RSS Feed
Category Archive: historic preservation
more than beauty and function, many rooms have a kind of atmosphere, a history, that makes them intriguing.
What is the fascination with abandoned buildings? There is certainly some attraction to the mystery and faint danger of these places, but I think there are darker forces at work as well. In abandoned industrial sites, much of mystery of the place has to do with the fearful contrast of the quiet stillness of the [...]
I recently attending some sessions of the Colorado Preservation Inc.’s Saving Places 2012 Conference. As usual with these things there are plenty of educational sessions that you can geek-out on various preservation topics, from process-heavy advice for preservation commissions to very technical analysis of window retrofitting techniques. For me the most interesting event was the [...]
An astute client pointed out that the magnificent house on Green Rock Drive, the Menkick House, by Charles Haertling, is up for sale. Completed in 1970, the Menkick House is among Haertling’s finest works and ranks alongside his Volsky House, Benton House and Willard House as one of the finest examples of late Modernist Organic [...]
I have finally gotten around to processing some more film from a very rewarding trip to the San Luis Valley in southern Colorado last year. I will certainly be going back there again this year, later in the Spring when the heavy snows have past but before the major snowmelt swells all the local [...]
On a narrow spit of land, at the confluence of two mighty rivers, lies ancient Cairo. Not the one in Africa, with pyramids and camels, rather the one along the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers, Cairo, Illinois. Cairo has seen better days, the 1920 population of 15,000 having dropped below 3,000 souls. Once a shipping center [...]
Before interstate engineers replaced our river crossings with solid, straight, under-supported super-slabs of concrete highways, spidery steel bridges carried us across the impediments to the relentless to- and fro- of an increasingly mobile society. When you pass through the steel rib cages of these older bridges, especially the narrow, long spans, crossing a river feels [...]
Most of the smaller towns that I passed through on a recent road trip had their version of the local movie palace. And most were closed down along with the rest of the storefronts along the main street. The emptiness of middle America is remarkable and so sad. We all hear the [...]