Ornamental 19th Century Book Covers
Posted in Discourse on Sun Jul 29, 07 by Kyle under 19th Century and Books.
I ran across a page that had images of many highly ornamental 19th century book covers this morning and I just had to share it with everyone. There are various styles, some with ornament, some with pictorial engravings. All very gorgeous.
My personal favorites are the ones with “Eastlake” ornament.
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The Eclectic Royal Insurance Company Building
Posted in Discourse on Tue Oct 10, 06 by Kyle under Architecture and 19th Century.
I love old commercial buildings, especially crazy eclectic ones like the above Royal Insurance Company Building in Philadelphia. If you look closely at the photo you can see that this building was built in 1882, during the peak of Queen Anne architecture and Aesthetic the movement in the United States. Close inspection reveals the de rigueur sunflower motif on the panels beneath the windows. The sunflower was to the Aesthetic movement what the I-beam and plate glass was to corporate Modernists. You can also see classical columns and pilasters mixed with pointed gothic arches and finials, among the other delightful details that abound on this building.
The late 19th century is know for this kind of eclectic mixing. The build up of an integrated look through the combination of small details such as arches, decorative panels, brickwork, moldings, shingles, slates, and finials contributed to the aesthetic goal of creating a “picturesque” effect. Like all styles a skilled sense of design is required to make it work well, this mix and match approach did not always ensure pleasing results. However, the toolkit of the 1880s and 90s was big enough to ensure a lively variety and individuality on the street front while still maintaining a common architectural language.
See the full Library of Congress record.
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Ornamental Design Media Blitzkreig
Posted in Discourse on Thu Sep 21, 06 by Kyle under 19th Century and Decorative Arts.
If the New York Times says it, and no-one on Apartment Therapy listens can it still be true? After nearly a century of egregious contempt from high-style minded critics it looks as if the century that brought us the domestic use of electricity, the telephone, the bicycle, photography, film, the recording of sound, canned food, flush toilets, large scale public transportation, the study of psychology, department stores, metal and glass as structural building materials, and pre-perforated cross-stitch cards may finally be getting some serious attention in regards to its aesthetic output.
If you didn’t see it, the New York Times published a little missive headlined After Midcentury Modern, What’s Old Looks New today contemplating the future of trends in the high end design and antiques collecting market…
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1890 Chronicle Building unmasked in restoration/condo conversion
Posted in Discourse on Wed Sep 6, 06 by Kyle under 19th Century and Architecture.
If you have been to downtown San Francisco lately you might have noticed the renovation and construction going on at the building on the corner of Market and Kearny Streets. That building, 690 Market Street, is the old headquarters of the San Francisco Chronicle. The cladding that has been hiding the original Romanesque Revival tower for the past 45 or so years is coming off and the Ritz-Carlton Hotel group has plans to restore and add additional stories to the building and put it to use as a luxury condo and time-share development.
This building was one of San Francisco’s first skyscraper buildings and was designed by the Chicago architects Daniel H. Burnham and John Wellborn Root. I was pretty stoked when I had heard about the restoration, as the the building is one of the few downtown buildings from the 1800s that (kind of) survived the 1906 earthquake. It was rebuilt by Willis Polk after the 1906 earthquake. It is always a great thing to see an old building come back to life again. Recently I ran across this old color lithograph from 1889 that shows the building in its original condition and some photos before and after the earthquake. The lithograph’s caption reads “The San Francisco Chronicle’s New Building: Throughly Fire Proof, Largest Clock in the World, Entirely Lighted by Electricity.” Truly top of the line for its time.
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Timeless sentiments
Posted in Discourse on Thu Aug 31, 06 by Kyle under 19th Century.
In a letter to Jean-Baptiste Leroy on November 13, 1789 Benjamin Franklin wrote that:
Our new Constitution is now established, and has an appearance that promises permanency; but in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.
With certainty I can can say that he was right. Despite the ever-changing nature of how the world looks and sounds, some things never manage to change. In that vein I offer for your consideration a glimpse at this turn of the century cartoon from The Wasp, a satirical (and quite often blatantly racist) magazine published in San Francisco through the last half of the 19th century.
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