A quick look at the photo above and it should be obvious that something’s afoot at this particular location of Barnes and Noble. Incidentally, I only heavily scrutinized a Barnes and Noble once before, also in Maryland, when I noticed a repositioning of merchandise within the interior just a few months ago. This time, the
It’s rare that I feature two back-to-back articles on the same subject, and even rarer that the subject includes massive, opulent houses. But these houses—each one a castle, or what we would contemporaneously (and pejoratively) call “McMansions”—are the backdrop for what ultimately is an entirely different focal point. Over on Geist Reservoir, in the northeastern
I’m running out of days in this month, and the last few posts took more time than I expected, so I’ll conclude May with a brief hat-tip to one of the greatest unintentional memes that the City of Brotherly Love has to offer, and it gave it to the world long before the concept of
For the book-lovers among us, it’s hard to believe that Borders Books and Music has been defunct now for over ten years. It was one of the first and most obvious high-profile casualties of Amazon, the latter of which nipped away at the revenue stream of what had previously been the nation’s largest bookstore, peaking
There was probably a point in history when virtually every American had heard of Cumberland, Maryland. Not only that, it’s reasonable to surmise that a significant proportion of Americans had passed through it. Aside from the fact that, for most of Maryland’s history, it was the state’s second largest city (its “Queen City” behind Lord/King
Over the years I’ve shown enough preoccupation with toilets that it should probably become a separate keyword, right up there with “historic preservation” and “adaptive reuse”. But it’s kind of embarrassing to elevate loos to the same level as genuine urban revitalization strategies. Still, it’s hard to deny the cultural importance that restrooms have; they
As recently as my last blog article, I alluded to an unusual dichotomy in the value of corner parcels: for the most part, residences on street corners are less valuable than homes on the rest of the block. People don’t the reduced privacy one expects when a property fronts two streets, when they can easily
It’s not nice. But it probably was inevitable. Earlier this summer, during a photo shoot on a weekend getaway to his beachside vacation home, a certain head of state stopped his bike but was unable to disengage his feet from the toe clamps in time. Having nothing to stabilize himself, he fell over. No serious
The Dolphin Mansion is up for sale again! Indianapolis’s most notorious home has struggled to find an occupant for the last seventeen years, but it’s not for lack of trying. Actually more of a campus with six structures on a mega-lot, surrounded by mid-century middle-class housing that’s a lot humbler (and I mean that in
Hot on the heels of those Manhattan Irish pubs, several of which sit frozen in time after St. Patrick’s Day, we encounter another example of Mt. Vesuvius erupting and coating everything in ash. But this time the Pompeii is a much more suburban setting. The Interstate 270 corridor bisects Montgomery County, the most populous county
A quick look at the photo above and it should be obvious that something’s afoot at this particular location of Barnes and Noble. Incidentally, I only heavily scrutinized a Barnes and Noble once
It’s rare that I feature two back-to-back articles on the same subject, and even rarer that the subject includes massive, opulent houses. But these houses—each one a castle, or what we would contemporaneously
I’m running out of days in this month, and the last few posts took more time than I expected, so I’ll conclude May with a brief hat-tip to one of the greatest unintentional
For the book-lovers among us, it’s hard to believe that Borders Books and Music has been defunct now for over ten years. It was one of the first and most obvious high-profile casualties
There was probably a point in history when virtually every American had heard of Cumberland, Maryland. Not only that, it’s reasonable to surmise that a significant proportion of Americans had passed through it.
Over the years I’ve shown enough preoccupation with toilets that it should probably become a separate keyword, right up there with “historic preservation” and “adaptive reuse”. But it’s kind of embarrassing to elevate
As recently as my last blog article, I alluded to an unusual dichotomy in the value of corner parcels: for the most part, residences on street corners are less valuable than homes on
It’s not nice. But it probably was inevitable. Earlier this summer, during a photo shoot on a weekend getaway to his beachside vacation home, a certain head of state stopped his bike but
The Dolphin Mansion is up for sale again! Indianapolis’s most notorious home has struggled to find an occupant for the last seventeen years, but it’s not for lack of trying. Actually more of
Hot on the heels of those Manhattan Irish pubs, several of which sit frozen in time after St. Patrick’s Day, we encounter another example of Mt. Vesuvius erupting and coating everything in ash.