the following images were taken while chicago architect john vinci and i spent the afternoon on a self-guided tour of st. louis-based city museum's architectural artifact installations scattered on multiple floors of an old colossal warehouse. the majority of the ornament comes from chicago, with large...
john vinci and i made the trek to st. louis to visit richard nickel's architectural ornament at southern university edwardsville, the wainwright and union trust buildings, city museum, and the wainwright tomb, located in bellefontaine cemetery. time was very limited, so i didn't get a...
images of richard nickel’s adler & sullivan building ornament collection on display at lovejoy library, southern illinois university edwardsville (siue). nickel sold his architectural artifact collection to the university in 1965 but continued salvaging additional fragments until his untimely death in 1972. ...
this month marks the second trip i’ve taken to new york to document american architecture, and the cross-over of preservation happening in the two cities. this summer i pursued a fragment of the historic gage building (1899) being replicated in buffalo at the boston...
i flew to nyc to document the woolworth building's upper floor condo conversion and exterior ornament restoration, but my adhd continually redirects my efforts toward editing other images of captivating building ornament (e.g., edelmann's dexter bld. facade). i have edited some woolworth, but need to...
the farmers & merchants union bank first got its humble start in a dry goods store in columbus, wisconsin, at the immediate out start of the civil war. new yorker and businessman john r. wheeler named it “the union bank” to signify his support for...
Boston Valley Terra Cotta’s Master Sculptors Restoring Chicago’s Gage Building June 22, 2017|Blog, Gage Building, News/Events Boston Valley Terra Cotta has been making progress on the very detailed, ornamental terra cotta facade restoration of the Gage Building in Chicago. Designed by architect Louis Sullivan in 1899, the Gage Building’s Art Nouveau...
the following images were taken during a recent road trip where i manged to briefly stop in winona, red wing, and minneapolis over the course of an afternoon. a sizable chunk of tiime was devoted to photodocumeting the interior and exterior ornament of purcell, feick,...
a photographic study of selected 19th and early 20th century la crosse (wisconsin) commercial building exterior ornaments. additional information on building history (e.g., architect, build date, material identification, etc.) will be added to each photo as time permits. the extant buildings shown below were chosen...
during my business trip to buffalo (new york) earlier this month i managed to spend a good deal of time documenting several buildings that hold great interest to me. i could easily spend days shooting adler & sullivan's guaranty building (both inside and out), but...
i like to think of myself as a “watchdog” of sorts, especially when it comes to changes and transitions performed on downtown chicago’s historic buildings. while deeply engaged in surveying late 19th and early 20th century facade ornamentation, a comprehensive and ongoing photographic project, i noticed...
historic buildings that dodged waves of urban renewal and blatant neglect are thriving in milwaukee. on a given stretch, a virtually untouched oriental-themed movie palace and its two neighboring 1870's commercial buildings prove that milwaukee has been proactive in rehabilitating their existing "stock" of historic...
my eye gravitates toward crazed paint, cracked windows, timeworn stonework, and "ghost signs" as i walk the streets with camera in hand. those are only a few of the numerous attributes that i look for in aging buildings that have avoided substantial alteration. even when...
spending an afternoon in the small and amazingly eccentric town of jerome, az., is an unforgettable experience, where portals to the past exist in an oddly suspended state, immune to change or significant alteration. this glorified "ghost town" was an ideal location for me to practice...
visiting la crosse, wisc. this past week was incredibly therapeutic - effectively reducing levels of stress and anxiety that were becoming overly toxic and depleting me of the energy necessary to wake each morning prepared to document the never-ending building deaths throughout chicago. [caption id="attachment_25058" align="alignleft" width="1200"]...
a visit to new york city always presents a welcome change, to throw into relief the day-to-day documenting and salvaging of chicago's demolitions, and provide a more relaxed experience of mid-19th century ornamental cast iron architecture filled with manufacturer markings to later research. a lengthy stroll through...
when in new york i always visit sullivan's bayard-condict building (1897-1899) not only to reacquaint myself with an "old friend" of sorts, but to closely study and photo-document the exceptional white glazed terra cotta facade through time, executed by the perth amboy terra cotta company, perth amboy, nj....
i had plenty of time to research the history of charleston, south carolina, before flying there. a few weeks after booking the trip, however, i had chosen to avoid that approach altogether and just visit blindly, in hopes of getting lost in its rich and well-preserved...
as in san francisco, i spent a great deal of my "vacation" wandering the streets of new orleans armed with a camera and multiple lenses. i deliberately avoided putting forth any objectives or parameters for myself in terms of producing architectural imagery that could be assigned greater...
the painted ladies are a historic attraction in the bay, but i was nonetheless thrilled to peruse for myself the sloping row of colorful queen anne style residences in alamo square park and throughout the city. these victorian and edwardian style houses are generally 2-3 stories, featuring multiple balconies, large...