Thursday’s Windows: Thank you, Sandra

I had a hard time choosing a photo for this week – the last week that Sandra Conner will be hosting her “Thursday’s Windows” series. It should be something special…but what do I have that’s different and good enough? Finally I settled on this picture –

Apartment windows in Habitat 67 in Montreal – a complex made by stacking together identical concrete modules, with each individual unit made by connecting a varying number of modules. I first saw Habitat when it was one of the futuristic highlights of world’s fair Expo 67 – unlike the other fair buildings, most of which are long gone, it seems to have held up very well over the past 45 years!

Sandra, thank you for coming up with this challenge! It’s been an interesting project to participate in. I hope your life calms down a bit and that you have a blessed and happy year ahead of you.

Thursday’s Windows: In the bay

Time for another picture for Sandra Conner’s Thursday’s Windows.

I took this one last Sunday – a very windy day – while we were eating lunch in the middle of Chesapeake Bay.

That’s right, in the middle of the Bay. We came home from our short vacation by way of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel, about 17 miles (28 km) of bridges combined with two tunnels that dive down under shipping channels. At the entrance to the southern tunnel, you can stop to visit a little restaurant and souvenir shop, with a long fishing pier behind it. (I didn’t see anybody at all braving the fishing pier this week! It was very windy.)

Thursday’s Windows: Christmas

A “third day of Christmas” post for Sandra Conner’s Thursday’s windows series –

Thursday’s Windows: Philadelphia Victorian

(Well, yes, it’s Friday now.) But, even if it’s a day late, here’s my current contribution to Sandra Conner’s Thursday Windows – a wonderfully ornate late nineteenth century specimen from Locust Street in Philadelphia.

I’m not sure which I like most – the incredibly complicated stone carving surrounding the window, or the leaded class, or the flourishing jade plant on the windowsill.

Thursday’s Windows: Needle

This week’s picture for Sandra Conner’s Thursday’s Windows series –

A rock formation near Mount Rushmore in South Dakota – actually, I think it’s officially called the “needle’s eye”, but it’s a window of sorts!

Thursday’s Windows: Curtains

Another photo for Sandra Conner’s Thursday’s Windows series. Nearly ten years ago, we stopped to look at a typical late nineteenth century / early twentieth century homestead in South Dakota. The original part of the house, on the left, was excavated out of the side of a hill with a roof and front wall added. Later, the right-hand side was added as a more “normal” house.

But what strikes me most are the curtains in the windows with their determinedly decorative ruffles.

(This really was a family home, until it was eventually abandoned when the owners realized that you just couldn’t make a living by farming here. It’s only a short distance from where the ground crumbles away into the Badlands:

which are and always were hopeless for crops of any sort at all.)

Thursday’s Window: Federal Fanlight

Back to Susan Conner’s Thursday’s Windows series, with a fanlight above the front door of one of the larger houses at Sturbridge Village, a reconstructed early nineteenth century town in Connecticut.

This building is in the “Federal style”, popular in the U.S. during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. It copies ancient Greek architecture as much as possible – notice the columns framing the door – but the New England climate forces some compromises, like glass windows to try to keep a little heat inside during the winter!

Thursday’s Windows: Handles

Another entry for Sandra Conner’s Thursday’s Windows series. Sometimes it’s hard to figure out how to enter a building, but not this one!

Just grab one of the big yellow handbags and pull.

Also – here’s a closer look into the window to the left of the door. I tweaked the color balance to bring up the handbags inside and make the reflected sky / tree / lamppost less overpowering, but they’re still more in the way than I’d like! What’s inside – handbags, scarves, handbags, sunglasses, handbags, and a lot of handbags in every color and material and style and size you ever tried to imagine.

Thursday’s Windows – Stained Glass

And another entry in Sandra Conner’s Thursday’s Windows series –

The National Cathedral in Washington D.C. has a wide variety of stained glass windows – some are in a cathedralesque medieval style, while others are very modernistic. (I think this is a representation of the creation, but I may be wrong.)

Thursday’s Windows: Trolley

Another photo for Sandra Conner’s Thursday’s Windows series –

The front windows of this retired trolley gave the driver
a good view of what was ahead. (Trolley Museum, Scranton PA)