that seem borrowed from Billy Idol's "Rebel Yell": MoMo. Yes, "MoMo". A peek at the Web site indicates that this utter stupidity stands for "Modern Momentum," but would you plop down a half million bucks to tell people you lived at MoMo? What kind of MoMos do they take us for, anyway? MoMo, you get a D-.
Chicagoist is primarily familiar with the north side's developments due to our daily Red Line trek, but hopes readers can provide glimpses of real estate flowers blossoming in their back yards, as well.