Lens-Artists Photo Challenge #126: An Alphabet Challenge–Subjects That Begin with the Letter A.

Phew! Patti, I think you win the award for the looooongest title challenge to date, at least that I’ve seen.

I’m featuring photos from Illinois today and although I know most of you expect nature when you come here, what could be more iconicalyl Illinois than the Arcs and Arches of the Bean in Chicago? It’s a mind-bending Awesome Artistic beauty.

These Architectural features (and yes, you could say Arcs again) are found in the Art Institute of Chicago.

Let’s close with a two-fer: Animals in a nature Alley.

for Lens-Artists Photo Challenge #126: An Alphabet Challenge–Subjects That Begin with the Letter A.

Monday walk…Look up.

The buildings of Luxeuil have some marvelous details, but you have to look up to see them.  That can be dangerous when you’re trying to walk, whether on level pavement or not, and this certainly isn’t. So we’ll just stop here and take a good look at details on one building for now.

I know lots of you like arches and stone and windows, so this one’s for you.

Here’s another look at some Burgundian tiles. Those are fun, but there’s a lot more going here.  That one head is really sticking out and on top of the tower you can spot a sort of  lion rampant look, although I can’t tell whether or not it’s actually a lion.

Luxeuil…architecture

I suppose if you live in France, the architecture doesn’t seem as interesting as it does to me, a visitor from a place where older homes might have been built within the last century.  Of course styles are distinctly different as well.  As a member of Thursday Doors, I find that I have to remember to include photos that aren’t just doors.  🙂  But I managed to do it (although I won’t tell you how many doors photos I have.  You’ll have to tune in on Thursdays to see them.)

This house with its blue accents and gate and beautiful balconies caught my eye immediately.  (Why “caught my eye” when you hopefully have two?  Just wondering.)

By crossing the street, I could peek into the sort-of-secret-garden.  Despite the drought, it looks pretty good to me.

Silent Sunday…lines

Thursday Doors: Raddon-et-Chapendu #2

Why did the photographer cross the road?

To take photos on the other side.

I did and these are the reasons why, including one very hidden door.  Fortunately, most doors in this challenge are easy to find.  Just go to Norm’s site and click on the InLinkz box at the bottom of his always a-door-able post. You open doors around the world and meet lots of great bloggers.

 

Thursday Doors…Heavy metal in Philly

As you might expect from a city founded in 1682 by European immigrants, that served as one of the capitals during the Revolutionary War and a temporary capital while Washington, D.C. was being constructed, and that had a large role in other areas during the founding of the United States, Philadelphia is filled with European-style architecture.  Of course, that includes doors.  Here are three rather elaborate examples.

Thursday Doors…garage door

I know.  This doesn’t look anything like a garage door.  But trust me, it is…in a way.  This door leads to the (flat) roof of the garage attached to our house in South Euclid, Ohio.  The house was built as an experimental home in the mid-thirties, designed by Charles Bacon Rowley.  (This shot in in the link dates from when we actually lived in the house. The windsock is the giveaway.)  Our house was the first porcelain enamel house in the world, although when we bought it, the dark brown enamel panels had, thankfully, been covered with white siding.  One former neighbor referred to it as “the haunted house.”  Here’s a somewhat similar house, the Armco-Ferro House, using the same ferroenamel.  It was constructed for the 1933 Century of Progress Exposition as an affordable house that could be mass-produced.

The attached garage had a flat roof, accessed from the inside of the house through this door at the top of the stairs.  When we bought the house, we thought that perhaps we could make the roof a type of second-story patio.  That never happened, although I did plant lettuce and other veggie in pots.  Only pole-vaulting deer would be able to eat them there!

This shot was taken after we had the interior of the house repainted and I repainted this door, the metal railing and edging, and re-stained the stairs and all the original hardwood floors in the entire four-bedroom house prior to us putting the house on the market.  I always love the symmetrical beauty of the staircase and railing as well as the invitation of the door, drawing the eye and the viewer upward.

Weekly Photo Challenge: Circle…Stained beauty

Welcome to 2016, a new year for all of us!  In Philadelphia at Rittenhouse Square, Anthropologie runs a store that, incredibly, used to be someone’s home.  Can you imagine having this circle of stained glass in the roof of your home?  I haven’t bought anything there, but we often go just to wallow in the beauty of the space itself and the decorating is gorgeous as well.

May your 2016 be filled with blessings and beauty!

Sally D’s Mobile Photography Challenge: Black and white…Philadelphia architecture

Details, details, details. Architecture is full of them and black and white highlights those details beautifully.  One of the downsides of being a photographer, at least for those walking with me, is that I’m constantly stopping to take photos.  When I can’t, I always regret the photos I had to leave untaken.  Ah, well, it gives me something to look forward to on the next trip. In the meantime,  I hope you enjoy these two.

The soul of a building

When we moved into our rental house, one of our daughters said it had no soul.  Although it was clean and new, I understood what she meant.  Too many buildings these days seem to have no soul.  The house we owned in Cleveland not only was well-built, but was filled with little details that showed the care the builder took.  It lit our eyes when we first saw it, huge windows letting the sunshine in to illuminate hardwood floors.

This shot from downtown Cleveland shows the soul of a building.  Does your house have soul?  If so, what makes it that way in your eyes?  What buildings have shaped you?  If you comment, feel free to leave a link to a photo of a building that you love and that has shaped you or simply a building you find beautiful that has soul.

A real building is one on which the eye can light and stay lit.
~Ezra Pound

We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us.
~Winston Churchill