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Classic light post, Union Street near Mason, San Francisco. San Fran has done a good job preserving classic posts — Union and Market have the same poles they had for the last several decades. I have hundreds of photos from a 2008 visit — will get around to more posts one of these days.
Categorized in: One Shots Out of Town Tagged with: San Francisco
The last time I was in DC (December 2007) I quite accidentally stumbled on these remaining streetcar rails on O and P Street in Georgetown. Looks like the city is on a street paving program, but according to this article in Greater Greater Washington, the stones and rails will be spiffed up and put back. [...]
Categorized in: One Shots Out of Town Tagged with: DC Washington
Categorized in: One Shots Out of Town Tagged with: DC Washington
Despite federal guidelines elsewhere that mandate green and white reflective street signs, Brookline, Massachusetts (the birthplace of John F. Kennedy) has always been permitted to retain its handsome set of bas relief street signs, with a silver background and black letters. Have the signs been landmarked? 11/18/11
Categorized in: One Shots Out of Town
Over the years my pal Allen Dade has passed along several dozen images of the strange and varied lampposts found in the London area. I know next to nothing at all about them — except they’re in the vein of the wrought and cast ison Bishop Crook and Corvington lampposts that, in newly cast versions, [...]
Categorized in: Out of Town Street Lamps Tagged with: England London Manchester
Though San Francisco is much smaller in total area than New York, its strict grid street system provides ample opportunity for builders to include alleys in its street plan. While Manhattan is unaccountably alley-poor, San Fran presents multiple opportunities for intrepid alley hunters… ISADORA DUNCAN LANE, Taylor between Geary and Post, Union Square area As a rule [...]
Categorized in: Out of Town Tagged with: California San Francisco
You might think San Francisco and Flushing have absolutely nothing in common, but they do share something. Way over in the extreme western end of Flushing, between College Point Boulevard, the Van Wyck Expressway, the Long Island Railroad and the Kissena Park Corridor, there’s a cluster of small streets unnoticed except by their residents and the people [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Out of Town Tagged with: Flushing Queens
“There was a time in this fair land when the railroad did not run,” once sang Canadian Gordon Lightfoot, and as hard to believe as it is now, NYC and New Jersey never had a rail connection crossing the mighty Hudson until 1910, when Pennsylvania Station opened. Much of the grand architecture associated with the connection has [...]
Categorized in: Out of Town Tagged with: New Jersey
I arrived in Roslyn on a March day in 2007 so clear and bright it crackled. It was, in fact, Easter Sunday. Visiting the North Shore, Long Island town of about 2600 on a day like this made me bewildered why I hadn’t more often; it’s full of history, ancient buildings and landmarks, and a gaggle [...]
Categorized in: Out of Town Tagged with: Roslyn
There are many American Streets in Philadelphia. Or, strictly speaking, there’s one American Street in about twenty different pieces… William Penn‘s and Thomas Holme‘s original Philadelphia grid pattern, developed in the 1680s, has proven to be a major influence on city plans across the United States; Manhattan’s grid pattern owes a debt to it, and Queens adopted [...]
Categorized in: Out of Town Tagged with: Philadelphia Pennsylvania
It all began with a strange (to me) map notation on a Geographia Hudson County atlas, specifically, in Jersey City at Wayne and Monmouth Streets just west of downtown. “Dixon Crucible” it read, and I was drawn there just to see what this was all about. A crucible is a vessel made of a refractory substance such [...]
Categorized in: Out of Town Tagged with: Jersey City New Jersey
Holy Hoya! I was walking through gorgeous Georgetown, DC in December 2007 when I stumbled on an extant streatch of trolley tracks, complete with bricked pavement, on O Street…and again, a block north on P Street. A revelation to your webmaster…in New York City, most traces of our trolley legacy are routinely covered by asphalt or [...]
Categorized in: Out of Town Tagged with: Washington DC
Foggy Bottom, located west of the White House between E and K Streets on the north and south and the Potomac River on the west, is best known for being the home of the US Department of State, the World Bank, the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and most prominently George Washington University, which owns much of the local [...]
Categorized in: Out of Town Tagged with: Washington DC
A February 2008 walk in Jersey City’s north side provided terrific Manhattan views, a look at a cobblestone carriageway and a view of one of New Jersey’s oldest houses… It’s much, much easier for the car-free (and loving it, as Don Adams used to say) to get to the north side of Jersey City (The Heights) from New [...]
Categorized in: Out of Town Tagged with: Jersey City New Jersey
My first visit to Bayonne, NJ came in January 2006. I noticed a lot of interesting signage from previous eras… Bayonne, NJ is located on a small peninsula situated between Newark Bay on the west and Upper New York Bay on the east. To its south is the Kill Van Kull and beyond it, Staten Island, to [...]
Categorized in: Out of Town Tagged with: Bayonne NJ
In the years following the Dutch settlement of New Amsterdam on the southern end of Manhattan Island in the mid-1620s, the settlers had interest in the lands surrounding it in Long Island, Staten Island and present-day New Jersey. By the 1650s, by then under the rule of Director General Peter Stuyvesant, the Netherlands had acquired from [...]
Categorized in: Out of Town Tagged with: Jersey City New Jersey
