I suppose it was common for buildings in Lviv’s center and wealthier neighborhoods to have the architectural infrastructure for servants who lived with the families. These now largely antiquated architectural elements would have included a servant staircase, sleeping quarters, and a separate wash area. Fortunately, the planning of my apartment […]
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The village of Winnetka, a suburb of Chicago, incorporated in 1869, has still a few remnants from its earliest years found in the infrastucuture and architecture. In particular, in the yards of some of the oldest houses that date from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuies one can find […]
Most of the buildings in Stockholm’s Old Town are still adorned with fire marks – plaques that showed that a building was insured in case of a fire. The signs, which depict a phoenix rising from the flames, were introduced in the 1740s. In the event of a fire, the fire brigade would […]
Before electricity, stairwells were lit up by candles, gas lamps, and other types of lighting. Lanterns were hung from hooks or poles high in the central area of the stairwell, or sometimes the stairwell’s newel posts, due to their prime location, functioned also as lamp posts. Early newel posts burned […]
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. […]
From 1795-1803 Lublin was part of New Galicia, a short-lived administrative region of the Austrian Habsburg Monarchy. In 1803 it was merged with the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria, but retained some autonomy. In 1809 Austria lost this territory, and in 1815 it became part of Congress Poland. A sampling of Lublin’s […]
Lublin, Poland, still has some intact horse hitching rings. They are attached to the front of several buildings in downtown Lublin. These iron rings would have been used to tie up horses by people doing errands downtown. They probably started to fall out of use in the 1920s. I also […]
Winnetka, a suburb of Chicago, has a few guard stones that used to protect the sides and corners of walls from carriages.
