I went to the Lemp Brewery haunted house in mid October, which gave me the chance to take some bad photos of the place at night. It’s pretty fun to walk around the place at night, with lights giving a nice perspective on the architecture. You enter the cellars under the brew house, and then…
Tag: Renaissance Revival
Auburn Avenue, Mount Auburn, Cincinnati
Mount Auburn? That sounds interesting, I thought to myself, and then discovered that there was a historic site related to future president William Howard Taft. After taking a terrible photo of his boyhood home, I photographed many of the houses along Auburn Avenue, which follows the crest of the hill. The siting of Mount Auburn…
Downtown, Youngstown
Downtown Youngstown is really nice! Now, I’m defining it as the area enclosed by Highway 422, which surrounds it to the northeast, effectively cutting it off from the rest of the city; on the southwest, the Mahoning River forms the other border. Youngstown State University clearly breathes much of the life into the area northeast…
Collingwood Boulevard and Ashland Avenue, Old West End, Toledo
South of the cathedral on Collingwood are a whole bevy of interesting houses, and a nice change of pace from Detroit’s architecture in a neighborhood known as the Old West End. This first mansion is the Edward Ford House, and like so many gigantic manses, was repurposed as an institutional building, becoming the Red Cross…
Former City Hall and the Wayne County Building, Detroit
Keen observers might have wondered what that Second Empire building in the foreground of that historic photo of the Penobscot Building was. That tower and Mansard roof belonged to the former city hall of Detroit, ignominiously demolished against the wishes of a majority of citizens in 1961. Designed by James Anderson, it opened in 1871….
Book Tower and the Michigan Building, Detroit
I find the Book Tower, the creation of three brothers, one of the more humorous but enjoyable skyscrapers built at the height of Detroit’s golden age. It was actually the product of two building campaigns: the tower and the lower structure. You can see the Book Building, which is sort of the yellowish building to…
Indian Village, Detroit
Cruising by Mr. Fish on my to Grosse Pointe on the East Vernon Highway, I stumbled onto a mirage, a neighborhood of perfectly preserved houses along several long blocks with stately trees known as Indian Village due to several, but not all, of its streets being named after Native American nations. Indian Village is pretty…
West Boston Boulevard, Detroit
I took in a bit of the Boston-Edison Historic District, traveling east down West Boston Boulevard just west of the Cathedral of the Most Blessed Sacrament. Chicago Boulevard and some other streets compose the large neighborhood, where some of the most important figures in Detroit history, including automobile executives, lived. As would be expected, the…
The Grande Ballroom and Grand River Avenue, Detroit
One place I wanted to visit in Detroit was the Grande Ballroom on Grand River Avenue, northwest of downtown. While the building has been abandoned for decades, it once played a pivotal role in the development of rock and roll, particularly as it was where the band MC5 played early in their career. Other very…
Woodward Avenue, Churches and Other Buildings, Detroit
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…