I stumbled upon this one accidentally. I was walking through Brooklyn with my family and this building caught my eye. The once clean and beautiful little North Side Bank is now a hip little surf shop. https://pilgrimsurfsupply.com/
Brooklyn Navy Yard is changing fast but some things still remain.
Take a look at these before and after photos captured during a recent Open House New York tour, expertly led by the delightful Taylor Zhou. The tour covered a range of fascinating topics, but one of the most interesting and often overlooked was the history and impact of the Chinese Exclusion Laws passed in 1882. These laws had a significant impact, dramatically limiting immigration from China and virtually eliminating any Chinese women from coming to the US. If you’re keen on learning more about this critical issue, be sure to check out the 1882 Foundation at (https://1882foundation.org/about-the-foundation/).
OHNY (Open House New York) is a nonprofit organization that promotes unparalleled access to the city—to the places, people, projects, systems, and ideas that define New York and its future. From the annual Open House New York Weekend festival to year-round programming like Urban Systems, Public Policy Talks, or Stacks, join us to take an inside look at how the city works.
(https://ohny.org/)
In 1909 many nations and communities in the U.S. celebrated the centennial of Abraham Lincoln’s birth. The Centennial Celebration Committee of New York City asked City Hall for $25,000 ($742,000 today) in 1908 for the event.
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS
Chicago organized a committee of 100 citizens, who raised $40,000 ($1.2 million today) to sponsor a week-long celebration to outdo the efforts of any other city in the United States as an example of patriotism.
Source: https://drloihjournal.blogspot.com/2021/08/lincoln-centennial-celebrations-in-chicago-and-springfield-illinois-1909.html
Located in the heart of downtown Chicago is the Fine Arts Building, also known as the Studebaker Building. It is located at 410 South Michigan Avenue, across from Grant Park, in the Chicago Landmark Historic Michigan Boulevard District.
It was built for the Studebaker company in 1884–5 by Solon S. Beman, the architect for the town of Pullman, in the Richardson Romanesque style. As the Studebaker company outgrew this headquarters, the Studebaker family converted the building to studios for artists, musicians, architects and others. The building’s role later expanded when it became home to both the women’s suffrage movement and the Arts and Crafts movement in the Midwest. To this day, the building remains true to its art roots, still housing art galleries and design firms.
Source: https://www.nps.gov/places/fine-arts-building.htm
It’s December 8, 1893 – The World’s Columbian Exposition just ended in Chicago, which saw an influx of people and made the Windy City a truly international destination. Imagine that you are on the corner of Michigan Avenue and Adams Street in downtown Chicago. Some modest buildings dot the skyline, and there’s a little hustle and bustle in the streets.
You look east and see open land – no Millennium Park with sprawling grounds – but you spot something new. A stately, classical Beaux-Arts building: the Art Institute of Chicago.
125 years later, soaring skyscrapers and even more city-dwellers populate Michigan Avenue, but the Art Institute still stands proudly and is considered one of the leading art museums in the world.
Source: https://www.wfmt.com/2018/12/07/celebrate-the-125th-anniversary-of-the-art-institute-of-chicago-with-wfmt-tune-in-for-an-art-inspired-morning-program-on-saturday-december-8/
One of my favorite things in the world is a good bookstore or library. This beautiful bookstore in Porto, Portugal was an inspiration to J. K. Rowling for the moving staircases in Hogwarts.
The Livraria Lello & Irmão, commonly known in English as the Lello Bookstore, is a bookstore located in the civil parish of Cedofeita, Santo Ildefonso, Sé, Miragaia, São Nicolau e Vitória, in the northern Portuguese municipality of Porto.
Along with Bertrand in Lisbon, it is one of the oldest bookstores in Portugal and frequently rated among the top bookstores in the world (placing third in lists by guidebook publisher Lonely Planet and The Guardian).
Great to be back out in the world again! Here are some before and after finds from Brooklyn and Manhattan this past Fall.
The Roman Catholic parish of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, located in the Williamsburg area of Brooklyn, was established in 1863. F.J. Berlenbach, Jr., designed the Lombardian Romanesque basilica in 1870.
The Austin organ now in the Church of the Annunciation was originally built in 1912 for St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, Morristown, N.J. In 1930, St. Peter’s installed a new Skinner organ (Op. 836), and the Austin organ was acquired by Annunciation Church.
Bleeker St. at the NW Corner of Bowery 1934. Cool to see the old elevated rail line in the background of the old photo. Too bad they couldn’t have saved it for another Highline.
The Bombing of Warsaw in World War II refers to the aerial bombing campaign of Warsaw by the German Luftwaffe during the siege of Warsaw in the invasion of Poland in 1939. It also may refer to German bombing raids during the Warsaw Uprising in 1944. During the course of the war approximately 85% of the city was destroyed due to German mass bombings, heavy artillery fire and a planned demolition campaign.
The Warsaw Uprising was a major World War II operation, in the summer of 1944, by the Polish underground resistance, led by the Home Army, to liberate Warsaw from German occupation. The uprising was timed to coincide with the retreat of the German forces from Poland ahead of the Soviet advance.
Although the exact number of casualties is unknown, it is estimated that about 16,000 members of the Polish resistance were killed and about 6,000 badly wounded. In addition, between 150,000 and 200,000 Polish civilians died, mostly from mass executions. Jews being harboured by Poles were exposed by German house-to-house clearances and mass evictions of entire neighbourhoods. German casualties totalled over 2,000 to 17,000 soldiers killed and missing.[11] During the urban combat, approximately 25% of Warsaw’s buildings were destroyed. Following the surrender of Polish forces, German troops systematically levelled another 35% of the city block by block. Together with earlier damage suffered in the 1939 invasion of Poland and the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in 1943, over 85% of the city was destroyed by January 1945 when the course of the events in the Eastern Front forced the Germans to abandon the city.
Found a few new before and after photos this week in Amsterdam. This is a target rich city as so little has changed on the streets over the past century.
The Old Bailey, London EC4M 7EH, UK
The Blitz was a German bombing campaign against Britain in 1940 and 1941, during the Second World War. The term was first used by the British press and is the German word for ‘lightning’.[4]
The Germans conducted mass air attacks against industrial targets, towns, and cities, beginning with raids on London towards the end of the Battle of Britain in 1940, a battle for daylight air superiority between the Luftwaffe and the Royal Air Force over the United Kingdom. By September 1940, the Luftwaffe had failed and the German air fleets (Luftflotten) were ordered to attack London, to draw RAF Fighter Command into a battle of annihilation.[5][6] Adolf Hitlerand Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring, commander-in-chief of the Luftwaffe, ordered the new policy on 6 September 1940. From 7 September 1940, London was systematically bombed by the Luftwaffe for 56 out of the following 57 days and nights.[7] Most notable was a large daylight attack against London on 15 September.
The Luftwaffe gradually decreased daylight operations in favour of night attacks to evade attack by the RAF, and the Blitz became a night bombing campaign after October 1940. The Luftwaffe attacked the main Atlantic sea port of Liverpool in the Liverpool Blitz and the North Sea port of Hull, a convenient and easily found target or secondary target for bombers unable to locate their primary targets, suffered the Hull Blitz. Bristol, Cardiff, Portsmouth, Plymouth, Southampton and Swansea were also bombed, as were the industrial cities of Birmingham, Belfast, Coventry, Glasgow, Manchester and Sheffield. More than 40,000 civilians were killed by Luftwaffe bombing during the war, almost half of them in the capital, where more than a million houses were destroyed or damaged.[1]
In early July 1940, the German High Command began planning Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union.[8] Bombing failed to demoralise the British into surrender or do much damage to the war economy; eight months of bombing never seriously hampered British war production, which continued to increase.[9][10] The greatest effect was to force the British to disperse the production of aircraft and spare parts.[11] British wartime studies concluded that cities generally took 10 to 15 days to recover when hit severely, but exceptions like Birmingham took three months.[11]
The German air offensive failed because the Luftwaffe High Command (Oberkommando der Luftwaffe, OKL) did not develop a methodical strategy for destroying British war industry. Poor intelligence about British industry and economic efficiency led to OKL concentrating on tactics rather than strategy. The bombing effort was diluted by attacks against several sets of industries instead of constant pressure on the most vital.[11][12]
325 Bourke Street Melbourne, Australia – 1920 – 2019
Flinder Railway Station Melbourne, AustraliaFirst World War, 1917
Below left, doctors and medical students pose in front of Dunbar Hospital, a converted house that was the first hospital in Detroit for its black residents. At a time when blacks could be denied healthcare at hospitals on account of their race, minority-owned and operated hospitals like Dunbar filled a critical need in the city. Dunbar Hospital would later move to a larger location in 1928, with the original building reverting back to a home and later becoming a museum.
Detroit was, and still is, one of the most segregated cities in America. Though blacks have lived in Detroit almost from its founding over 300 years ago, it wasn’t until the First World War that large numbers of black immigrants began to arrive in the city from the south, along with southern whites who sought jobs in the defense industry. What had been a fairly integrated city became stratified along racial lines, with the racial prejudices of many newly arrived southern whites and some Detroit residents dictating a social policy that saw the creation of separate neighborhoods, schools, hotels, and public services for black Detroiters. Dunbar Hospital
Manhattan: 7th Ave. and Grove St. 1927 – 2016
Grove St. from West 4th St. 1939 – 2016
Grove St. West Village 1932 -2016
Chambers St. and Church St. 1927 – 2016
Chambers St. 1905 -2016
History Then and Now 