Architectural Map-Drawings to Date: September 2013

*click larger*       TOTC Architectural Map-Drawings to Date: September 2013

STAUNTON Virginia's West Beverley Street: Print & Postcard

Staunton Virginia's "main street", Beverley Street, in a veritable museum of architectural styles, thanks to turn-of-the-century eclectic architect T.J. Collins.
 https://www.etsy.com/listing/163126092/staunton-virginia-west-beverley

Thanks to architectural historians and architects (Frazier Associates), business owners, leaders, planners and preservationists (Historic Staunton Foundation) over the past four decades, Staunton's architectural heritage has been preserved and utilized. A stroll today down Beverley in downtown Staunton offers antique, jewelry, gifts and book shops, a fine cigar and gentlemens' accoutrements shop, live music and fantastic restaurants - leave room for gelato afterwards at the Split Banana in the old Masonic Temple! 

https://www.etsy.com/listing/163126092/staunton-virginia-west-beverley

The Masonic Temple was designed by Chicago architect I.E.A. Rose and built in 1896.

https://www.etsy.com/listing/163126092/staunton-virginia-west-beverley

The National Valley Bank was designed by T.J. Collins and this portion, center, was built in 1903. 

https://www.etsy.com/listing/163126092/staunton-virginia-west-beverley

I'm kind of keen on those triangular flag banners. Homemade white fabric banners like this decorated the Sears Hill Bridge Re-Opening here at the Depot in April - and I was smitten. Beverley Street's no stranger to festive decoration - wait 'til you see my Woodrow Wilson-inspired Staunton Print, in the works...

https://www.etsy.com/listing/163126092/staunton-virginia-west-beverley

Of course -- Postcards, too! A souvenir to send, or keep. 

https://www.etsy.com/listing/163146811/staunton-virginia-west-beverley-postcard

The banner flags draping the back of the card kind of remind me of the tricolor stripe on international  AirMail envelopes.

https://www.etsy.com/listing/163146811/staunton-virginia-west-beverley-postcard

Exploring STAUNTON Virginia

The sun woke me up this morning on a holiday. So I chased it around downtown Staunton, from the churches of Frederick Street to the Shopfronts of Beverley Street.

Worthington Hardware; Gooch & Hoge Building & Masonic Building. 10 block Beverley Street.

View west down Beverley Street (at Market Street.)

made [By the People; For the People]. new shop on Beverley Street selling AMERICAN-made goods. Can't wait to visit!

Clocktower Building (old YMCA), Gooch & Hoge, Masonic Building. Beverley Street.

National Valley Bank, Beverley Street. T.J. Collins, Architect.

Warehouses facing the Railroad Depot, Middlebrook Avenue.

Watching trains from the newly refurbished Sears Hill Bridge.

View over Staunton from Sears Hill on the Sears Hill Bridge Day, April 2013.

Flowers are always in season at the flower lady's house on Beverley Street. (click larger)

Thanks for sharing some of my favorite places in Staunton. I'm beginning to draw now...keep in touch to see which of my favorite sites I draw this week. Hope you like!

This is STAUNTON Virginia

Staunton Postcard, 1908.

This week, let's go to STAUNTON.
I visited here first in 1995 with my new best friend, Kathy, from architecture school. We stopped at her mother's home in Staunton on the way back to school from the Rem Koolhaas lecture at the National Building Museum in Washington DC. She drove me through town and I was impressed with the hills - so steep! A road trip through beautiful western Virginia with my mom landed us here at a B&B several years later. A marriage to a JMU doctoral student brought me here this year to live. We love it. Our favorite thing to do is explore Staunton so we cherish the few times we've had here after a very busy semester and a summer spent mostly out of town and look forward to many more Staunton explorations!  I'm so excited to draw Staunton's main street, Beverley Street, this week. Keep in touch --

STAUNTON VIRGINIA. by Kirsten Sparenborg, 2013

STAUNTON VIRGINIA.  Map by Kirsten Sparenborg, 2013

Staunton, 1857. Lith. Woldemar Rau. Copyright Ed. Beyer. Library of Congress.

View from Sears Hill, Postcard, early 1900s.

Perspective Map of the City of Staunton, 1891. Library of Congress.

Woodrow Wilson's House in Washington DC

We're on a Woodrow Wilson tour this week, it seems! After a crippling stroke in office, and at the end of his term, Wilson and his second wife, Edith, lived here on S Street, near Embassy Row. Wilson lived here 1921-1924. Edith lived 37 more years and gifted the house to the National Trust in 1961. The house is furnished largely as it was when Wilson lived here. (photo on left by Todd A. Smith Photography.)

Welcome to the parlor, a memorial to Wilson's family (his three girls' portraits on the piano) a "museum" of international gifts to the former President.

The grand piano, played by his eldest daughter, and a huge wall tapestry, a gift to the President.

A painting of the Spanish Steps in Rome, and portraits of King George V and Queen Mary, mother of the current Queen Elizabeth.

Wilson's office includes, among the books and treasures, a film projector (right) and screen (left). Cutting edge.

The neighborhood and the beautiful terraced rear gardens.

Woodrow Wilson's dressing and bed room. What a gentleman.

Edith Wilson was a 9th generation descendant of Pocahontas and proud (left image: Pocahontas, and Edith). Here is her bed and dressing room.

Built-in cabinets and cupboards are found throughout the house (love them!) and proudly house the Wilsons' china collections here.

In addition to an elevator that was powered by the S Street streetcar, the house was equipped with an intercom!

The kitchen is a large bright space, with a "modern" stove and wooden icebox.

The Woodrow Wilson House is a treasure trove of curious gifts from around the world by admirers of the President who negotiated the end of the horrendous World War and an interesting glimpse into life at the high end of Washington in the 1920s.

Local Tourists: The Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library and Museum

We took a stay-cation outing to Woodrow Wilson's place today, right down the street in Staunton, Virginia. Our impetus was the great gift of the Blue Star Museums incentive, allowing military families free admission to certain museums during the summer. (So cool! I wish we could travel the country museum-hopping...) Thank you, Blue Star and The Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library & Museum.

Three houses sit on the ridge known as Gospel Hill, at the edge of Staunton's downtown. Only the Presbyterian manse was there in the 1850s and Wilson's parents lived there. His father was the minister. The Museum comprises the manse and the other two houses. The middle houses administration, admissions and gift shop. The largest houses the Woodrow Wilson Museum (above.) Come on in for interesting exhibits on the life of the Wilson family, the President's parents and siblings, their short residence but long relationship with the town of Staunton, Wilson's education at the finest institutions in the country, his presidency, World War I and the Woodrow Wilson family.

And the President's beloved limousine, a Pierce-Arrow, one of the first luxury automobiles, lovingly restored and shown off in the large garage/exhibit. Wilson was one of the first members of the AAA, but he never earned a driver's license.

These war posters set the scene for the WW I exhibit - complete with the trenches, their sights and sounds, photographs and old rusty weapons in the basement. The dawn of the machine in war.

The pennants and ribbons and, especially, this typographic drawing endeared me to the graphic and celebratory techniques of the early 1900s. 

I especially loved the exhibit featuring the paintings of Wilson's first wife, from Georgia, Ellen Axson Wilson. She earned awards and exhibited and studied at the Art Students League in New York while she was engaged. After she was wed to Wilson, Ellen pursued family life primarily, painting when she had time as the children grew.

An artful life at the White House, thanks to Ellen Axson Wilson. 

Sottile & Sottile: From Savannah to the World

The reach of a small architecture & urban design firm in Savannah Georgia extends far, far beyond the bounds of the modest rowhouse studio on Chatham Square.

In addition to awards by the CNU, AIA and others, Sottile & Sottile ideas and projects have produced some standout covers on a few international magazines.

On urban design,
INTERNATIONAL NEW LANDSCAPE:
http://www.sottile.cc/International-New-Landscape-Sottile.pdf

see http://www.sottile.cc/International-New-Landscape-Sottile.pdf for full cover

On the singular SCAD Museum,
ARCHITECTURAL DIGEST:
http://www.sottile.cc/Architectural-Digest-Sottile-SCAD-Museum.pdf

see http://www.sottile.cc/International-New-Landscape-Sottile.pdf for full cover

[The photo by Adam Kuehl in AD is otherworldly.  At night, it glows as a beacon. In the day, it welcomes learners and lovers of art.  It was a thrill to attend paper sessions of the SCAD Symposium in the SCAD Museum in February 2013. Having walked the galleries, halls and classrooms with pencil, pen and watercolor in the design stages, it was awesome to walk and use these spaces (and present a paper in them) in full living color and texture and space...]