Monthly Archives: November 2012
Protected: The path to hipness (Part I)
Historic 1939 World’s Fair home on the market
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A Maryland Realtor emailed to let me know that Silver Spring, Maryland’s 1939 World’s Fair Town of Tomorrow home is on the market. Built as a marketing gimmick and used as collateral advertising for the New York fair, the home has had only two owners since it was completed in the summer of 1939.
Construction progress photo. The Washington Post, June 11, 1939.
Hudson on the Savannah
Savannah’s architectural charm is evident throughout the expansive National Historic Landmark district that comprises its eighteenth- and nineteenth-century urban core. Buildings, structures, and cultural landscapes are what most visitors notice. Archaeologists (current and former) who spend a lot of time looking down — a professional hazard — appreciate the history underfoot. Specifically, brick pavers from brickyards throughout the Southeast and the Hudson River Valley. Continue reading
Virtual zeitgeist, physical places, and real people
Architecture writer Nichole Reber has written a post for Hong Kong’s Perspective magazine blog that explores the intersection of history, preservation, and memory documented in past posts in this blog. Continue reading
Views of the Communipaw Abattoir
Before the arrival of the railroads in the mid-19th century, Communipaw, New Jersey, was a small port town in the Hudson River’s west bank. Before 1866, the Pennsylvania Railroad had no dedicated livestock terminal in the New York market. Animals the railroad carried from the west were offloaded in Elizabethport, New Jersey, and were ferried across the Hudson River to Manhattan where they were driven through the streets to the Allerton stockyards at 44th Street and Fifth Avenue. While New York City’s new health laws (which became effective in 1866) contributed greatly to the construction of the Communipaw abattoir and stockyards, the reduction and elimination of the costs of driving livestock across the Hudson River and through city streets also were significant factors along with increased competition for livestock by the three major railroads serving New York City: the Pennsylvania; the Erie; and, the New York Central. Continue reading