Category Archives: architecture
Gas pumps in storage
Just because we could: that’s why my friend Jo and I left Lubbock after work the other day and drove the 90 miles or so down to Snyder, Texas. It stays light so late in the summer that we had plenty of time to get down there to take a few* pictures before it got dark.
You know my rule about looking around back, right? After I took a few (dozen) shots of an old gas station, we went around back and saw where the gas pumps were stored.
But before that happened, a man pulled his pickup into the parking lot, parked in the shade of the building next door, and had the following conversation with me:
Man: You takin’ pictures?
Me: Yes, sir, I am.
Man (with narrowed eyes and suspicious voice): Why?
Me: I like this building!
Man (with same eyes-and-voice): Why?
Me: I can’t explain it, really. I just like old buildings.
Man (with resignation in his voice): Oh. I was hopin’ you was a real estate appraiser. I’m tryin’ to sell this place.
I didn’t make his day, but his building made mine.
Snyder, Texas
photographed 7.10.2013
* Few = 93
“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
One Day | One Image 