Rivers – RDZ Photography

Maysville, Kentucky – May 2019 – Great Architecture in an Unlikely Place

Architecture, Art, History, Nature, Transportation

Maysville, Kentucky was one of the original settlements west of the Allegheny Mountains, as it is situated along the Ohio River about 80 miles upriver from Cincinnati.

We entered the town via the 1931 Simon Kenton Bridge. Spanning the Ohio River for almost 2,000 feet it is a classic old steel bridge.

As with many river towns the flood wall is adorned with murals. Maysville’s are well done – including this one as a tribute to favorite daughter Rosemary Clooney, who from the 1940s until the turn of the century was an actress and fantastic singer (and also well known as George Clooney’s aunt).

The town is in remarkably good condition compared to most of the little river towns of this part of the world.

Much of the center of town has been restored, including this fountain and square.

More of the excellent flood wall murals – horses are a big deal in Kentucky.

This mural depicted the street we were standing on 100 years ago.

For most of the Ohio River valley in Ohio, West Virginia and Kentucky there are steep hills just a few blocks back – Maysville is no exception.

The Washington Opera House dates from 1898 in a Beaux Arts style. It is used today for theater and concerts.

Another great example of the nice restoration done in town.

The main street has some galleries to go with the small stores.

Some architecture is reflective that we are in the beginnings of the south.

The Kentucky Gateway Museum is a new building, but well done and blending nicely with it’s surroundings.

Maysville was once a center of wrought iron manufacturing, and many of the homes show this heritage.

Even a vacant lot has been re purposed as a small park – along with another great ghost sign.

Even the vacant house it very cool – the building in front and most of the house appears to be covered in kudzu, which I haven’t seen this far north before.

Just down the rest are more restored homes.

This row of houses to me is reminiscent of the famed ‘Painted Ladies’ of San Francisco – only at 1/10th the cost.

If you ever get the chance stop by Maysville, Kentucky – it is worth the visit.

Chicago – February 2019 – Then and Now

Architecture, History, Transportation

The ‘Time Travel’ series continues in Chicago start with Van Buren Street Station in 1907 and now. Note the Art Museum in both photos for orientation of the view.

The Chicago River looking west in 1946 and now. Same bridges, but not much else (although the Merchandise Mart is still there, just hidden behind Marina City.

Buckingham Fountain from 1955 to now gives evidence to how many buildings have been built in the last 60s years.

Michigan Avenue north of the river from 330 N Michigan again shows all the new buildings, although the Wrigley Building and Tribune Tower still grace the riverfront itself.

Meanwhile down at street level looking across the same bridge in 1955. Of note is the mid 50s Ford making the right turn compared to the Honda Civic today. Both were one of the most popular cars of their day.

Also of note are examples of clothing as well as the change in street lighting.

This view of State Street in front of Marshall Fields/Macy’s has the change over from streetcars to buses. At some point they must have cleaned the exterior of Marshall Field’s as it is much brighter today.

While turning around looking south down State Street – in the 1950s it was large old Plymouths, Packards and Chevy’s. Today is a Prius parade while the traffic blocked the intersection.

Moving back over to Michigan Avenue in the late 1950s shows the recently completed Prudential Building (1955). Not only was it the tallest building around it was the only building on Randolph Street, east of Michigan.

The reason for this was they were just beginning to replace the freight rail yards with buildings. Clearly by 2019 all available space has been built up.

This view from 1960 shows the freight yards east of Michigan Avenue, right in the middle of Grant Park. While Columbus Avenue took part, the park is much better for the city than the rail lines.

The El crossing the river to the west loop (at a slightly different angle in 2019) shows the huge growth along the river from 1960 until today.

The skyline view from Adler Planetarium also shows the dramatic change. This skyline view is from 1965. (full disclosure the ‘current’ photo is from last July, not this last week – nobody was sitting along the stone step along the lake in Chicago in February).

Our final view is from 1970, and the recently completed John Hancock Tower – the first 1000′ tall building in Chicago. This view too is impressive in the changes seen in downtown Chicago in the last 50 years.

Chicago – February – Sunny Morning from the Willis Tower

Architecture, Nature

We woke up to bright sunshine on a very cold Chicago morning, with no plans until late morning so we made our way to the Willis/Sears Tower observation deck 1300′ up.

We have been there before, but not with perfectly clear skies. It turned out there was a bit of a haze along the horizon, which was amazing as a cold front had come through the night before.

The Willis Tower Skydeck’s feature is ‘The Ledge’, a Plexiglas space sticking out the side of the building where you look straight down through the Plexiglas to the street far below.

The young Mennonite (??) couple had no trepidation walking out on that, but I stayed back and took photos!

The view due north from the tower past Lincoln Park and the Lake Michigan shoreline.

The postcard view of downtown Chicago.

As with Lake Erie in Cleveland, Lake Michigan also freezes. With the winter weather going from cold to somewhat warm and back, the ice is spotty.

It was apparent as soon as we got up there with the very bright sunshine low in the sky photos looking east were tricky from the glare, but this view of Adler Planetarium and the Shedd Aquarium came out nice.

Whereas this view to the southeast had more glare but an interesting look on the water in the background.

Notice yet another 70 floor apartment building being built. Cranes are common in the skylines of Chicago.

The Carbide and Carbon Building (green building with gold top in the middle of the photo) was once one of Chicago’s tallest at just over 500′ when it was completed in 1929.

Now it is dwarfed by all the newer ones.

The view northwest along the Kennedy Expressway, which even at 10:30 in the morning had slow traffic coming into the loop.

With the bright morning sun many in this building chose to lower their shades, but from this view it almost looks as though there are numerous broken windows.

A closer view of Lincoln Park and the marina.

This unusual shaped building is the River City Apartments, designed by Bertrand Goldberg – who is most famous for designing Marina City

He apparently likes round shapes.

The Citadel Center with it’s highly reflective glass looks like a jigsaw puzzle of surrounding buildings waiting to be put together.

Columbus – February 2019 – The Ice is Back

Nature, Water Features

This weekend is a bit of a repeat from last weekend with visits to icy places and botanical gardens (to recover from the cold)

While Columbus doesn’t have anything close to Lake Erie, they do have a few streams that have enough drop to have small waterfalls, including Indian Run Falls in Dublin.

The falls are very small, but with enough splash onto the rocks for some nice ice formations.

As noted in the Cleveland ice posting it had warmed up and rained (a lot) but it is now very cold again, resulting in frozen puddles, with interesting patterns frozen in them.

Further down river is Hayden Run Falls, the best in town. There is a nice boardwalk to get back to the falls, crossing over the flooded bottom.

After a short distance you arrive at the falls. The Featured Image for this posting has a closer photo of the falls.

Everything within 200′ of the falls had a nice coating on it from the continual mist coming off the water, although mostly on the side facing the falls.

The ravine walls had numerous icicles all over them

As we made our way back down the boardwalk we could hear the ducks quacking away.

Our last stop was Griggs Dam. Again with all the recent rain and snow melt off there is flooding, so the dam’s for the reservoirs are running at full capacity.

With this being a dam, and not a waterfalls there is little spray to cause ice formation right at the dam, but just down stream the trees along the banks were covered in ice.

They aren’t Niagara Falls, but a nice way to spend a few cold hours on a Sunday morning.

Cleveland – February 2019 – Frozen, but Thawing

Nature, Water Features

As usual in winter in the midwest the weather is all over the place. Last week was sub zero Fahrenheit, and by Sunday it was nearly 60 degrees.

Lake Erie tends to ice over quite a bit in the winter, and this year has been no different. Followers of this blog will note the main photo is the iced over Cleveland Harbor lighthouse after a particularly hard winter.

For this day the ice was melting somewhat, but still providing some interesting sights. The photo below is a security fence that was iced completely over, but has melted enough to be translucent.

There was some ice cover near the shore, but with large wet spots that seemed to attract the seagulls. The water provided a nice reflection.

While taking photos of the ice and water, I noticed that this shot got a perfect ‘T’ of airplane contrails in the sky. My assumption is an east-west flight had recently passed at altitude, and the northbound flight had just reached where the east-west contrail was present.

A close up of the birds on the ice.

Despite the look the water inside the breakwater wall is frozen and beyond it is open water.

The wall at Voinovich Park had some ice on it, but with perfect symmetry with the concrete.

The lighthouse has a bit of ice on it, but nothing like the main blog site photo.

The harbor in front of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame still had some light icing on it.

The life preserver is ready if needed.

Meanwhile over at Edgewater Park, the beach had a lot of ice on it.

The ice was very chunky.

The birds clearly congregated near the water, even if it was just pooled on the remaining ice.

The amount of seagulls all along the lake shore was staggering.

Our last stop was along Rocky River. Each spring (or thawing in winter) results in significant flooding in the valleys with the ice jams.

The ravine walls provided a small waterfall. It was a nice day for checking out the melting ice with a different look that the stark white normally associated with the winter ice on the lake (and river)

Chicago – October 2018 – Open House Part 1

Architecture, Art, History, Nature, Transportation

Our Chicago Open House weekend started on Friday, before the official event started on Saturday. We made our own tour of places that were open.

James Thompson Center – Designed by Helmut Jahn, the Thompson Center is a 17 story curved glass building housing many government offices. From the interior all 17 floors are visible in the impressive atrium.

On the plaza in front of the building is a sculpture from Jean Dubffet called Monument with Standing Beast. Standing at 29’ high, the sculpture weighs in at 20,000 pounds.

Cook County Office Building – A classical 12 story office building located in the government section of downtown Chicago, to me it is most famous for where the Blues Brotthers went to pay the property tax for the childrens home (and yes the Cook County Assessors office is located in this building).

The building has the classic Art Deco look on the interior.

Chicago Temple – The First United Methodist Church of Chicago was the first church to be founded in the city, even before it was a city, in 1831. In 1838 it moved to it’s current location at the corner of Washington and Clark.

In the early 1920s with downtown Chicago rapidly developing the church debated selling their valuable land and moving out to one of the neighborhoods. Eventually they decided on a novel approach, build a skyscraper with a church included, and in addition, put a chapel on the top. The result was a 568’ tall building with what is to this day the highest church from street level in the world.

The first level has a traditional church.

Known as the Sky Chapel, it was part of the original building but not fully completed until 1952 as a gift from the family of the Walgreen’s Drug Store founder.

To this day the church is self funded by the rents paid by other tenants in the building, allowing it to fully focus on serving the diverse community it serves.

Outside is some unique art.

Marshall Field’s (Macy’s) Tiffany Dome – With over 1.6 million pieces it is the largest Tiffany mosaic in existence. Designed by Louis Tiffany in 1907, over 50 artisans worked on scaffolding for 18 months to complete this amazing masterpiece.

The Pedway hosts a collection of stained glass.

Some general scenes around the city.

A tourist boat on the Chicago River.

One of the lift bridge control buildings frame by a 60 floor building.

Classic Chicago – The Merchandise Mart with a Brown Line El train coming in.

Old street light and new skyscrapers.

Up Wells Street from the 10th floor of a parking garage.

A building along Madison Street.

Millennium Park

Cloud Gate is a public sculpture located in Millennium Park. While the artists inspiration was liquir mercury, it is commonly referred to as The Bean. It is one of the most popular tourist attractions in the city.

The buildings along East Randolph Street.

Pritzker Pavilion – A Frank Gehry design, the pavilion is a band shell that hosts numerous events each year. For this mid October night it was quiet, but still stunning with it’s red lighting.

Art Institute of Chicago is one of the oldest and largest museums in the United States. From this part of the park, you get a great view of one of the modern additions along with the Michigan Avenue skyline.

tomorrow the official events starts.

Chicago – October 2018 – Open House Part 2

Architecture, Art, History, Nature, Transportation

Open House Chicago continue…

The North Leg of the Chicago River toward Chicago Avenue – clearly we are in … Chicago.

151 North Franklin – a new, nondescript building saved by a great rooftop deck.

Some strange lighting on a nearby building.

180 North LaSalle – it was billed as Open House, but really just a lobby was open.

Another (brief) revisit – The Builders Building. But this skylight is worth it.

20 West Kinzie – Originally a Google Building it is now home to a flexible work space group called We Works.

Their 17th floor common space offered some different aspects on some iconic buildings.

They too have a nice outdoor space on the 17th floor.

Just up the street in a 100 year old warehouse is the architectural firm of Ross Barney.

330 North Wabash – Miles van der Rohe designed this basic, yet famed 695’ high skyscraper.

The minimalist, but stylish lobby.

Originally built for IBM and completed after Rohe’s death in 1969, the Open House Chicago event was held on the 15^th floor in the offices of Thornton Tomasetti.

This firm is a leader in engineering design, focusing on mechanical engineering of many famed skyscrapers around the world.

Our final stop of the day – the John Hancock Observation Deck. Definitely not part of Open House Chicago, but worth the visit on this partly cloudy day.

We arrived about an hour before sunset and barely made it up in time, but we did!

Enjoy sunset and night time in Chicago.

continued….