More downtown Minneapolis

Another picture I never got around to posting from Minneapolis: the Wells Fargo Center, designed by César Pelli.

Though the Art Deco design looks very early 20th century, it was actually completed in 1988.

Miami Beach buildings

Some of the buildings I saw walking around near the hotel and the botanical gardens.

Miami is famous for its art deco architecture, but I didn't make it to the section of South Beach with most of the best-known buildings. Most of what I saw were buildings like the one on the top left—bungalows surrounded by palm trees. But you can see the art deco influence in the geometric shapes and colors in many of the other buildings.

Speaking of the Golden Gate Bridge

I saw this bridge on a daily basis when I was young. I've driven across it countless times, sailed under it, and walked across it more than once. It often shows up in my dreams. And yet, I had never noticed the Art Deco details on the towers before.

Obviously, when I was a kid I wouldn't have known what Art Deco was, but the adult me never noticed either until I looked at these pictures.

More Kirkland vignettes

That giant blue disk in the photo on the bottom right is a radio from the 1930's. I remember when audiophiles were competitive over who had the biggest stereo speakers -- now it's probably whose system is the tiniest -- but whoever owned that radio would win any competition.

Saturday reflections

There isn't really much of a reflection here, but it's abstract enough to pretend, and it's a segue into the final batch of pictures from Denver: an Art Deco tray and cocktail shakers at the Kirkland Museum.

Bonus Saturday reflections

Because it's only 20 degrees outside and even after two cups of coffee and reading more news than is good for me I still don't feel like getting dressed and going out in it, here's another picture: the Atlas statue in front of a triptych of cathedral reflections.

Wikipedia tells me that when this statue was first unveiled in 1937, people protested because it looked too much like Mussolini. “Later, painter James Montgomery Flagg said that Atlas looks too much as Mussolini thinks he looks.”

Another look

Here's the French building again, in context, with a few of its neighbors.

Urban poetry

In New York, it always pays to look up.

This is the Fred F. French Building on Fifth Avenue, one of the first Art Deco skyscrapers. There are a pair of stunning faience panels at the top, with sunbursts and Assyrian-style griffins, and many years ago when I was first working in New York, I used to stand on the terraces outside our offices and look down Fifth Avenue at the north-facing panel and wonder, What the hell?

Most of the exterior is just brick, but the setbacks all have this bright terra-cotta trim in varying patterns. It's not what you notice first, but it's worth taking a look at.

Two more

The light wasn't great for photographers in a hurry -- the building was only open for another fifteen minutes when I got there -- but you can at least see those luxurious Art Deco shapes.

What an entrance

The curve over the doorway, accented in ironwork and gold relief.

Jumping back several decades

This is 570 Lexington, an ordinary office building in Midtown East.

It also happens to be a fine example of Art Deco, like so many buildings in this part of Manhattan. I'd never seen it before, though, never known that there was any reason to go inside. But the lobby was on the  Open House tour and it was a short, if unexpectedly chilly, walk up from Grand Central, where the bus from the airport had dropped me off.

Something unexpected

It doesn't look like anything else in town, but I do love the unexpected Art Deco details on the old courthouse building. It was apparently the first cement building in Alaska, and proof that cement could work as a building material even with Alaska's frigid climate.