Architecture Trek

Cathedral Seating

2017-04-26T14:04:00.002-07:00

Exploring Armstrong Woods State Natural Reserve a few days ago we stumbled across this miracle of a forest theater and its huge cathedral-like seating area. I don't know the history of this theater, but I speculate that it's a produce of the federal Civilian Conservation Corps, active in this park and so many other state parks during their critical development periods of the 1930s and 1940s.

It's a beautiful, reverent setting. But let the the pictures speak for themselves.

Note the pair of big-leafed maples curving over and framing the stage, which is backed by another big-leafed maple. Pictures always come up short in the redwoods. We were there on a moody, rain-sprinkled Monday morning that made the visual design experience even more powerful.

View from the stage! Does St. Peter's in Rome have this much seating?

Best Western in Wine County

2017-04-25T07:25:00.001-07:00

Normally, I am not one to fawn over hotel architecture so when my wife booked us for a Best Western (near the freeway) in the Sonoma County wine country last weekend I don't think I had the planet's greatest expectations. But what a lovely surprise to overnight at Healdsburg's BW Dry Creek Inn. (Check out the YouTube video).

I love good outdoor rooms and this hotel had two. We strolled about after breakfast enjoying the ambience as staff set up for a working day's events and conferences. It was just the two of us, but I easily imagined the pleasure of a big family or group of friends drinkingwine by the fireplace in these outdoor rooms, kids running free and laughs all around at familiar family and friend stories. It definitely had a feel-good quality about it - and what better can you ask of thoughtful architecture?

The atmospherics were Tuscan. In the midst of beautiful California wine country in April we indulged the feeling -in this unexpectedly tasteful Best Western just off the freeway.

Whimsical furniture

Wine themes in the pedestrian walkways

Latin inscription outside, which, if my high school Latin is still reliable, means:

"There's wine. Drink up."

Sequoias

2014-08-03T16:40:00.003-07:00

For all the wandering in awe of human-made environments, nothing quite tops what comes naturally - as in the Giant Sequoias of California. Hats off to California State Parks for the ambience of Calaveras Big Trees State Park. My wife and I were there over the Fourth of July weekend, when it was so hot we picked the perfect morning and evening light and temperatures in which to walk two miles of trails in the North Grove. For much of the time we had the place to ourselves. These pictures show that for all the high-rises of Hong Kong and the splendor of say, California's state Capitol building, it's hard to beat a primeval forest in the Sierra Nevada at 7:30 in the morning.

Downtown, City of Angels

2014-08-02T14:43:00.001-07:00

A few weeks ago long-time good friends in Southern California treated us to a tour of downtown Los Angeles with the Los Angeles Conservancy. On this particular Saturday morning we did the Broadway Theater and Commercial District walk. If you like downtowns I can't recommend this highly enough. We had a really knowledgeable guide who took us back to the pre-Depression days of the 1920s when this small, young Pacific city added a score of elegant theaters to its downtown core. We walked for two hours or more through a district that's since become a Latino shopping zone. As always, I like to look up to these great geometric squares and designs when architects and builders believed in beauty and embellishment, a time before it became apparently impossible to afford such displays of good taste.

Yes, we did visit one theater, the interior of the Tower. It's used occasionally for rock shows and small presentations. As our guide said, these old movie palaces have been saved and preserved, but not yet found a new purpose. Sitting inside the Tower, I could only think it may take 50 more years for that purpose to materialize. In the meantime, cheers to those who saved these grand places!

Our walking companions pointed out this below as the work of a famed UK artist named Banksy.

Again, where do you see such attention to detail (below) in 2014?

We had the good fortune to be with a Los Angeles Times reporter who lives downtown and took us to the roof of a building now filled with garment manufacturing, but apparently being repackaged for a tech firm. Nice view from the roof...

Returning to Pershing Square via a wonderful fast tour of the Last Bookstore we arrived at the historic Biltmore Hotel for a romp through the halls. This wall-size picture below is from a banquet at the hotel's opening almost a century ago.

And such great hallways!

It's so easy in California to think of Los Angeles in terms of sprawl and endless suburbia, and never to had much of any experience in downtown. Downtown in the City of Angels was real, with a huge farmers market and thousands of new residential units in the works. It has a long way to go and I'd advise about a million new trees if I was on the mayor's staff. But a wonderful way to spend a few hours before heading to Malibu, then to a great place for wine tasting near Thousand Oaks and home to our friends' house in Simi Valley. Oh, and of course, the weather was perfect.

Wine Country

2014-05-18T19:22:00.003-07:00

We had family in town from Ohio so we ventured west on I-80 to the Napa Valley for wine tasting, picnicking and sightseeing. We loaded up on sandwiches and chips at Safeway in Napa and drove north on Highway 29 where our first stop was the iconic Robert Mondavi Winery. It had been years, but I remember how my wife and I dropped in here when we were newly married in the 1980s. The grounds were immaculate and so was the sense of the good life in California, in the pairing of good wine and good food. This is a feel good place, carrying on Mondavi taste, which is now part of a giant global corporation.

Redwoods

2014-05-18T16:43:00.005-07:00

Having moved to California 35 years ago I know it's nearly impossible to take a great picture of redwoods. They're too big, too much. You have to capture them in your mind. Not so, however, the great outdoor furniture and walking infrastructure that accompanies them in places like Muir Woods National Monument north of San Francisco. When we visited recently I was taken by the four bridges spanning the gently running creek that meanders through the woods, the wooden plank walking trails and the fencing that keeps you where the rangers want you. A lovely place for looking up, down or straight ahead on the trail.

A Beach House for Climate Change

2014-05-06T20:40:00.002-07:00

We visited Stinson Beach recently in the Golden Gate National Recreation Area north of San Francisco. Here's a beach house ready for storm surges and sea-level rise, estimated at up to five or more feet by 2100, according to a National Research Council assessment for the State of California. Surf's up!

London Calling

2013-12-21T06:29:00.003-08:00

I was off to Beer's Books recently in dowtown Sacramento to buy a calendar for my wife, and their always-ecclectic selection of the offbeat proved a winner for 2014. Walking up from a different direction than usual I discovered this lovely mural of California writer Jack London. (Car included)

The mural, finished in 2009, is by Sacramento artist/writer Stephanie Taylor. Another great contribution of pedestrian art to blank walls in Sacramento.

City Center

2013-12-07T09:53:00.002-08:00

A few of us in the office made a trip this week via I-80 and the El Cerrito Del Norte BART station to Oakland City Center at 1111 Broadway. The topic was sea-level rise, conducted in a lawyers' conference room high above the city. Some pictures downstairs on a quiet morning early December:

Looking back toward the entrance with a Peet's latte' in my possession.

'Tis the season in office buildings near and far.

Business

Get me a laptop, coffee and a good book. I could live here.

Oasis in the City

2013-11-29T09:32:00.003-08:00

The day before Thanksgiving I walked into Westminister Presbyterian at Capitol Park to take in part of the Music at Noon series, this one featuring harpsichordist Faythe Vollrath. I left the church to resume a walk in the park and noticed people looking inside the patio next to the church. Very classical and inviting urban oasis, home to many weddings.

Social Media

2013-11-27T20:58:00.000-08:00

Forget Yelp and Groupon. Give me the old-fashioned sandwich board on a city street. I like a colorful making the case for lunch. Here are a few boards I've seen recently in the vicinity of the state Capitol. I'll add more as I find them - one gem in particular that I've seen on L Street, advancing the cause for "peace and cookies on earth."

Philosophy

Hot soup, flatbread pizza

Note Dog Friendly Patio.

Here's our "Peace and cookies on earth."

....and 30 flavors of Italian soda

Cheerful, colorful - Trader Joe's in the suburbs

Architecture of the State

2013-11-18T19:48:00.002-08:00

A fall day. The lunch hour in downtown Sacramento. I strolled to the State Department of Education, getting a sense with these arches, columns and pillars, of being inside a great cathedral. An elegant space. Ahead of this woman and to her left inside the windows, employees were looking over collections of holiday gift baskets.

What's Wrong With This Picture?

2013-11-13T20:12:00.001-08:00

I believe that F is falling asleep.

City of Trees

2013-11-13T19:46:00.002-08:00

Sacramento's Capitol Park is ablaze in color. It was nearly 80 degrees earlier today, bringing out the city's bureaucrats to sit a spell, hike, gab and stroll amid the leaves of autumn. We, who work for the state downtown, benefit from visionaries of a century ago, the tree planters and landscape architects who envisioned such a creation as you see here below:

Young Capitol staffers with the Legislature out of town.

Crossroads.

Somewhere it's snowing, but not in California

Pacific Grove, California

2013-11-11T19:27:00.004-08:00

My wife and I ventured off for a long weekend to Pacific Grove, a small Monterey Penninsula city best identified by dual icons of monarch butterflies and Victorian architecture. We walked, we ate, we sat and watched the Pacific Ocean. It had been a dozen years or more since we last set eyes on a town that we explored when we first met nearly 35 years ago. It has lost none of its charm in a world that leans toward big box stores and shades of beige.

The private residence of Dr. Hart in the good old days of style and taste.

Nothing beats an explanation of this old house.

We had a great breakfast in this busy family-owned restaurant.

What town wouldn't kill for such a benevolent mascot?

Even the trees in Pacific Grove have interesting design. Living in the arid Central Valley of California I also tend to forget about ice plants. Here are an big fertile belt of them to frame this old Monterey Cypress.

Another spectacle at the sight of the Point Pinos Lighthouse, the Pacific Coast's oldest continously running lighthouse.

A beauty in itself.

We got there too late to see the newly remodeled interior. This guy in the blue coat and his colleague told us it was closing time. Next trip.

Enter the Christmas Tree

2013-11-08T21:36:00.002-08:00

The Capitol Christmas Tree arrived today on the West Steps!

(A few days later, updated Wednesday, November 13)

Give us a few more days and we'll be looking like this, Christmas 2010.

Presidential Taste

2013-11-08T21:22:00.002-08:00

One of my favorite pastimes is presidential history. While in Fremont, Ohio, in October, I had occasion to visit the home of President Rutheford B. Hayes. They had just done a $1 million renovation inside to bring several rooms back to their original splendor. Pictures weren't allowed inside, but I shot these of the Hayes house while waiting for my brother to arrive for the 3:30 p.m. tour, where we were joined by two sisters driving from Chicago to Boston on I-80. They dropped into town just to take in the place.

The house in Spiegel Grove, a huge park filled with large trees and endless walking space. Hayes is buried on the grounds with his wife and horse.

I sat here awhile and thought great thoughts on the benches. What a porch!

And the view!

Again, the View! Great time of year to sit on the President's porch.

My Home Town

2013-11-08T20:45:00.001-08:00

I recently spent most of a week in Fremont, Ohio, visiting family and enjoying the full colorful spectacle of an eastern autumn. It's a small town of about 16,000, built by pioneers with great taste. They've left us dozens of great monuments, especially beautiful churches and public buildings.

When I grew up this was the county jail, blackened with soot and dark as coal. My brother helped organize a cleaning and burst of adaptive reuse that turned it into offices for the county commissioners.

Built in 1890.

The Sandusky County Courthouse. Dignified.

Pioneer history in the park out front of the courthouse.

Classic. Built to last by ancient founding father Lutherans.

Another Lutheran Extravaganza just blocks away. Grace Lutheran.

Catholics were no slouches, either. This is St. Joseph's. Less than a mile away is St. Ann's, also built of red brick. Both beauties and speaking to the high aspirations of the county seat of Sandusky County. While I was home it occurred to me that there are literally thousands of small

American towns with this kind of architecture. I don't have pictures of the houses, but the whole town is filled with giant old two-story's, many of them kept up, many struggling and selling for less than $100,000. Great place to visit, town of my father's people and cemeteries filled with my relatives.

The ambience of 15th and L

2013-11-08T19:56:00.004-08:00

I walked east to buy chocolates at Ginger Elizabeth on Thursday and strolled here through the tree canopy at downtown Sacramento's lively corner of 15th and L streets. There's always a lunch gaggle here, the office crowd and lobbyists gossiping about who's up and who's down. Eye-catching. Great little detail there with the rickshaw.

The Indefinable Look of the 2000s

2013-01-26T21:29:00.002-08:00

The 1990s and 2000s have possessed a certain indefinable look - especially in infill housing of the sort that just opened in downtown Sacramento. This is Mercy Housing's income-qualified housing project near the courthouse and county jail on a formerly very dead corner. It's a great little piece of infill development - the kind you see featured in one of my favorite magazines of all time, Urban Land from the Urban Land Institute. They love this stuff. So do I.

The Continuing Echoes of Rome

2013-01-26T21:19:00.001-08:00

Forgive me the brief ramble of history, but I am engrossed this winter in the first and second volumes of Edward Gibbon's "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire." That means being hyper conscious of the Roman Empire's influence still visible in our lives. I'm a guy who took Latin throughout high school. I visited Rome twice, in 1978 and 1981, to soak in the ruins of what must have been a truly magnificent display of architecture in its time. I came across the Sacramento County Law Library on a recent lunch time walk. It's a little corner place near the Amtrak station, all tucked away and invisible to most of the city. The ancients' good taste endures.

Room With a View

2013-01-26T21:05:00.000-08:00

We went to the Crocker Art Museum in downtown Sacramento last Sunday and ran into a huge crowd visiting for the Norman Rockwell exhibit. It was great. So was this million-dollar view of downtown from inside the museum. Even better on a rocking chair.

Joyeux Noel, 2012

2012-12-30T12:01:00.002-08:00

Christmas is gone and New Year's Day is soon to come. I end 2012 with this small memory, a picture taken on Christmas Eve while waiting for light rail to the suburbs. This is Ambrosia Cafe, a lovely little place on a corner in a main downtown square of Sacramento.

Waiting for the train on late darkening afternoons of fall becoming winter this year, I have often felt spellbound by the warm welcoming light coming from this little coffeehouse. Ambrosia is a favorite gathering place for Capitol policy wonks, lobbyists and the ocasional legislator. They drink coffee and tea here and gossip about the latest.

The cafe anchors the ground floor of an older building about six stories high, approximately the favorite height of people strolling urban areas. I forget now where I read that. I believe it was about Paris being abundant in that kind of architecture. I love the holidays wreaths here, the Christmas tree anchoring the corner and the informality of the street-level holiday greeting.

So many of the best architectural sights, the litlte feel-good places, happen almost by accident without trying too hard. Small holiday sights can get frozen into memory. This is mine, Christmas Eve with Ambrosia closed for the holiday. The cheer was contagious. Happy New Year everyone, and happy sight-seeing in 2013!

School of Design

2012-10-07T20:35:00.003-07:00

My wife and I sauntered off today to the Elk Grove Pumpkin Festival, stopping first to tour the Elk Grove Historical Society's heritage park. Next door is this renovation-in-progress, the historical old home of the 1884 Reese School.

I add it here because of the classical entrance. They obviously added this touch to say: "Enter here a place of learning, a very important place."

Contrast this with today's schools, which seem designed by the same companies that do prisons.

Writers, Governors, Presidents, Light Rail

2012-08-31T20:50:00.001-07:00

A few days ago I went to the Center for Sacramento History to look up an archives file from the 1950s. I got on Regional Transit's new Green Line and rode out to Richards Boulevard and 7th Street and got off at the city's newest light rail station. It's a nice one, made of bricks from the recently demolished Richards-Bercutt cannery. It's been torn down to begin construction on a new urban neighborhood out there north of downtown named Township 9.

What I really liked was a collection of sayings by notables who came from or worked in Sacramento. Here are a few of them: