A Pictorial Blog of Things I Make,
Items I Collect, Architecture I Love,
and Other Stuff



Saturday, October 8, 2011

Yet More Modernism in Florida

Lake Buena Vista: Walt Disney World Dolphin (1990), designed by Michael Graves.

Collins Park, Miami Beach: Rotunda (1926) with a concrete relief sculpted by Albert Vrana and entitled The Story of Man.

Southern Florida College, Lakeland: William H. Danforth Chapel (1955), designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.

The altar of the Danforth Chapel.

Miami: 700 Brickell Avenue (1971).

Palm Beach: Dunster House (1978). 

Miami: Colonnade Plaza, formerly Mutual of Omaha Building (1969), designed by O. K. Houstoun, Jr. & H. Maxwell Parish.

Fort Myers: Lee County Administration Office Building (1960), designed by Gundersen Wilson Architects.

Miami: Atlantis Condominium (1982), designed by Arcquitectonica. Punctured into this 20-story, 96-unit condo is this five-story section known as the Palm Court, containing a red spiral staircase, a Jacuzzi and of course, a palm tree.

Tampa Museum of Art (2010), wrapped in a perforated metal skin and designed by Stanley Saitowitz.

Miami: Espirito Santo Plaza (2004), a 36-story building designed by Kohn Petersen Fox Associates. The arch is a nod to Eero Saarinen's Gateway Arch in St. Louis--the city whose byname is The Gateway to the West. Miami is known as The Gateway to Latin America.

Jacksonville: Riverplace Tower, originally Gulf Life Tower (1967), designed by Welton Becket and KBJ Architects. When completed, this was the tallest precast, post-tensioned concrete structure in the world.

Miami Beach: 158 Ocean Drive, designed by architect unknown, post-World War II.

Naples: An A-framed Dairy Queen.

Tampa: Exchange National Bank Building (1966), designed by Harry A. MacEwen. This photo shows the lower nine floors of the 22-story building--a parking garage sheathed in aluminum Sol Dec II solar screening. Developed by Alcoa, the screening allowed a 34-percent open area for air circulation and light. At the time, it was the largest installation of Sol Dec II on record.

Miami Beach: Fountainebleau Hotel (1954), designed by Morris Lapidus.

Lake Buena Vista: Walt Disney World Swan Hotel (1990), designed by Michael Graves.

Lakeland: This 70-foot-tall sign dates from 1957 and appeared in 1990's Edward Scissorhands.

Jacksonville: Independent Square, formerly Independent Life Building (1974), designed by KBJ Architects.

Miami Beach: Apogee (2007), designed by Sieger Suarez Architectural Partnership.
To look at like posts, visit: Modernism in Florida & More Modernism in Florida

Tuesday, September 20, 2011

Put 'er There: N.Y.C. Bar Coasters of Neat Design

Coaster from the bar of La Bottega, a restaurant at the Maritime Hotel, 363 West 16th Street.

One of a half dozen or so related coaster designs at the Ace Hotel's restaurant Breslin, 16 West 29th Street.

The restaurant is at 218 Lafayette Street; the font is Art Nouveau.

Junior's has a full bar but this scallop-edged coaster is more frequently sandwiched between coffee cup and saucer.

This coaster was designed by Milton Glaser for the restaurant at 11 Madison Avenue.

One version of John Dory Oyster Bar's DayGlo coaster . . .

. . . and the other version.

From Hearth at 403 East 12th Street, my all-time favorite coaster--this rectangular one designed in 2006 by Bob Dahlquist and based on posters that F. G. Cooper made for the U.S. government during World War I.  

Friday, September 16, 2011

Praised Be: Exceptional Religious Architecture in the Hamptons

In its monolithic-like stance and with its battered walls and tall window spaces, Sag Harbor's First Presbyterian Church is supposed to call to mind the form of a temple along the Nile. Some say this edifice is the finest example of the Egyptian Revival style in the whole country.

 Built in in 1844 and designed by Minard Lafever, First Presbyterian is also known as the Whalers Church, and its wooden roof-line ornaments shaped like blubber spades attest to Sag Harbor's long-gone heyday as whaling center.

Completed in 1987 and designed by Norman Jaffe, the synagogue known as Gates of the Groves extends from the Jewish Center of the Hamptons in East Hampton.

 Jaffe (1932–1993) drew inspiration from the 18th-century wooden synagogues of Eastern Europe for a design that incorporates plain cedar shingles, the area's traditional building material since the 1600s.

East Hampton's Most Holy Trinity Catholic Church dates from 1894.

This Victorian-era frame church has  East Hampton's largest Christian congregation, once including Edith Bouvier Beale and her daughter, Little Edie. Most Holy Trinity Cemetery, a few miles away, is the burial ground for the paternal ancestors and relatives of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, including her Aunt Big Edie, who died in 1977.
To look at Mrs. Beale's gravestone, visit: Some Celebrity Graves I've Visited
To look at more ecclesiastical architecture, visit: Mid-Century Manhattan Churches

Tuesday, September 13, 2011

Still More Selections From My Collection of Mall Post Cards

Built in 1967, Brookfield Square, outside Milwaukee, featured this so-called "Wonderfall." Colorfully spotlighted, it was a "fountain" of clear oil flowing down wires.

Opened in 1971, Park City Center in Lancaster, Pa., was once known as the Mall of Four Seasons, with corridors named accordingly. Summer, shown above, did not have . . .

. . . the artificial blooming trees of the Spring corridor.

A floor opening in the Winter corridor affords a view of an ice skating rink. This section has "evergreen" trees.

When it opened almost 50 years ago (on October 11, 1961), Cherry Hill Mall was the biggest enclosed agora in the country and the East Coast's first climate-controlled mall, where, says the post card, "the temperature is always springtime."

Another distinction of Cherry Hill Mall: two-story aviaries displaying tropical birds.

Just three miles from Cherry Hill Mall is Moorestown Mall in Moorestown, N.J. It opened in 1963 but has since been remodeled multiple times.

This is the East Court of San Antonio's North Star Mall, which opened in 1960.

Valley North Shopping Center Mall, Wenatchee, Wash.

Nowadays anchored by a Kmart and a Bealls department store, the Seminole Mall of Seminole, Fla., was built in 1964, was renovated in 1990, and was hit with foreclosure in July of this year. 

The climatically-sealed souk now known as Westfield Belden Village opened on October 1, 1970 in Jackson Township, Ohio, outside Canton.

Facts about the Glendale Galleria: Opened October 14, 1976; designed by Jon Jerde, architect of the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minn., and the Bellagio in Las Vegas; second largest mall in Los Angeles County; location of the first Panda Restaurant (1983); home of the first three-story Target in the U.S. (2007), as well as venue of one of the first two Apple Stores in the world, both opening in 2001. 

Tuesday, September 6, 2011

Hyper-Typographic Business Cards

From my collection of  business cards: Specimens that show multifarious fonts teeming together and flowing over the edge--as in this card from the Second Avenue Deli, New York City.

This card from Lafayette in New York City is . . .

. . . similar to this one from the Hog Island Oyster Co. in San Francisco--a coincidence, I suppose.

Strawberry Luna, Pittsburgh.

Silas Tom, Dallas.

Buddakan, New York City.

Woodside Press, Brooklyn.

Peculiar Press, San Francisco.

Nello, New York City, Southampton and St.-Tropez.

Wolfgang Puck Bar & Grill, Las Vegas.

Bar Américain, New York City.