Puerto Rico or the Virgin Islands, winter 1941/42, by Jack Delano, via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.
Tag: steps
A study in steps: Schürhof, Basel
After I took a number of photos of the hanging plant columns of the Basel Museum of Culture (during our visit at Thanksgiving), I turned my attention to the courtyard around them — the Schürhof — the floor of which is largely a set of low, wide steps descending to the museum lobby and gift shop.
The street entrance to the courtyard and thus to the museum is through a simple archway on the Münsterplatz.
Before the museum was renovated in 2011 by Herzog & de Meuron, the Schürhof* was not open to the public. The museum shared a door with the Museum of Natural Sciences around the corner.
Looking at a “before” photo (here, fourth image), the old courtyard appears to have been used at least partly as a parking lot.
The renovation excavated it to open up a new museum entrance in the base of the existing 1917 neoclassical building.
The other buildings that enclose the Schürhof are medieval.
Above and below are three views from upper windows inside the museum.
You can see a plan of the courtyard here (fifth image).
The Sunday porch: postcard
“Sitting on the Porch,” a postcard from ca. 1900, location and photographer unknown, via Miami University Libraries Commons on flickr.
(Click on the photo for a better look.)
The Bowden Postcard Collection of Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, holds over 480,000 postcards from nearly everywhere in the early 20th century world.
This image is not very seasonal, I must admit. Here in Stuttgart, we woke up this morning to a light covering of snow.
Children picking up our bones
Will never know that these were once
As quick as foxes on the hill. . .And least will guess that with our bones
We left much more, left what still is
The look of things, left what we feltAt what we saw. . . .
— Wallace Stevens, from “A Postcard from the Volcano“
Life in gardens: Ax-les-Thermes
The walled garden of Chalet Magazin, Ax-les-Thermes, France,” July 1906, by Eugène Trutat, via Bibliothèque de Toulouse Commons on flickr.
From over the wall I could hear the laughter of women
in a foreign tongue, in the sun-rinsed air of the city. . . .
. . . the sound filled up the garden and lifted
like bubbles spilling over the bricks that enclosed them. . .
— Mary-Sherman Willis, from “The Laughter of Women“
A study in steps: pink umbrella
A glimpse of an old Japanese garden. . .
A hand-colored photo taken between 1860 and 1910, from a collection that belonged to journalist Holger Rosenberg, via National Museum of Denmark.
Unfortunately, the museum does not have any other information about this image.
When has an umbrella ever
Kept the rain and the mist from entering a heart
And shaking it with dreams?— Luis Muñoz Marin, from “Umbrella“
enclos*ure 