A few days ago Chris Miller tweeted this very urban image of Halifax. The red building brightening up all that grayness made me remember a William Carlos Williams poem about a red wheelbarrow.So I quickly looked up the poem and tweeted the beginning as a reply, replacing "wheelbarrow" with "building." so much depends upon a… Read More

In April I was coming out of Atlantic News and noticed that the building across the street was being stripped of its many layers of siding. I posted a picture on Twitter and wished good things for a building that had lost its dignity a long time ago. The Twitter post gathered 10,000 impressions so… Read More

So the car was in for servicing (remember the diesel that VW lied about), so there was time to take a long ramble. I didn't have a destination in mind and just started walking quickly down Robie Street, then turned up May Street for a slower-paced stroll in a zone with more visual charms. Immediately… Read More

While looking through photos taken last month, I noticed a little theme: new public landscape elements, with thoughtful design, located in communities several counties distant from Halifax. Here are three examples. Mersey Skatepark In early June the Rhododendron Society did its annual garden tour, this year in the Liverpool area. One of the stops was… Read More

A couple of years ago I came upon a delightful Instagram account that posted pictures of fruit stickers. This was a bit shocking because noticing is what I do, and my impression was that fruit stickers were rubbish and not worth looking at. So I got a little notebook, that resides in the kitchen "junk"… Read More

Halifax is not great at mourning old buildings that are knocked down, and is particularly unprepared to acknowledge the destruction of interesting structures that are not particularly ancient (i.e. younger than I am). Christian Science Reading Room Recently I received this tweet about the demolition of the Christian Science Reading Room and the attached First… Read More

We visited Greece for the first time in April and it was good. The trip started and finished in Athens, so here are some images of the city, because, like us, you may only be able to conjure up the Acropolis. Air travel is amazing, but is by no means painless. The big new windows… Read More

Here's a little project for your summer adventures in our cultural landscapes. Take note of vintage, woven wire fences. They are not too common, but they crop up all over the province (and elsewhere on this continent), and can be delightfully decorative. Clementsvale, Annapolis… Read More

The other day on Twitter, Elizabeth Cushing posted an extraordinary blueprint for an apartment building on Oxford Street in Halifax. The plans were undated, but from the Harris and Horton architecture firm that was dissolved in 1926. I suspect the design dates somewhere around 1920. I also assume the apartment was not built. Twitter had… Read More

Tim Bousquet in the Halifax Examiner drew my attention to a tender that the city has issued for "Detailed Design: South African Memorial Fountain Rehabilitation." This is exciting news for fans of decorative cast iron (like myself), so I was distressed, but not surprised, that Tim's response was "blow the damn thing up." The fountain… Read More