St. Mark's Episcopal, Old West End

I'm taking a short break from my moratorium on church pictures because I'd always been curious to see if this one's as disgustingly ugly inside as it is outside.

It isn't. The interior's magnificent. Good artwork, but with a refreshing lack of the gewgaws and garbage Catholic churches are littered with. My parents never understood how I could tolerate all those garishly colored statues of irrelevant idiots. Now I have to agree with them. If I had any tolerance at all for old Yahoo and his purported son Jeebus, this place would be nice for time wasting.

I don't know what the hell that's supposed to represent, but I'm inclined to like it.

John Waite House, Old West End ( 1892 )

The form is simple, but the decoration pulls all the stops.





The walking tour brochure lists John Waite as the first owner. I'm going to have to find out what the C is for.




Someone must have liked pigeons.

Georgian ( ? ) Apartments, Old West End

One's the Georgian and the other, I believe, is the Collingwood. Sorry, but I wasn't about to dig through the remaining snow and slush to refresh my memory from the tile signs inset into the sidewalks. These are two, u-shaped buildings. The one on the left may be salvageable. ( I repeat, may. )
It's time for a reality check on this one, however. There's almost no realistic hope that it's ever going to be restored. Even remodeling it out of recognition would cost far too much to be feasable in our current situation.





The Old West End has few failures in the preservation department. It might be time to see this as one of them and give up.

First Congregational, Old West End

My moratorium on church pictures still holds, but I certainly wasn't about to pass an opportunity to get inside two of the churches in the Old West End, this week, much less to see Tiffany windows. I'll post some of them one of these days, but I couldn't resist posting these.

In my usual, contemptible style I ended up liking the Lederle and Geissler windows at First Congregational even more than the Tiffany.

I like the way they used rough chunks of glass in the border.

That oval piece at the left isn't flat, it's a cabachon.

This is actually one of the older Tiffany windows brought from the old downtown church. Threw it in anyway.

Collingwood Presbyterian, Old West End

I have to say I never expected to find a Moorish style drinking fountain in a Presbyterian church.

Beautiful thing. The picture doesn't do justice to the colors.

Park Lane Hotel

Whatever You Call That Street

It's near the Glass Pavilion and it gets confusing.

Monroe Street

Collingwood Boulevard

FYI

Immediately after opening my kitchen window this morning, to take this picture, I regretted the whole idea.

Former Shomer Emunim Synagogue, Old West End