Walkable environments are so important, and why so many American cities are struggling.
Search Results for: Florence
Santa Maria Novella Train Station, Florence, Italy
Update: See another train station built in Cincinnati around the same time. Florence is so famous for its Renaissance culture, that one forgets that it has a great train station, welcoming travelers into the city. It’s so not like Renaissance architecture, it provides a little bit of a respite from the oppressive ubiquity of Albertian…
Florence Cathedral
Update: See some more pictures of the Duomo and the Pantheon here. Sigh, Florence’s cathedral is so much more awesomer than St. Louis’s Cathedral. But I guess not everyone can have a dome designed by Filippo Brunelleschi.
The City of Steel: Youngstown, Ohio
Youngstown doesn’t need our pity. While perhaps there is no other city in America that has been so poorly treated by capitalism, I couldn’t help but see the glimmers of what had been, and what could be, a great place for hard working people to live and thrive. It’s hard to imagine what it must…
Lake View Cemetery and Little Italy, Cleveland
A little bit of a latecomer in the Rural Cemetery Movement, Lake View Cemetery was founded in 1869, east of downtown Cleveland on rugged, steep terrain. While due to the growth of the city and mature trees, the name comes from what had once been a commanding view of Lake Erie. The grounds are lush,…
The Church of St. Mary the Virgin, Aldermanbury, Fulton, Exterior
I was digging around in the vault and found some old photos of the time we visited Fulton, Missouri, and saw the Church of St. Mary the Virgin, Aldermanbury, which is not an everyday occurrence. On the campus of Westminster College, the church was disassembled after being seriously damaged during the London Blitz in World…
Chapelle Expiatoire
The Chapelle Expiatoire might win the award for the building threatened with demolition the most number of times in its existence. Also, my streak of finding tourist attractions that are deserted continues, as I think there were a grand total of maybe four other people at this site when I visited. Expiatoire means “Expiation” which…
Les Invalides
I caught this view of the dome of the Invalides through the trees of the gardens of the Rodin Museum, which is a must-see when you’re visiting Paris. Designed by Jules Hardouin-Mansart, the structure serves as a critical step in the development of domes in Western architecture. The domed church was part of a larger…
The Gardens of Versailles
Business up front, party in the back, as they say. The backside of Versailles facing the extensive gardens is made up of three flat elevations with large swaths of reflecting ponds and gravel paths on the first terrace. The same garden designer as Vaux-le-Vicomte, André Le Nôtre, was brought in to design the grounds here…