Favorite Historic Buildings or Places

[2jakes]

^^^^
Took Amtrack to Temecula, Calif. last summer.
Train dropped me off at Union Station.

I thought of Grand Central Station in NY.

I've never been there except in movies:

Someday would love to visit NYC.

 

[Fading Fast]

Saw this pic - Employees leaving a Ford factory in Michigan, circa 1915 - in a newspaper this morning (note the incredible windows)

 

[2jakes]

 

[Fading Fast]

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I love this style of factory. Fortunately, you can still see them up and down Amtrak's Northeast Corridor. And, after looking at them fall into further decay for decades, recently they've started to see a pretty good revival as many are being repurposed for lofts for tech businesses or "downtown" condos for empty nesters and Millennials. While that can be a bit too precious sometimes, it's a heck of a lot better than watching them disappear to time or the wrecking ball.

 

[2jakes]

These images are reminders of department stores that roamed downtown where I grew up!

I miss the wood....
the ceilings, chairs, shelves and the sound as you walked the floor.
About the only thing that was spooky
were the elevators with accordian
metal doors and the operator who
sometimes would drive a tad too
fast and I felt my stomach go up
my throat.... at least that was the sensation I felt.
Who needed roller coasters, this was
just as good for me!
I even got to see canisters or baskets
shoot up into the air carrying paper
checks or money (not sure) as it traveled on railngs or tracks as it sped throughout the department store... I was 2 or 3 but I recall that.

 

[3fingers]

There were two small department stores here that had brass vacuum tubes to carry money up and down from the floor to the cashier upstairs. You took your purchases to the counter where the clerk wrote out a ticket with the items listed and a total price. You gave them your check or cash and they put it in the brass carrying tube along with a copy of the ticket. Your change came back down shortly. As a child I had a vision of the person upstairs wearing an eye shade and sleeve garters just like in the movies. Imagine my shock when I was taken upstairs by a kindly clerk only to find the casher to be a very nice middle aged lady in normal attire.

 

[BobHufford]

Not so much a favorite, but it has sentimental value to me. I learned to swim here in the 1960s when this was a YWCA (yeah ... not sure why we were at the YWCA when there was a YMCA across the street). The pool was very cool with a lion's head spitting water out of its mouth. The building was turned into condos in the 1980s or early 1990s (hence the awful facade currently on the front). I found out today it is to be demolished. Probably to make room for more cracker box apartments to house Missouri State University students. Bummer...

 

[2jakes]

A favorite since I was a kid:

If ever they think about turning it into a condo:

There'll be some fireworks for sure!

 

[Fading Fast]

There are a lot of still active YMCA's in NYC, with this one being one of my favorites.

Present day (web picture - I've been there, with the way the building is located on the narrow street, you can't get an angle to get a really good picture):

And when it first went up

 

[1mach1]

The National Mall. Washington, DC

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G930A using Tapatalk

 

[Fading Fast]

Was walking from one meeting to the next this morning, looked up and saw this gem. For years, the office building I worked in overlooked this one and the top or crown - hence, the name, The Crown Building (1921) - is incredible. I remember sitting in meetings and just staring out at it (and not really listening to what was going on). The first two pics are mine from today, the third is from the web so that you can really see the fantastic crown (what an insane penthouse apartment it would make).

 

[1mach1]

Was walking from one meeting to the next this morning, looked up and saw this gem. For years, the office building I worked in overlooked this one and the top or crown - hence, the name, The Crown Building (1921) - is incredible. I remember sitting in meetings and just staring out at it (and not really listening to what was going on). The first two pics are mine from today, the third is from the web so that you can really see the fantastic crown (what an insane penthouse apartment it would make).

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That is a super cool building. I have been by it, but never in it. Also, haven't seen the crown from that angle either. Simply awesome.

 

[HanauMan]

I have always had a certain fondness for the Art Deco period (even though I'm really more of an Arts & Crafts guy). Thus I like looking at, say, the Chrysler building just as much as looking at period National Socialist or Soviet buildings.


Dystopian future for the Workers: Karl Marx Hof, Vienna. Interwar communal living for the masses.


I now live in Scotland and the town I live in has many Art Deco period buildings, though of a more domestic nature.



This square box (while I enjoy looking at Art Deco houses I don't actually wish to live in one!) still retains its original sunburst gate.

 

[Fading Fast]

⇧ Like you, I can enjoy some of the "blunter" Art Deco buildings to look at in a "that's cool that they did that / I'm glad that building exists" way, but I still have no desire to live or work in it.

 

[vitanola]

I have always had a certain fondness for the Art Deco period (even though I'm really more of an Arts & Crafts guy). Thus I like looking at, say, the Chrysler building just as much as looking at period National Socialist or Soviet buildings.


Dystopian future for the Workers: Karl Marx Hof, Vienna. Interwar communal living for the masses.


I now live in Scotland and the town I live in has many Art Deco period buildings, though of a more domestic nature.



This square box (while I enjoy looking at Art Deco houses I don't actually wish to live in one!) still retains its original sunburst gate.

Dystopian?

The Karl Marx Hof, ninety years on, is still desirable housing, as are the orher massive low-rise developments built by the Vienna Council in the 1920s and 1930s. The almost equally monumental George Washington Hof is better suited to those who prefer a more traditional architectural style.

All of these developments were built around large courtyards, in the generally accepted style of Imperial Period Viennese housing, but without the increasingly shabby and disreputable courtyard tenaments typical of privately built housing of the time. These developments respected the original street layouts, and ofderred walkable, human-scaled accomodation. The apartments in these buildings were large, for the time, well lighted and ventilated, beautifully laid out, and today still are highly coveted residences.

The quality of the housing which these inter-war developments offer is akin to that found in Co-operative Village or Tudor City in Manhattan, but with more and better laid out green space and social amenities.

 

[HanauMan]

I didn't come up with dystopian for these schemes, something I read somewhere. However, I agree with that term with regards to these vast social housing projects. And yes, I lived in a similar environment as a kid when we, as a military family, lived on the economy of our host nation.

I do agree that these communes, whether in Vienna or in Germany (both had basically the same social aims) are much better than the slum and tenement housing that people endured before. But I have a horror of the vast soul-less developments forced on people by the likes of Le Corbusier and his elk.

 

[vitanola]

I didn't come up with dystopian for these schemes, something I read somewhere. However, I agree with that term with regards to these vast social housing projects. And yes, I lived in a similar environment as a kid when we, as a military family, lived on the economy of our host nation.

I do agree that these communes, whether in Vienna or in Germany (both had basically the same social aims) are much better than the slum and tenement housing that people endured before. But I have a horror of the vast soul-less developments forced on people by the likes of Le Corbusier and his elk.

Well, we have seen how well the high-rise developments have worked out. That is why so many no longer exist. The sort I'd social housing built in Vienna, however, has been successful for nearly a century. There is a great difference between it and LE Corbusier's utopian schemes.

 

[Fading Fast]

The above conversation reminded me of the Cherokee Apartments built in 1912 in NYC originally for working families with at least one member suffering from TB. NYC's subsidized high-rise effort has been the same disaster it has been in most cities, but the Cherokee and some other smaller scale projects were and are quite successful. The architecture, as seen below, is stunning.



Really interesting history: https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/cherokee-apartments

 

[GHT]

I now live in Scotland and the town I live in has many Art Deco period buildings, though of a more domestic nature.


This square box (while I enjoy looking at Art Deco houses I don't actually wish to live in one!) still retains its original sunburst gate.

Art Deco has many and varied styles, some more pleasing than others. There was a garage on the south coast that fell into disrepair when the ageing proprietor called it a day. Housing developers tried to get planning permission to demolish it, but it was protected by it's grade two listing. The building was eventually put up for auction. One couple saw beyond the weeds and the grime, they restored the garage, fuel pumps and all. Now it's an Art Deco home that I would gladly live in.

 

[Fading Fast]

Art Deco has many and varied styles, some more pleasing than others. There was a garage on the south coast that fell into disrepair when the ageing proprietor called it a day. Housing developers tried to get planning permission to demolish it, but it was protected by it's grade two listing. The building was eventually put up for auction. One couple saw beyond the weeds and the grime, they restored the garage, fuel pumps and all. Now it's an Art Deco home that I would gladly live in.
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I think about this often, Art Deco is - like pornography to a certain former Supreme Court justice - easier to identify than define as it really encompasses a lot ranging from some pretty flowery French-inspired work to, as seen in this gas station, early hints of the Mid-Century Modern architecture to come - and a bunch more variations.

I'm really glad the above building was saved and so thoughtfully restored.