Sometimes it’s easy to get caught up in the beauty of architecture and in the history, but preservation is first and foremost about people. It is the people, after all, the community, who create spaces, create and use architecture. Architecture is only telling the story of the community. I was excited to discover local artist… Read More Preservation Meets Art
Ballard, once a town populated primarily by Scandinavian fishermen, is now a popular neighborhood in northwest Seattle (I previously wrote about Ballard’s recent boom in popularity here and Ballard’s famous holdout here). Two of Ballard’s defining features are associated with the waterway that separates the neighborhood from the city: the Ballard Bridge and the Ballard Locks. The… Read More The Nation’s Most Popular Locks
One of my favorite trips this summer was a trip I made to Orcas Island, one of the San Juan Islands in the Puget Sound. We aimed for Moran State Park, sure to find good beaches, trails, and campgrounds. We did, but we also found something else: a historic mansion tucked along the coast, known… Read More Extravagant Art in Improbable Places
Labor Day may be best known these days as the last breath of summer, that last three-day weekend before we dive into fall, made for last beach trips and barbecues. However, the holiday that gives us this three-day weekend was created with another intent: to recognize the labor movement and the achievements of the American… Read More National Park Feature: Pullman National Monument
I’ve never met a National Park I didn’t like, but I admit it, I have a favorite: Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historical Park in Woodstock, Vermont. To celebrate the centennial of the National Park Service (that’s today!), I thought I’d share a little bit about the park at the top of my list. Here, five reasons it’s my… Read More NPS Centennial: Meet My Favorite National Park
The Pioneer Building is located at the south end of downtown Seattle in the aptly named Pioneer Square neighborhood. Pioneer Square was once the heart of Seattle and due to the shift of downtown to the north, the neighborhood has retained a number of historic buildings. Several blocks around the Pioneer Building make up the Pioneer Square-Skid… Read More Building Feature: Seattle’s Pioneer Building
The arches found over entrances of many old buildings are often set apart from the building both stylistically and structurally. Sometimes they symbolically announce the building you’re entering, and sometimes literally. And in the case of a number of historic arches across the country, they have outlived their buildings. The first case of this that I knew… Read More When All That Remains is an Arch
Chicago is an architecture enthusiast’s dream city. From Burnham & Root and the White City, to Frank Lloyd Wright and the Prairie School, to the glass skyscrapers of Mies van der Rohe, a dozen nationally-significant trends had a role or got their start in the Windy City. I visited Chicago again recently and, as always, I couldn’t… Read More Building Feature: Chicago’s Fisher Building
Portland, Oregon’s rose city and a key piece of what locals call the Pacific Northwest (or Cascadia), has long been a crossroads in history. Or, if you will, the end of the trail–the Oregon Trail, that is. The city may be young by east coast standards, but it quickly came of age and has the… Read More Portland’s 3 Best Historic Estates
The Nuclear Reactor Building on the University of Washington Campus has been fighting hard for nearly two years, and following a controversial Superior Court ruling in favor of the University, the building’s future is looking bleak. The judge ruled that, as the University is an educational institution, it does not need to comply with Seattle’s… Read More Saying Goodbye to the Nuclear Reactor Building
Susie Trexler 