I’ve been spending a lot of time in Oak Park lately, and one of the things I’ve found to be the most interesting is comparing houses of different styles but similar time periods. This is, after all, the neighborhood of Frank Lloyd Wright where the Prairie style was born. Not everyone was interested in the… Read More What Came Before Prairie Style
Donner Pass, just west of the California and Nevada border, is perhaps best known in history for the Donner Party and today for its large ski community. The area, however, has a rich and varied history, much of which is easily visible from the Old Donner Donner Pass Road. Donner Pass has petroglyphs visible just… Read More California’s Chinese Wall
The thing that fascinates me most about Second Empire style (most identifiable by those mansard roofs) is how quickly it went from huge popularity to disfavor in the United States. Second Empire, which drew from contemporaneous French building fashions, was the dominant residential style in the United States 1860-1880. It was also used in a… Read More Second Empire in the 21st Century
I started off my summer with a road trip from Seattle to Chicago and featured my favorite roadside motel in July. So now that it’s Labor Day and summer is winding down, it’s only fitting to share this little gas station I stopped to visit on my trip to Reno/Tahoe last week. Rocovits’ Gas… Read More A Century Ago on First Street
