The tour continues.
Furnished and decorated by Washington’s venerable Hecht Company, Silver Spring’s 1939 World’s Fair Home’s public spaces reflected the traditional vocabulary that met visitors to the familiar Cape Cod home in the Northwood Park subdivision. The living room was the first room on the left of the entry hall.
1939 World’s Fair Town of Tomorrow Home No. 15: First floor plan. Living room highlighted.
Earlier this week on my way to testify at a historic preservation hearing in Maryland I got to stop by Silver Spring’s 1939 World’s Fair home. A few weeks ago I wrote about the Realtor emailing to let me know that the home was for sale. She generously offered to give me a tour of the home and I accepted.
Silver Spring’s World’s Fair Home. December 2012.
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.
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
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
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
Cattle guard.
Shed.
Chimney ruins.
Tenant house.
That’s precisely what a group of developers and third-wave gentrifiers did back in 2007 when they created One Oakhurst to gin up opposition to the creation of a proposed Oakhurst local historic district in Decatur, Ga. Several of the folks behind One Oakhurst were web-savvy IT professionals who created untraceable anonymous email accounts and a blog that successfully avoided caching by search engines like Google. Continue reading