what about the plastic animals?

Archstone

This building, which is called the Archstone, has no archstone.  I feel like I am not understanding something.

Orange and Rockland

Rockland County Courthouse, New City, NY

Orange County Government Center, Goshen, NY

In last week's list of links I pointed to the US County Courthouse group on Flickr.  There's a map on that page indicating the counties in which a courthouse had been photographed.  New York is oddly underrepresented.  To prop up the Empire State, and since I have the good fortune of having many vacation days to use in the next few months, I took a day trip today to photograph the Rockland and Orange County courthouses.  That sounds impressive but the Rockland courthouse is only a ten minute drive from work and Goshen is a mere half-hour beyond that.  I also went sightseeing along the Delaware River (saw two bald eagles!).

The Art Deco Rockland County Courthouse was built in the late-1920s.  The courthouse is on the National Register of Historic Places.  It is the third building on that location since Rockland became a county in 1798.  Before it became a county, Rockland was Orange County "South of the Mountains". 

Today's Orange County is all north of the mountains.  The county seat of Goshen is also home to the Harness Racing Museum and Hall of Fame, which is conveniently located across the street from the county courthouse.  The current courthouse was designed in the Brutalist style by Paul Rudolph, then dean of the School of Architecture at Yale, in 1963 and completed in 1967.  The building is very cubical.

Regun Theatre

You would never guess it is an old building but according to PropertyShark, the building that houses the fish market across the street from my apartment was constructed around 1913, possibly earlier.  One bored evening this summer I came across a Flickr photo of the storefront.  The picture is crap but the photographer is a movie house buff.  In an earlier life the Sea & Sea Fish Market was the Regun Theatre.

The Regun Theatre is known to have operated between 1916 and 1950.  On May 22nd, 1923 the theater hosted Annie Mathew's "Kiddies' Day", an event sponsored by the Register of New York County.  It was estimated that over 3000 children saw two performance that day.  According to the Times the kids were treated to "a first-class orchestra" as well as showings of "Daddy's Boy" and "The Little Church Around the Corner".  The highlight of the day was a performance by "Miss Rita Hogan, the youngest child actor in the "movies" who sang and danced for them [the kids] at both performances".

A couple months later the Regun was involved in an ugly incident next door.  The Regun screened movies on the roof during the summer.  The July 12th, 1923 issue of the Times reports that Jacob London, owner of the two six-story walk-up tenements next door filed suit against a number of his tenants.  The tenants, Mr. London alleged, were inviting friends over to watch the movies next door from the roof of their building.  Actually he asked for a restraining order to prevent his tenants from

congregating on the roof at any time to witness moving picture performances; from holding meetings or assemblages on the roof; from gathering collectively ion the roof for social or amusement purposes; from occupying windows connected with the common halls to witness moving picture performances; from inviting, soliciting, encouraging or urging persons to assemble with them, either on the roofs or in the hall windows to witness moving picture performances or for any unlawful purpose...

Up to 200 a night were congregating on the roof, possibly causing the roofing to sag.  The headline of that article is "Brings Suit to Keep Tenants Off Roof".  The scanner must have had a hard time distinguishing U from H as the headline in ProQuest when I did the search was "Brings Shit to Keep Tenants Off Roof".  Anyway...

A shorter article a day later sheds a more familiar light on the situation.   Max Klein an attorney for the tenant claimed that the landlord was using the roof issue as an excuse to get rid of the tenants.  The tenants named in the suit had lived in the building for 6-10 years and were protected from increases by rent laws.  Mr. Klein said the landlord was trying to get rid of the tenants so he "could get new ones who would have to pay $15 to $20 a month more" in rent.

On June 24th, 1930 five Hispanic men were arrested after they tried to storm the Regun in protest of its showing of "Under a Texas Moon", directed by Michael Curtiz. who later directed "Casablanca", and the first western filmed in color.  The news article is sketchy on details but it refers to the neighborhood, which was primarily Jewish at the time of the rooftop lawsuit, was now a "Latin-American colony".  On the night of the arrests about 100 protesters marched upon the theater carrying placards that read "Down With Under a Texas Moon.  It is a reflection on the women of Latin America."

The most recent article concerning the Regun that I could find in the Times was on November 10th, 1936.  Four people were injure when plaster fell from the ceiling of the theater.  The rooftop projection booth (the article says the building had formerly shown outdoor movies) sat on iron stilts.  The stilts rusted away from lack of maintenance and gave way on the night in question.  About 150 moviegoers "stampeded from the auditorium".  The story did not mention what movie was playing.

Guthrie Theater

Guthrie Theater and Gold Medal Flour elevator.

Inside the cantilever.

Collapsed I-35 bridge.

Looking out the window toward the Gold Medal Flour grain elevator.

The rotated building on the previous post is the cantilevered part of the new Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis.  The building sits on the bank of the Mississippi and opened last year.  There are great views up and down the river from the edge of the cantilever. 

Arcus Brothers, Bloomsburg, PA

Had I gotten on the interstate right away I would never had seen the Arcus Brothers store in Bloomsburg.  They were closed when I stopped.  It appears they sell mattresses, furniture, slot machines, condoms, musical instruments, movies, and probably items too numerous to mention.  I didn't take a photo of the whole building, but someone did in 2003.

That's it for the trip to Ohio.  I'm at a loss as to what to chronicle next.  The trip to Iowa?  All of this summer's bike rides around town?  Maybe it's time to back to the Midwest!

Dawn Powell Lived Here (and here and here)

Mural in Shelby, Ohio (Dawn Powell on right, Charles Follis, left)

Orpha May Sherman Steinbrueck's house, Shelby, Ohio

9 E. 10th St. (1931-1942)

35 E 9th (1942-1958)

A favorite author of mine is Dawn Powell (1896-1965).  She wrote more than a dozen novels, some set in Ohio, others in New York.  Her books are mostly smart, observant satires that, unusually, treat the objects of satire with respect.  None of the novels sold well during her lifetime and her books were out of print until a revival of sorts took place in the 1990s.  Her cousing Jack Sherman, who was instrumental in her literary revival, died just this past spring.

Powell was born in Mt. Gilead, Ohio.  Her mother died when Dawn was a small child.  Her traveling salesman father remarried soon after to a woman who became the proverbial evil stepmother.  Powell ran away in her early teens to live with her aunt Orpha in Shelby.  She fictionalized much of her childhood in My Home is Far Away, which is about as unrelentlingly sad a novel as you'll ever want to read.  As long as I was in the neighborhood I stopped in Shelby to take a look. 

You would never know it by visiting today but Shelby was a growing industrial powerhouse a century ago.  In 1890 it was the birthplace of the seamless tube industry and the Shelby Bicycles (warning:  really horrible web page layout) made from those seamless tubes were quite popular.

Shelby was pretty quiet on a Saturday afternoon but Orpha's much modified house was still standing. The mural in which Powell is depicted also include Charles Follis.  Follis is recognized as the first African-American professional football player, getting paid to play for the Shelby Athletic Club in 1902.

When Powell first moved to New York she lived on the Upper West Side.  All those buildings are long gone.  Most of the her time, though, was spent amongst the mid-century bohemian crowd in Greenwich Village.  The building on East 10th Street has a plaque dedicated to her.  That building was designed by the firm of Renwick, Aspinwall, and Russell.  Renwich was James Renwick of Grace Church, St. Patrick's Cathedral, and Smithsonian fame.

Although those two New York buildings are nice places, Powell and her husband never had much money.  Their only child was severly autistic and needed lots of care.  Toward the end of their lives Powell and husband were nearly itinerant and dependent on the kindness of benefactors.  Powell died in 1965 and was buried in the pauper's cemetery on Hart Island.

Peoples Federal Savings and Loan Association Building

Finally it was time to visit the bank.  The only other time I was in Sidney I was making my way to Yellow Springs on a hot summer's day.  I saw this building and had to drive around the courthouse square to look at it again.

The Peoples Federal Savings and Loan Association Building was one of Louis Sullivan's later buildings.  Construction began five days after Sullivan submitted his architectural plans for the building in 1917.  The building is allegedly one of the first to feature air conditioning. The bank exterior features a blue glass mosaic, terra cotta relief ornamentation and a wall of green glass windows.  Inside the safe is symmetrically located and viewable by all.  The building was placed on the National Register in 1977.

Wood County Courthouse

The Romanesque Wood County Courthouse is the most recognizable building in Bowling Green.  The Wood County Auditor has a dryly humorous history of the building.  I never had occasion to go inside when I lived there.

Unlike a lot of midwestern and southern county buildings, this courthouse doesn't sit at the middle of town surrounded by downtown businesses.  The courthouse is located one block north and east of Bowling Green's central intersection and is mostly surrounded by houses.  At one time or another my friends Colleen, Karie, Romy and Steve all lived across the street.

If you're a fan of midwestern county courthouses, Cheryl has been visiting many in western Kansas.

Barn Star

Living in New York City I've missed out on the building decoration craze that's sweeping upstate New York, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, if not other places.  Barn stars!  This particular example is in Mexico, but I saw plenty of them in towns and in the countryside on my trip.  Single stars, multiple stars, same-sized stars and different-sized stars.   

Wooden barn stars were a decorative element that were often added to barns in German and German-American communities as early as the 1700s.  More recently, barn stars made of tin have become popular.   The older style stars have largely disappeared but the tin stars are all the rage.

Wall with Window

You never know what is going to strike someone's fancy.  I thought this green-gray wall with window would make a good photo for the Guess Where NYC group on Flickr.  It was fairly hidden on Minetta Street (it's the light green building at the intersection of Minetta and Minetta).  Someone that knew the neighborhood they would be able to guess it right away, but if you weren't familiar with the street you would think it impossible.  Of course, the location was guessed within a few minutes.

What got me is the number of people who have marked the photo as a favorite.  I didn't think too much of its aesthetic qualities but apparently people like it.

Trivia question #1:  What was Minetta Lane before it was Minetta Lane?
Trivia question #2:  What hall of fame baseball player grew up half-way down the block from this building?  (If I remember where I saw that historic marker!)