Old Executive Office Building

Attached to the white house is a wedding cake of a structure known as the Old Executive Office Building or the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. Built from 1871 till 1888 in the Second Empire French style -it originally held the State, War & Navy Departments. Designed by Richard Ezdorf and Alfred Mullett - this local favorite is built of the expected granite & slate -but also cast iron. Fun fact -there are 900 columns and 1,572 windows on the exterior!

I hope everyone has a great weekend and gets to enjoy some 'cake' of their own!

Washington Monument

One of the great things about having guests in town is that you get to do all of the cool stuff you don't ordinarily do. Tonight I spent the rainy evening visiting the Washington Monument.

Designed by the architect Robert Mills, the monument to our first president began construction in 1848 and was finally completed in 1884. The interior is made of up beautiful plaques donated from around the world. This one is the largest - from NYC in 1852. One was donated by the pope but was ripped out and trashed by soldiers at one point!

An observation deck is at the top. You can see the interior face of the stone -which is protected by glass panels seen here.

The obelisk rises 555 feet and 5 inches high, the tallest structure in DC. It was the tallest building in the world, beating the Cologne Cathedral and held this distinction until the Eiffel Tower was completed in 1889.The views are spectacular as one would imagine. Visibility was low due to the rain and fog, but you can see the WWII memorial at the base of the following picture, with the lincoln memorial closer to the top.Each view is labeled above the window, as you see here.

The cap at the top is made of aluminum -which was the most precious metal at the time the building was completed due to its' rarity. Now we use it to wrap up leftovers!

Quote by George Washington written in glass inside the observation deck:

"My first wish...is to see the whole world in peace, and the Inhabitants of it as one band of brothers, striving who should contribute most to the happiness of mankind." (1785) AMEN!

The monument was recently renovated with a barrier creating an outer ring for security. An inner ring is made up of American flags.

Window displays

A friend was recently in Copenhagen and snapped this photo of the Royal Copenhagen's flagship shop window display. What great marketing! China companies probably do 75% of their business anymore from wedding registries: why not market that fact? The pretty wedding dress, cake and display of china really play into that; apparently the store was full of dresses too. I also love the reflection of the typical traditional Copenhagen streetscape in the window too!

La Ronda UPDATE

The hearing of the local commission is on Wednesday, June 3rd at 6:30PM in the Lower Merion Township Building on Lancaster Avenue to decide the counties' stand on the demolition of the Addison Mizner designed mansion. Please attend and show your support if you are in the Philadelphia area!

http://www.lowermerion.org/index.aspx?recordid=1671&page=51

Up!

This past weekend I saw the new Pixar movie, UP. WOW! You all have to see it; It may be the best Pixar movie yet! I wouldn't take very young children to it though, it has some very sad situations that were hard enough for me to take! The animation is superb and the writing is excellent. Even the small 'short' before the movie was really entertaining!Without giving too much away, the premise is an elderly widower who attaches 1,000s of helium balloons to his quirky Victorian house to fly to South America! Don't ask, just go; Let me know what you think!

Blogger inspiration

I feel a bit uninspired lately, I have to apologize for that. I want to thank the kind people who have emailed me to make sure I'm ok: I'm fine and just a bit pre-occupied! Hopefully the weekend will rejuvenate my blogging sensitibilites and 'think different' as this old Mac ad proclaims with the divine Callas. I hope her singing will inspire you this weekend!

Fun weekend projects

This past weekend, I went to the National Building Museum to check out some of the new, and very interesting, exhibits. They have the best gift shop in all of DC: Fun games, household items and every design book under the sun! I picked up a few postcards from Monkey Designs which contain parts to build models of some houses -you can see a few above.

I bought 7 and thought I might build 1 or 2 for some fun. I built 4, just couldn't stop myself! I started with the Georgian house you see to the far right, then progressed to the yellow Greek Revival style house which was a bit harder. I then moved onto the pagoda which, while it had a lot of steps -wasn't as hard as the French Styled house with lantern on the roof (a lot of swearing went into the creation of that TINY lantern). These houses stand about 1 1/2" high - TINY pieces to cut out with an exacto-knife!

But it was a lot of fun, I plan on digging up a miniature train set from micro-machines (do they still make those?) and putting them under my mini christmas tree this year!a blurry picture of my weekend projects. The 3 left are a Greek revival house, Buckingham Palace and Chartres Cathedral.

Australian War Memorial

In honor of Memorial Day here in the US, I've decided to focus on a monument most of us probably aren't familiar with -the Australian War Memorial in Canberra, Australia's capital.The memorial was first conceived after WW I. However, a competition for the design of the structure wasn't completed until 1928. Because of the great depression, the monument then wasn't finished till 1941. The style remains Art Deco which was popular at the time. Housed in the building is also an Australian military museum.interior of the dome above the Hall of Memory. Stained glass depicting the virtues of soldiers surround the space, you can see one of them above. They were completed by Napier Waller, a 1-armed veteran who also did all of the mosiac work here in the hall.The central courtyard.

The cloisters around the pool contain rolls of honors to commemorate the 102,000 soldiers who died in the field throughout the numerous battles Australia has participated in. The rolls list name only, because, as it states, "all men are equal in death".

Top image courtesy of Les Butcher on Flickr.com. All others from wikipedia.org

First rose of summer

I was walking home the other day and noticed that the roses are coming out in full force. I guess summer is upon us! I hope everyone has a great weekend and takes some time to smell the roses!

Architectural master 'pieces'

Well you knew it was going to happen someday. Lego has started a new collection called 'Architecture'! You don't know how excited I am: as a kid lego's were just about the only toy I was interested in! Probably the most fun so far are the sets based on Frank Lloyd Wright masterpieces. Released in conjuntion with a show at the Guggenheim (of which there is also a model, seen above) called 'From within Outward' with the help of the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation these sets will help young budding architects learn a bit of American Architectural History piece by piece. The show at the Guggenheim looks pretty great too, I need to head up to New York to see it before it closes in August!Also in the series is a BEAUTIFUL (but expensive at $299) set of the Taj Mahal.The Empire state building above and the Seattle Space needle below are just as fantastic and a much more reasonable $20. For nieces, nephews, children -anyone? I can't wait to see what comes out next in the series!

Model at top of the post is of Fallingwater: the Kaufmann's summer home outside of Pittsburgh.