Our cities’ and buildings’ physical spaces, urban and rural landscapes, hold secrets to how people used to live, hold traces of previous eras. Embodied in outdated signage, beautiful antique craftsman, and remnants of outdated infrastructures, these mementos of a bygone world serve as are our physical connections to the past.
When I was in Annapolis I saw some oval plaques with images of trees, eagles, engines, etc. on some of the old buildings. I thought they were something exclusive to Annapolis, but when I returned to my suburb I found a couple of them there and realized it was something […]
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I found a new faux ghost sign on a shop that sells gold, silver, watches, and currency. The name of the shop is Ломбард (Lombard). The signs are in Polish and Ukrainian: Złoto (Gold) Srebro (Silver) Zegarki (Watches) Гроші (Money) Kantor (Currency exchange) This first example I’ve seen in Lviv […]
On Saturday I went on a bicycle excursion to the Pidzamche neighborhood in Lviv and found this amazing very recently uncovered ghost sign! It must have been uncovered in the last month because it wasn’t visible when I was wandering around this neighborhood in May. Judging from the sign, in […]
The building at 3 Drukarska Street was built c. 1543, and was owned by Stanislaw Schtansl Scholtz. The building later become known as “Under the Mother of God” because of a statue of the Virgin Mary on the façade. In 1858 the building housed the St. Sophia Association of the […]
I read an interesting article in Ukrainian, in which the author uncovers the original purposes of the layout of an old Kozak village and the design of the houses. Below is my translation of most of it. The link to the original article and a few more photos can be […]
Two ads for PKO [Poland’s largest bank], likely from the 1970s. The first one is advetising bankboos.
In Lviv’s Passage Andreolli, which leads from 28 Rynok Square (built 1760s-1770s) to Teatralna Street, is a chain (handcuff or fetter) that once was in front of the City Hall. Women were chained to it by the arm or leg so that they would think about their behavior.
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
