Category Archives: architecture
“Business route” is optimistic
It’s the same story: once the interstate came through, all the little businesses along what is now optimistically called the business route began to fade. Here there are several miles of abandoned gas stations, truck stops, restaurants, and other buildings whose previous life is now indeterminable.
It’s a sad sight.
Unless I see it: then it’s a town full of opportunities.
Rio Pecos Ranch Truck Terminal
(now closed) (which you could already tell)
Santa Rosa, New Mexico
photographed 5.4.2013
College of Architecture
The college of architecture and urban planning at the University of Michigan is housed in this old building. And, at the end of the building are apartments; anyone who’s ever gone to architecture school will appreciate the genius behind THAT idea.
(Oldest architecture school joke in history: This building doesn’t even NEED light switches: the lights are always on because on one ever leaves.) (I never said architects were funny.)
Ann Arbor, Michigan
photographed 4.20.2013
Stairs from the nameless street
A curvy staircase going from one street (that Google maps just refuses to provide a name for) to the intersection of E. South Water Street and North Park Drive, and on to Lake Shore East Park.
I guess people in Chicago know this, but it came as news to me: those stainless steel handrails are cold, and when they get wet* they are very slippery.
downtown Chicago, Illinois
photographed 4.15.2013
*There was something called “rain” in Chicago. I’ve read about it, but we don’t get it in Texas. At least not in my part of the state.
Power plant door gleams in cold sunlight
On the banks of the Huron River, in Ann Arbor, the wind felt like it was straight from the Arctic. The clouds that had followed us from Chicago were breaking up, but not until they’d dropped a bit of snow overnight.
The first mill on this part of the Huron River was built in 1833, and the adjacent millpond eventually served a flour mill, a woolen mill, a paper mill, and other industries. The “new” hydroelectric station, shown here, was constructed in 1914.
Ann Arbor, Michigan
photographed 4.20.2013
Heaven on a Sunday morning
Of course you knew this: that the very instant I first saw this place, which was on a Friday night, I made plans to go back on a Sunday morning just so I could use “Heaven on a Sunday morning” as the title of a blog post.*
As it turns out, heaven isn’t too crowded on Sundays. Just a couple of guys working on repairing the brick street, a man on a bicycle who was shopping the trashcans, and me.
Lubbock, Texas
photographed 4.7.2013
*I realize I could have actually taken this photograph any day of the week and just pretended I took it on a Sunday. But I wouldn’t do that.
