A friend forwarded to me this set of photographs of 30 architectural wonders from around the world.
#7 reminded me of Convex and Concave by M. C. Escher and made me wonder if it had been inspired by that.
Mano Singham
Just another Freethought Blogs site
The obviously fake bookshelves (mostly bookcase-pattern wallpaper) kind of ruin that one, to be honest.
The only one of those I’ve actually been to would be the Château Frontenac. There was actually an entire chain of hotels built along the Canadian Pacific Railway line in similar styles (the Royal York in Toronto, the Empress in Victoria… most of the still existing ones are under the ‘Fairmont’ brand name now, and the Frontenac is the oldest of them that’s still standing with most of its original structure intact. (The Banff Springs is slightly older, but a fire destroyed the older wooden half of the building almost a century ago, leaving the later stone and concrete extensions to rebuild from.)
The Frontenac also has the advantage of geography with the cliff face overlooking the St. Lawrence River. Quebec City was one of the few real ‘walled cities’ in North America, originally built as a fortress to guard the entrance to the St. Lawrence Seaway, high on the cliffs to make it essentially impossible to attack from the sea. The hotel may have been built over a century after the British seized the city, but it was deliberately built to evoke the older European styles that the rest of the city had originally been built in.
Ketil, but that’s not architecture, is it? It’s just decoration.
Did it include the “Trestle”?
The largest all-wood structure in the world, big enough for a fully loaded B-52. It was built for electromagnetic pulse susceptibility tests.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATLAS-I
Not to be pedantic, but a lot of these photos seem to be more about ornament than architecture.
Not that I don’t like ornament.
#14 doesn’t say which Fox Theater; but that looks like it could be the one in my home town. Back when I was in high school (class of ’64), it was a movie theater; but it was restored a few decades ago. They even restored the old theater organ.
#13 looks massive until you notice the couple in the foreground. I believe it would easily fit in a corner of the Grand Temple of Todai-ji in Nara, Japan.
A correction: #16 Niagara Mohawk Building Built In Art Deco Style, NYC
is actually in Syracuse, NY, not NYC.
It makes me wonder how many other inaccuracies are in that page.
I like #17, it has pancakes. Some of the others might too, but they make sure I know it.
If #5 if where I think it is (Kyoto), then it’s usually full of tourists and the storefronts are all selling tacky souvenirs. I got a set of miniature samurai swords.
#23 doesn’t count because it’s no longer there.
@Allison #8. I guess they couldn’t find any good examples of Art Deco in NYC.
#8, I noticed the NiMo building attributed to the wrong city too. One thing though, I have driven by it many times and it never looked as good as that picture!
More Zhongshu bookstores: one in Chongqing, and one in Xi’an with a very different feel (not the same architectural firm as the other two).
I have to share this one too, since I just came across it and it’s so weird: BIBU pet store/spa/vet in Guangzhou.
cr @#11,
That is one wild pet store!
The Chongqing book store also has an Escher vibe.
Bill @#12
Apparently we share a hometown. But that is most definitely not the Fox you linked to in Atlanta. There were several such theatres built around the country almost a hundred years ago. I think only three or possibly four survive. The image in the linked article appears to be the Fox in St Louis.