School Entrance

 Astoria, Oregon ~ January 23, 2010

St. Mary, Star of the Sea School (see yesterday's post) also has an unusual doorway. Below is another photo of the facade from a more typical angle. The blue strip on the top of the lintel says, "For God and Country."

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A Grand Edifice on Grand Avenue

Astoria, Oregon ~ January 23, 2010

This grand Victorian building stands at the corner of Grand Avenue and 14th Street. The fire escapes that resemble decks could be seen on the right in yesterday's post. Here it is from Grand Avenue.

Another shot on the Grand Avenue side.

This is from the corner of Grand and 14th.

Grand going off to the left and 14th Street in front of us.

This blog is sponsored by Tapir and Friends Animal Store.

Three in a Row

Astoria, Oregon ~ January 23, 2010

These three houses must have a story, and if anyone knows it, I'd be interested to hear it. They have similar design elements. If you use your imagination, they are approximately red, white, and blue. 

The first house has the "comedy/tragedy" masks on the pediment representing drama and/or other creative arts.

The second house has an eagle that reminds me of early Americana. The three houses are across Grand Avenue from yesterday's Buddha. They seem like a matched set, but of what?

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Where Houses Climb Hills

February 7, 2010

Eleventh Street between Harrison and Grand is not one of the steepest hills in Astoria, but even here you can clearly see some of the concessions made to keep any structure reasonably level in this enchanting and unusual town on a hill. Streets like this are one reason it's never dull walking around Astoria. Not only do you need to watch your footing, but there's always something to look at along the way.

The white-paneled rectangle is the door to one of Astoria's typical small cement garages. Here you have to navigate a sometimes-tilted driveway as well as the abrupt turn into the narrow space. My car bears a few scrapes from my underestimation of that little dip that happens when you back out without thinking about the slope. Sometimes these garages crack and leak from the soggy earth on top. I love looking at them, though.

This blog is sponsored by Tapir and Friends Animal Store.

Astoria High School, About 1909

The photo above is another postcard loaned by Midnight Mike. The only date on it is the postmark, which is 1909. The picture shows the old Astoria High School at the corner of 8th Street and Grand Avenue. The photo was taken from 7th and Franklin.

Earlier on this blog, I posted the photo above, taken from almost the same location (7th and Exchange), but from a vantage point closer to the ground. In the next photo, taken the other day (March 23, 2010), I was standing at the opposite corner of the park, which is somewhere in front of the blue house in the background above.

You can see what a lopsided piece of ground it is. I wonder why they eventually tore down the building? The park is currently used as a baseball diamond, and at the left is a swing set. There's a picnic table with benches near the tree. Of course, that's the great Columbia River in the background; the hills on the other side are in Washington.

This blog is sponsored by Tapir and Friends Animal Store.

Curved Fence

I thought the curved fence at this home at 7th Street and Grand Avenue was both ingenius and charming. New blossoms and the relatively warm spring day made me feel almost as if I were in the countryside about a century or so ago.

This blog is sponsored by Tapir and Friends Animal Store.

Transition

On Sunday I walked up the Astoria hill and around one of the residential areas. I love this transitional shot, showing the moss from the torrents of winter rain and also a bush filled with spring flowers. In fact, I was surprised at how many green shoots and new flowers I saw out today. It seems that only yesterday it was winter. I'm sure the seasons will jockey for awhile before it feels like spring has sprung.

I took today's photo on 12th Street approaching this intersection with Grand. Check out the top and the bottom photos on the linked post. Here you will also see the lovely green house that peeks into the current photo on the upper right. I took some more photos of the house on Sunday; maybe I'll post one tomorrow.

This blog is sponsored by Tapir and Friends Animal Store.

12th and Grand, Part 2: A brief odyssey

In most of my 100-plus posts on Astoria, Oregon, Daily Photo, I've limited the photos to one per day, following the suggested format, and also as a personal discipline (I post tons of photos on my personal blog). However, today I'm taking you on an odyssey. The length is only a few yards (or metres). In this post, I showed the uphill intersection of 12th and Grand, where 12th morphs from a street to a path "to where?" In today's post, I'm showing you where it goes. The photo above is the downhill side of the 12th and Grand intersection - they're actually quite a few yards apart, as Grand ends in one latitude and starts up again in another. I've taken the photo above looking up, up, UP, because that's how the land lies.

"Two paths diverged in a wood." The one to the left is a private drive. The path you can barely see going up the hill into the trees is the public "street" - here nothing more than a walking trail. The building to the left is currently the Church of Christ, and was at one time an obscure fraternal order. I'll have more on that someday if I re-photograph the building.

The beginning of the path is nicely paved, but steep, and made a little bit treacherous with loose stones and gravel. Anyplace as old as Astoria (the oldest European American community west of the Rocky Mountains), is going to have some wonderfully strange archaic places, and this is one of them.

A few feet up the path, you encounter a stairway to get up the steep slope. Let me tell you, it's old and somewhat slippery - hence, the hand rail.

Here are the tiny steps. Don't ask me what year they were installed. It's been awhile.

Now we break out into the light again onto a paved trail. The visual end point here is just about where the photo in the other post ended. You can see it's not very long.

From where I took the last photo, I turned around to go back down. You have two choices: the stairs on the right (shown above) or the dirt path on the left. I figured I wanted to go back down on my feet, not on my butt, so I chose the stairs. It's steeper than it looks.

Ah! The view from the bottom of the trail. You see Grand going away on the left, and 12th plunging down one of Astoria's steeper hills on the right, headed for the river. Ahead of us is one of the most beautiful old Italianate Victorian houses in town. I've heard that it has quite a history, and it will deserve a post all its own someday.

As a new resident, I don't have much history with this corner of town, and as I said in the first post about 12th Street and Grand, I had never taken the trail before, imagining that it was private property rather than a city street. I'll bet there are a number of Astorians who could tell tales about this hidden trail.

On the blog's Facebook Page, Branden Wilson said, "These are soo much fun to TRY and climb when it's raining cats and dogs." Bon Asher said, "Even more fun Branden, when we get the ice/snow!! haha" Sandra Wilson said, "so cool...we love these paths." Stephanie Roley commented, "I'm surprised you haven't used the path before. It has always been one my favorite ways to get up the hill. It doesn't seem quite as steep as some of the other routes but I wouldn't want to try the stairs in the rain."

Someday I'll be investigating the "steeper routes." I do know where some of them are!

12th Street and Grand . . . the path to where?

No, the street sign is not misplaced. Behind me, 12th Street continues up the hill like any normal residential street. In front of me, it takes off on a narrow path through the berry bushes for one short block. Oddly, I've never followed it. Until I looked at the street sign today, I believe I thought it was private property. Taking notice, I stopped and wondered what the path was like, but as I had to meet someone on the street in about one minute and I didn't want him to drive on and miss me, I continued along on Grand. I can't picture what the other end of the path looks like, so I'll make a point of finding it.

There is history here, too. Thirteenth Street was the dividing line between land owned by John Shively and John McClure, both of whom arrived in Astoria in 1843 with land claims filed in Washington, D.C. The story goes that the men didn't like each other and could not agree on what size a lot should be. Because of this, the lots west of 13th ("McClure's Astoria") and east of 13th ("Shively's Astoria") did not align evenly, and you can still see a number of odd curves in certain streets and other streets that don't go through from one block to the next. Thirteenth Street is only half a block long in the downtown area, with another block made into a narrow passageway. But in the residential section, 13th Street doesn't exist at all. There's a very wide block between 12th and 14th Streets, with the cross street of Grand stopping and starting again at a different latitude. Someone connected the pieces with this intriguing leafy path.

My thought for Think Green Thursday is this: Wouldn't it be "grand" if half our city streets looked like this? Maybe we'd all be walking more!