Archive for the ‘Modern Snapshot’
Modern Snapshot: Bauhaus WTOP Transmitter Station in Wheaton
I have driven by the WTOP Transmitter Building in Wheaton too many times to count. Always rushing somewhere, I never actually got out of the car to take a look and take a picture of this Bauhaus building on University Boulevard that was once featured in Architectural Record. I finally did today and here is what I [...]
Modern Snapshot: Mies’ Crown Hall at IIT
I saw this tweet posted yesterday: (CREATION/DESTRUCTION – S. R. Crown Hall’s interior during finals week at Illinois Institute of Technology) along with this picture. I had a chance to stroll through Crown Hall–designed by Mies in 1956–during a quieter time this summer. There was no one else on the top open floor with 18 foot-ceilings, which [...]
Modern Snapshot: Davis Memorial Library in Bethesda
The mid-century modern Davis Memorial Library on Democracy Boulevard in Bethesda sits on what is left of the Davis family farm, once a 400 acre estate called Rock Spring. Designed in the mid-1960s by Bethesda-based modernist architect Stanley Arthur, the sprawling 16,000 square foot library features a side-gabled roof, extended eaves, clerestory windows and variety [...]
Modern Snapshot: Rollingwood Elementary School Building
During and after World War II, the population of the Washington area boomed. There was a great need, especially in the growing suburbs, for libraries, houses of worship and schools. Most of it was basic modern design of the time, or as one of my favorite sites calls it: mid-century mundane. One example of this [...]
Modern Snapshot: The Endangered Marvel Cleaners Building
The mid-century modern Marvel Cleaners sits empty at its perch near the corner of New Hampshire Avenue and Randolph Road in Colesville. It has been sitting vacant for a year and is slated for redevelopment. The rendering in the window shows a “Marvel Plaza” but it does not look like anything to marvel at like the [...]
Modern Snapshot: Mid-Century Wheaton Woods Baptist Church
Some shots from today of the Wheaton Woods Baptist Church located here in Rockville. Nothing spectacular, but a solid mid-century modern church. Or, as this site I discovered recently would call it: Mid-Century Mundane. The site “was created to explore a specific genre of architecture that has largely been ignored. While architecture of the mid-century [...]
Modern Snapshot: Giving Thanks for Little Modern Details
I look at a lot of houses online and in person. I write about many of them here. In this post, I want to highlight some of the smaller mid-century modern details I have come across during the past several years. Scrolling through the 3,000+ pictures on my phone (all of food, architecture and my [...]
Modern Snapshot: Mid-Century Cooling in Berkeley Springs
Berkeley Springs State Park in West Virginia features two mid-century ways to relax and cool off from the summer heat–one is mid-18th Century and the other is mid-20th Century. You can take a plunge in George Washington’s Bath Tub (c. 1748). At age 16, the first president was part of a team surveying the western [...]
Modern Snapshot: St. Paul’s United Methodist Church in Kensignton
The 1968 St. Paul’s United Methodist Church building in Kensington is the fourth the congregation has had since its founding in 1885. The current mid-century modern sanctuary was built after fire destroyed the previous sanctuary and heavily damaged other buildings, which were built in the 1950s. You can view a few pictures of the four [...]
