Something that I haven’t noticed in Lviv and Europe in general is iron fire escapes on the sides of buildings. I read that the reason such fire escapes are a rarity in Europe is because European cities have a long history of fire prevention and safety and were always ahead […]

I’ve come across three old hitching posts in two northern suburbs of Chicago, including in the village of Winnetka. I assume they have been in the same locations near the curbs since the time horses were still used as modes of transport here. I also assume there used to be […]

Winnetka, a suburb of Chicago, has a few guard stones that used to protect the sides and corners of walls from carriages.

In downtown Winnetka, I found a well-preserved coal chute. The building and chute date to the early twentieth century, probably between 1900 and 1930. The Majestic Company was founded in 1907 in Huntington, Indiana. It manufactured coal chutes, garbage receivers, package receivers, and fireplace dampers. Here is is an original […]

I saw this antique brass three-unit mailbox with old-fashioned speaking tubes and doorbells in an apartment building that was built in 1904 in the Ukrainian Village in Chicago. I’m guessing it was installed either when the building was built or no later than the 1920s. Currently there is a modern […]

Chicago has its share of ghost signs. Here a few from a couple neighborhoods on the north side of the city. The first one is an old ad for the Joseph Schlitz Brewing Company, which was based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The Schlitz brewery was opened in 1858 and in 1902 […]

Baraboo, Wisconsin, was the headquarters and winter home of the famous Ringling Brothers circus. The Ringling Brothers held their first circus in 1884. In 1919 they merged with the Barnum & Bailey Circus and moved their winter headquarters to Connecticut. The old grounds and buildings are now a living museum […]

I took a day trip to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and found some pretty cool ghost signs in the Third Ward, a historic warehouse district.

Last spring a few of my friends found this fake multilayered ghost sign in Boulder, Colorado. It’s on the side of a bike shop. There seem to be three layers of signs, and even the bricks are fake – they are painted on. (Thank you Julie, Eric, and Andrew for […]

Due to historical reasons, there are very few Ukrainian-language ghost signs in Ukraine, but in the Ukrainian Village (a neighborhood on the north side of the city) in Chicago, there is one in Ukrainian, and it is possible that there had been more. The one that I found is for […]