Ģipša Fabrika (Gypsym Factory) is located on the island of Kipsala, a former fishermen’s village. This nineteenth-century brick building used to be a plaster factory. Now it is part of a luxury apartment complex. Somewhere in the Old Town These two signs are on a building on Albert Street, a street […]

One of the highlights of my trip to Tallinn was my unexpected tour of the Ukrainian church and Ukrainian Cultural Center. The cultural center is located in a beautiful 14th century building located within the medieval walls of Tallinn’s Old Town. The center includes a museum, which was created “to help […]

Although not nearly to the same extent as in Tallinn, remnants of the merchants’ hoisting mechanisms remain on several of the medieval houses in Riga. A granary from the 18th century

Tallinn’s Old Town used to be an important trading city on the coast of the Baltic Sea. Fortunately, a majority of the medieval buildings have survived, including many of the merchants’ houses. The attic spaces—and sometimes several of the upper floors—of these houses were used to store the merchants’ goods. […]

Lehedzyne I spent a weekend visiting a friend in Lehedzyne, a village near Uman. I found two interesting boot scrapers. One extra wide one (for several people to scrape at the same time) near the village store, and then another large one with a handle attached to it in Baba […]

Modern hand-painted signs in Ivano-Frankivsk:

Ivano-Frankivsk, formerly Stanisławów or Stanislaviv, is a small historic city about 2.5 hours south-east of Lviv, located at the foothills of the Carpathians. It was built in the mid-17th century as a private fortress. Along with Lviv, in 1772 it became part of the Austrian Empire, then part of the […]

My friend found an antique roller shutter in Zhovkva, an old fortress town near Lviv. As the manufacturer’s mark is in German, and the company was based in Vienna, the shutter probably dates to before WWI. Photo credit: Charitie Hyman

When I was Glasgow, I noticed on several buildings in the city center the same tram rosettes that are in Lviv. Thus I immediately knew that Glasgow once had a tram system. Glasgow’s electric tram route began in 1898. In 1962 the city abandoned its tramway system — the last city in […]

At first I thought this was a ghost sign, but after looking closer at what it says and later finding that there really is a store with that name now, I understood it was not. It’s a store that sells gifts, souvenirs, and postcards. I really like the sign nevertheless.