Barracks Row, a small but generally prosperous commercial corridor in the southeastern Washington DC neighborhood of Capitol Hill, hosted a location of the regional chain Capital Teas—at least until last year. Just weeks after I made a sizable purchase at the location, at a time when I had no idea that it was struggling, the
I can comfortably assert that cities are cooler than suburbs without providing any evidence to back it up. In 2018, it’s basically an axiom, so why bother explaining? Isn’t part of the mystique behind “cool” its tendency to evade easy definition? Few suburbanites would ever make any reasonable effort to argue that their municipalities are
In places that seek to restrict certain behaviors, it’s not uncommon to use images instead of text. So a sign like this should come as no surprise: The top symbol goes without explanation, and, at least since around 2007 so does the bottom. But what’s that one in the middle? For those who recognize it,
As the term “retail apocalypse” becomes increasingly mainstream, it’s a bit comforting to see an all-too-rare example of what appears to be a purely local business trying its hand along an American-as-apple-pie main street. It’s even more comforting when the entrepreneur locates in an architecturally challenging building…and succeeds.Here we witness Glyph, a stationery-centered boutique that
As one of the busiest airports in the world—and numero uno for many years—Chicago’s O’Hare International (ORD) inevitably offers an array of amenities and services that places it well to the right of the distributional bell curve. But this feature comes as a bit of a surprise.I’m probably premature in asserting that we don’t typically
Many years ago I wrote an article exploring how trees of the palm family are widespread throughout southern Louisiana (specifically the New Orleans region), though they are not indigenous. In other words, they grow there quite easily but it is not their native habitat. If anything, the presence of palms in the southern US—or at
It’s not hard at all to see how housing has evolved over the last century, especially when we visit the residential areas right next to a city center and compare them to the ones a few miles further out in the suburbs. Far more difficult is the distinction between homes from the 1980s and those
The placement of windows or other apertures in a building—what the wonks generally call fenestration—can and should respond powerfully to the environment. In an urban setting, a well-designed older building on a commercial main street will nearly always have bigger and bolder windows on the first floor, to showcase the retail or merchandise-oriented businesses, especially
I’ve been wising up over the last few years to an escalating resurgence of the Victorian aesthetic throughout the Western world. Whether it asserts itself most powerfully in facial hair, comfort food, or a neo-Puritanism among our great social-media arbiters of taste, the Victorian revival seems most entrenched in the hippest, most urbane quarters. Take
Whether we measure it in square miles or a single street corner, the average American downtown is enjoying an unprecedented new life. Century-old commercial buildings—underutilized at best, mothballed or abandoned at worst—have comprised the most visible beneficiaries of this revitalization, since investors have reassessed their value as critical signals to the municipality’s historic origins, determining
Barracks Row, a small but generally prosperous commercial corridor in the southeastern Washington DC neighborhood of Capitol Hill, hosted a location of the regional chain Capital Teas—at least until last year. Just weeks
I can comfortably assert that cities are cooler than suburbs without providing any evidence to back it up. In 2018, it’s basically an axiom, so why bother explaining? Isn’t part of the mystique
In places that seek to restrict certain behaviors, it’s not uncommon to use images instead of text. So a sign like this should come as no surprise: The top symbol goes without explanation,
As the term “retail apocalypse” becomes increasingly mainstream, it’s a bit comforting to see an all-too-rare example of what appears to be a purely local business trying its hand along an American-as-apple-pie main
As one of the busiest airports in the world—and numero uno for many years—Chicago’s O’Hare International (ORD) inevitably offers an array of amenities and services that places it well to the right of
Many years ago I wrote an article exploring how trees of the palm family are widespread throughout southern Louisiana (specifically the New Orleans region), though they are not indigenous. In other words, they
It’s not hard at all to see how housing has evolved over the last century, especially when we visit the residential areas right next to a city center and compare them to the
The placement of windows or other apertures in a building—what the wonks generally call fenestration—can and should respond powerfully to the environment. In an urban setting, a well-designed older building on a commercial
I’ve been wising up over the last few years to an escalating resurgence of the Victorian aesthetic throughout the Western world. Whether it asserts itself most powerfully in facial hair, comfort food, or
Whether we measure it in square miles or a single street corner, the average American downtown is enjoying an unprecedented new life. Century-old commercial buildings—underutilized at best, mothballed or abandoned at worst—have comprised