We’ll leave Brush Park behind and turn on to Woodward Avenue at the Ecumenical Theological Seminary and head north. Woodward Avenue is perhaps one of the most iconic streets in Detroit, and stretches all the way from the Detroit River all the way past Eight Mile Road, the city limits, all the way to the…
Tag: Art-Deco
From the Vault: South Shore Industry, Chicagoland
Heading south down the shore of Lake Michigan from the Chicago Loop, you encounter a landscape that is both sublime and ineffable at the same time. There are no words to describe it. As I planned my journey to a series of Midwest industrial powerhouses, I realized I had never used these old, very old…
LaSalle Street Revisited and the Art-Deco, Chicago
I looked at LaSalle Street briefly back in June of 2008, taking photos of the Rookery, Chicago Board of Trade and another bank. In July of 2008 I featured a skyscraper that had been “chopped off” and replaced with a more modern tower. But let’s look at the Rookery first, which like the Wainwright Building…
The Wrigley Building and Marina Towers
“The Wrigley Building is so recognizable, it hardly needs an introduction,” states the introduction of the Chicago Architecture Center’s page on one of the most iconic skyscrapers in the United States, if not the world. I looked at it one time briefly before in June of 2008. The product of the building of the Michigan…
The Chicago River and Civic Identity
I would argue that the approximate one mile from the Lake Shore Drive Bridge to Wolf Point, where the Chicago River splits into its North and South branches, is easily one of the most famous vistas in the world. Along it you will see the Wrigley Building, the Tribune Tower and many others you’d recognize…
Churches Around the Courthouse Square, Decorah, Iowa
The ensemble of buildings around the Winneshiek Courthouse in Decorah is extraordinary in that churches fill a full two dies of the square, and the remaining two are partially filled with civic buildings. Starting on the west side and working in a counter-clockwise direction, we see St Benedict’s Roman Catholic Church. As is common with…
Weird and Wonderful Tower Grove South: The Area Around Potomac Avenue Between Gustine and South Spring Avenues
Around the former site of the House of the Good Shepherd, the land is rugged, with dramatic drop-offs and massive retaining walls. There are also at times huge differentiations between the street and the front doors of buildings, as you can see in these photos. There is also a preponderance of multi-family housing.
Weird and Wonderful Tower Grove South: Oleatha Avenue Between Bent and Oak Hill Avenues
Tower Grove South was still being built up in the southwest corner well into the 1930s, as these Cape Cod houses attest. There are also Gingerbread style houses, as well, which were being built to the southwest in the rapidly expanding St. Louis Hills neighborhood. This subdivision is the Russell’s Second Addition, and while it…
St. Francis Borgia Roman Catholic Church, Washington, Franklin County
Heading east from New Haven, we’re going to be looking at Washington, Missouri in Franklin County. I’m actually kind of surprised, only two months from the sixteenth anniversary of St. Louis Patina, that I’ve never covered this important city on the Missouri River. We’ll start our tour by looking at St. Francis Borgia Roman Catholic…
Front Street, New Haven, Franklin County
Perhaps it’s illogical that Front Street faces a bluff and not the Missouri River, but nonetheless, the businesses lining the side of the thoroughfare that runs parallel to the train tracks is a wholly intact row of storefronts. The town has a website promoting the downtown’s stores and events. The buildings are all occupied or…