Helene Huffer couldn’t stop tearing up. She was about to leave a home that had taken hold of her the moment she saw it in person. She dabbed repeatedly at her eyes with the paper…
Category: Architecture/Buildings
Early Native American monument that never materialized
Posted in Architecture/Buildings, and Native Americans
It was a foggy and humid Friday in 1913 when a ship carrying the president of the United States and his party headed to a site in New York Harbor for a momentous ceremony. In another…
Awe-inspiring interior of Memorial Hall
Posted in Architecture/Buildings, Art, Black history, Children, and history
It was a near-moonless night in November when I arrived at Memorial Hall in Fairmount Park for a meeting. This was my first visit to the place, although I had passed through the area many…
A mesmerizing old Ford truck & the highway it calls home
Posted in Architecture/Buildings, travel, and Vehicles
To me, it was a no-name highway, a stretch of lonely road that I took each December to buy pecans from a market not far off I-75 south when I visited my family in Georgia.…
Palmer Hotel assures it is fireproof after Great Chicago Fire
Posted in Advertising, Architecture/Buildings, Businesses, Equipment, and history
The aged envelope bore a large heading above a drawing of the Palmer Hotel in Chicago. The pronouncement would mean nothing without knowing the hotel’s history. “Only Fire-Proof House in the United States,” it blared.…
Birdhouses created in a child’s hand and manner
Posted in Animals, Architecture/Buildings, Children, and Home
I spotted the shelves of birdhouses from a distance at the auction house. They were arranged neatly in a cabinet near a wall – some of them alike, several reminding me of an abstract painting. I…
Selling what’s left of a shuttered elementary school
Posted in Architecture/Buildings, Auction, and School
The woman was a solitary figure in a long hallway that 10 minutes earlier had been filled with a clump of people moving mechanically from one classroom to another. In this quiet time, she seemed…
Architect’s 1972 drawing of Berry Gordy’s LA office
Posted in Architecture/Buildings, Black history, and Music
The words in black lettering stood out very clearly among the other papers, documents and posters on the auction table. “Mr. Berry Gordy’s Office.” They were printed beneath architectural drawings of an office space created…
The old building looked stranded, left alone and neglected at the bottom of a street teeming with ice cream shops, a burger joint, restaurants, and stores hawking T-shirts and other stuff that tourists buy but do…
Striking filigree balconies on Martha’s Vineyard cottages
Posted in Architecture/Buildings, history, and Religion
We were walking along a paved path bordered by petunias near our hotel, leaving behind momentarily the white wooden rocking chairs overlooking a lovely view of Oak Bluffs Harbor and anchored boats. It was mid-morning and…