Tag: laundry

The Sunday porch: Barri Gòtic

Cindy at enclos*ure3 Comments

Balconies in the Gothic Quarter of Barcelona, Spain, earlier this week.

The Quarter is the oldest part of Barcelona, with foundations in the Roman and medieval periods.  However, many of its current structures were built or significantly reconstructed in late 19th and early 20th centuries. Its streets, however, remain narrow and winding, sometimes opening up to small squares.

We spent five days in the city, after almost two weeks in Toulouse, France. Toulouse is all about the 13th to 15th centuries, while Barcelona glories in the late 19th and the 20th, so it was an interesting shift after a three hour train ride. As tourists, our energy levels were winding down, however. We rode the hop-on hop-off bus (without hopping off) and toured Gaudi’s Basilica Sagrada Familia (reserve tickets in advance; it’s remarkable) and Casa Amatller (they give you good hot chocolate and bread at the end), and watched the red rose and book selling of Sant Jordi’s Day on April 23. But mainly we just walked around and soaked up the perfect spring weather.

We stayed at Hotel AC Irla (a Marriott affiliate) in an upscale section of the Eixample district with easy public bus connection to and from (the V11 and V13, respectively) the waterfront and the Gothic Quarter (buy a T10 ticket from a magazine/newspaper stand; it will give you 10 rides* for about one euro each).

My only food tip: if you tour Sagrada Familia on a Wednesday to Sunday, book the 11:30 a.m. time slot and then have lunch at Arepamundi, a small Venezuelan arepa place a couple blocks south of the basilica. Order the small size arepas so you can enjoy more than one filling (get the Venezulana and the one with shredded meat, beans, fresh cheese, and fried bananas). Barcelona brought back some memories of living in Caracas in the 80s.

*Validate it each time you enter a bus, subway, or tram. If two people are using the same card, punch it twice each time. If transferring within an hour and a half from subway to bus (or bus to bus), punch it, but it won’t count as a new trip.

Industry

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factory-and-garden1941-or-42-library-of-congress
Vegetable gardens beside workers’ housing; factory in the background, place unknown, between 1941 and 1942, color slides by unknown photographer for the U.S. Office of War Information, via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

factory-and-garden-21941-or-42-library-of-congress

It was suggested by commenters on the photos’ flickr pages that the factory is for steel and the location is Pittsburg or Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.

The Sunday porch: Houston, Texas

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Originally posted in October 2013:

Old house in 1940s Houston, by John Vachon, Library of Congress Another photo by John Vachon — an old house with a double porch in Houston, Texas, May 1943.*  I love the tower room.

You really need to click on the photo and enlarge it to enjoy all the details of this one.

Sharp-eyed commenters on the Library of Congress’s Flickr Commons project noticed that the address on the curb is 1900 Franklin Street. The location is currently a parking lot next to the US Route 59 overpass, close to Minute Maid Park.

*via Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Color Photographs Collection, Library of Congress.

Green space

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Greenhills, Ohio, 1938, J. Vachon, via Library of CongressGreenhills, Ohio, October 1938, by John Vachon for the U.S. Resettlement Administration, via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

Greenhills, Ohio is one of only three “Greenbelt Towns” built [by the federal government] in the United States. The other two are Greenbelt, Maryland, and Greendale, Wisconsin. The three towns had their start during the Depression Era.*

.  .  . The building of these towns provided much needed jobs for those in the trades (brick layers, plumbers, carpenters, electricians, etc.), as well as people not in the trades who worked at clearing land, digging trenches, etc.

.  .  . The most important aspect of these towns was to provide low income families with affordable housing to raise their children in and a safe environment with access to large open “green” spaces. Pathways were created in each section of homes to connect the sections to each other, as well as provide a pathway to the Village center.

— The Village of Greenhills website

There are more Library of Congress photos of Greenhills here.

*The first residents moved in in April 1938.