Good piece of reporting by Simon van Zuylen-Wood on the Metro mania that is rattling Loudoun County politics. Although I could have done without the subplot about the key parties.
Category: Local News and Views
Photo roundup
In the Hunters Woods Safeway, I found an indoor water dispenser like the outdoor ones that so charmed me in south Texas.
The National Gallery’s East Building is undergoing a multiyear project to renovate the pink marble panels that clad the building. The fancy falsework around the building is its own kind of temporary installation art. The elevator component reminds me a bit of Brancusi’s Endless Column.
The beavers in the park have built a lodge up onto the boardwalk. They have incorporated one of the benches into their organic architecture.
Leta and I were both enchanted by Caitlin Phillips’ room at Artomatic. Her wall treatment supports her exhibit of purses made from old book bindings. I’ve got a powder room in my house that is in need of some sprucing, and I’m tempted to try Phillips’s idea, but make it more permanent. I wonder whether a couple of coats of polyurethane over the book pages would provide sufficient durability and yet be reversible (whoever buys this house from me is unlikely to share my taste in bathroom reading).
Snead & Co.
I finally had a few minutes’ opportunity to pause at the old Woodies building for the beautiful ironwork that’s been recently repainted. As can be clearly read now, the manufacturer was the Snead & Co. Iron Works of Jersey City, N.J.
Snead also held several library shelving system patents. I distinctly remember what must have been their skeleton shelves (with a clever twist-lock bookend) in the stacks of Deering Library, the old library at Northwestern.
En route: 1
Last night’s quick storms and rain helped these Mayapples (Podophyllum peltatum) to pop out of the leaf litter. I spotted them on my morning walk to work.
Bright red
I’ve been intending to do a more thorough job of documenting the various bus stop signs around the area from the numerous jurisdictions and authorities. Perhaps the spark will come from today’s sighting of one of the snappy new signs for Metrobus, complete with its NextBus stop number. The next N6 is expected to arrive in four minutes.
Upcoming: 30
Artomatic 2012 will take place in the Transwestern Presidential Tower on Clark Street in Arlington, as announced by the Crystal City BID. The unjuried, free show celebrating local artists of all kinds runs 18 May to 24 June.
And yet more changes
The street name sign that I saw in Dupont Circle two summers ago doesn’t appear to match the new signs spotted by Mike DeBonis on Capitol Hill recently. I rather like these newest signs, judging, at least, from the posted shadowy cellphone image. It’s a pity that the street number modules bolted on at the bottom still look so chintzy.
Park
I know that it’s nothing fancy, but this neon sign that marks the entrance to a Doggett’s parking garage on 11th Street, N.W., with its helpful/hopeful HERE and jaunty arrow, just makes me happy.
The garage is only open for the workday, so towards evening, the neon is extinguished.
Temporary
This ratty old building, window glazing missing from the upper stories, most recently was put to temporary uses like political campaign offices. I like the plastic wrapper around it while it’s being made into something new: gives it a Christo/Jeanne-Claude look. I also like the white background it makes for the shadow cast by the bare tree.
Two sets
Two treasuries of Washington photography: 700-plus images made in the mid-1960s by Alexander Lmanian (1925-1996), shared by Yale’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library; and Darrow Montgomery’s smaller collection of 25 photos he has made for Washington City Paper over the past quarter-century. Most notably, the Lmanian pictures document the destruction of the 1968 riots.
New camera
A new camera, and I’d always wanted to take some snaps from the 7th floor roof deck. Looking north, two domed houses of worship are visible, the golden United House of Prayer for All People, and on the distant heights, the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception. The long horizontal roofline is Galbraith A.M.E. Zion Church.
Looking down into K Street, N.W., the vacant pavement, once a parking lot, has been fenced off for several weeks. Perhaps some new construction is afoot. Looking beyond to New York Avenue, N.W., the green awning marks the location of the old A. V. Ristorante; its aggressive street-level awning used to span the wide sidewalk. Also notice the backside of the billboard, inflected toward Maryland-bound commuters.
Looking to the southeast down Massachusetts Avenue, N.W., the white dome will be familiar to some. The sloping red brick roofline is the Pension Building, home to the National Building Museum.
That explains it
Eric Fidler answers a question that’s been gnawing on my mind ever since my last ride down North Capitol Street from the Catholic campus: what’s with the brick silos and open fields between Michigan Avenue, N.W., and Channing Street, N.W.? An abandoned Nike base? Sequestration of toxic waste from the big domed building at the start of North Cap? The Undisclosed Location? (It looks even more hush-hush on Google Maps.) No, it’s the remains of the McMillan Sand Filtration Plant, which originally purified the city’s drinking water.
Some links: 56
Kojo Nnamdi interviews George Kerscher and Jim Fruchterman on assistive technology and accessibility for print-disabled readers.
Lydia DePillis is on the trail of all the spoil being excavated from the CityCenterDC site.
Bollard envy
Via DCist, images of jersey walls and other security barriers in the District of Columbia, signs of the pernicious growth of what Tom Sherwood called “securicrat” culture. But, writes Sherwood,
Look up beyond the barricaded doors and bomb-proof glass to see how many flagpoles sprout from private and government buildings. Take a moment to enjoy the sight of Old Glory waving in the wind. (We particularly like the big flag on Freedom Plaza, an aptly named space on Pennsylvania Avenue.)
Look at those flags that stand for freedom — and for a country that honors freedom and tries to export it to the world. That’s the America we want to see. And we want to see it with as few barriers as possible.
Pause on 9/11 to honor the victims of those horrible attacks, but don’t give in to fear. It would be downright un-American of you.
Palette cleanser
Via DCist, The average color of the Washington D.C. sky, updated every 5 minutes.