Travel

trinity evangelical lutheran church sits near the corner of west highland avenue and north 9th street. originally established by german immigrants in 1847, the building, as it stood until may 2018, was designed by architect frederick velguth in german romanesque or gothic revival style. what remains of the cream city brick, a lightly colored brick manufactured locally, and sandstone details can be seen...

a trip to milwaukee last weekend led to a much-needed, albeit abbreviated photographic survey of architectural building ornament (primarily terra cotta) adorning three historically significant 19th century buildings i've repeatedly visited for the last 20 years while traveling on my carefully curated "circuit" of structures within the confines of late 19th and early 20th century milwaukee architecture. in my humble opinion, the kalvelage mansion - also...

during my very brief visit to boston in late november, i took thousands of images of focusing on h.h. richardson's architecture, late 19th century ornament (e.g., carved brick) adorning houses located in the backbay neighborhood, mit chapel, a small selection of building on harvard's campus (e.g., sever hall, austin hall, ware and van brunt's victorian gothic memorial hall) and finally, brattle...

unfortunately, i haven't had much time to visit neighboring wisconsin this year to photograph architecture in cities and town across the state. i did have a chance to revisit louis h. sullivan's farmers and merchants union bank in columbus (1919) while in madison shooting the two bradley houses - the first by sullivan (1908) and the second by purcell, feick...

i've researched ornamental carved brick for sometime now, but lacked any extensive and/or detailed visual documentation of it in situ. fortunately, i ran across a wide array of examples on houses (built between the late 1870's and mid-1880's) located in and around boston's back bay. i suspect the carved brick i documented was likely executed by the perless brick company...

  i spent two afternoons photographing terra cotta and sandstone ornament adorning the facades of 19th century rowhouses located in boston's back bay neighborhood. the following gallery represents a tiny fraction of my efforts towards beginning what i hope will be an exhaustive photographic study of exterior architecture ornament found on both residential and commercial structures within this notably historic neighborhood.  the survey will shed light...

documenting louis sullivan's national famers' bank of owatonna (1908) was exhausting. pouring over and carefully selecting hundreds of images cataloging sullivan, millet, and elmslie's ornament has left me with extreme eye fatigue.  the ornament's energy was intense, but at the same time, calming. hard to explain, so i won't. it was a struggle to leave that room.   below are...

the following images were taken while chicago architect john vinci and i spent the afternoon on a self-guided tour of st. louis-based city museum's architectural artifact installations scattered on multiple floors of an old colossal warehouse.   the majority of the ornament comes from chicago, with large caches of terra cotta from building commissions designed by louis h. sullivan and...

john vinci and i made the trek to st. louis to visit richard nickel's architectural ornament at southern university edwardsville, the wainwright and union trust buildings, city museum, and the wainwright tomb, located in bellefontaine cemetery. time was very limited, so i didn't get a chance to extensively document building ornament during our brief stay. fruitful dialogue and observations of...

images of richard nickel’s adler & sullivan building ornament collection on display at lovejoy library, southern illinois university edwardsville (siue). nickel sold his architectural artifact collection to the university in 1965 but continued salvaging additional fragments until his untimely death in 1972.    it was incredibly cool to see the collection with chicago architect john vinci, who had not seen...

this month marks the second trip i’ve taken to new york to document american architecture, and the cross-over of preservation happening in the two cities. this summer i pursued a fragment of the historic gage building (1899) being replicated in buffalo at the boston valley terra cotta company, and saw they were simultaneously working on fragments of the woolworth building...

i flew to nyc to document the woolworth building's upper floor condo conversion and exterior ornament restoration, but my adhd continually redirects my efforts toward editing other images of captivating building ornament (e.g., edelmann's dexter bld. facade). i have edited some woolworth, but need to ramp it up soon - especially the ornament fabricated by winslow brothers.  the woolworth project...

the farmers & merchants union bank first got its humble start in a dry goods store in columbus, wisconsin, at the immediate out start of the civil war. new yorker and businessman john r. wheeler named it “the union bank” to signify his support for the northern states and abraham lincoln. several years later, at the end of the war...

Boston Valley Terra Cotta’s Master Sculptors Restoring Chicago’s Gage Building June 22, 2017|Blog, Gage Building, News/Events Boston Valley Terra Cotta has been making progress on the very detailed, ornamental terra cotta facade restoration of the Gage Building in Chicago. Designed by architect Louis Sullivan in 1899, the Gage Building’s Art Nouveau façade is emphasized with intricate vine and ivy motifs that complement geometric patterns...

the following images were taken during a recent road trip where i manged to briefly stop in winona, red wing, and minneapolis over the course of an afternoon. a sizable chunk of tiime was devoted to photodocumeting the interior and exterior ornament of purcell, feick, and elmslie's merchants bank building (1912), located in downtown winona, minnesota. the exceptional sullivanesque ornamentation...

a photographic study of selected 19th and early 20th century la crosse (wisconsin) commercial building exterior ornaments.  additional information on building history (e.g., architect, build date, material identification, etc.) will be added to each photo as time permits. the extant buildings shown below were chosen for inclusion based upon subjective interests and time commitment required to thoroughly document additional buildings...

during my business trip to buffalo (new york) earlier this month i managed to spend a good deal of time documenting several buildings that hold great interest to me. i could easily spend days shooting adler & sullivan's guaranty building (both inside and out), but due to time constraints, i had to move quickly from one location to the next...

i like to think of myself as a “watchdog” of sorts, especially when it comes to changes and transitions performed on downtown chicago’s historic buildings. while deeply engaged in surveying late 19th and early 20th century facade ornamentation, a comprehensive and ongoing photographic project, i noticed an odd change in a notable structure. the gage building (completed in 1899 with a...

historic buildings that dodged waves of urban renewal and blatant neglect are thriving in milwaukee. on a given stretch, a virtually untouched oriental-themed movie palace and its two neighboring 1870's commercial buildings prove that milwaukee has been proactive in rehabilitating their existing "stock" of historic architecture. i'm pleased to have witnessed this transformation over the past 20 years, and recorded...

my eye gravitates toward crazed paint, cracked windows, timeworn stonework, and "ghost signs" as i walk the streets with camera in hand. those are only a few of the numerous attributes that i look for in aging buildings that have avoided substantial alteration. even when the face of a building has not been willingly changed by residents it will have...