I've always found this building at the corner of 11th and Harrison to have an interesting and oddly charming facade. My imagination puts it on the English moors in a novel by one of the Brontë sisters. In looking up styles online, it seems to be Gothic Revival, which began in England and became popular in the United States. The sign on the door says, "Astoria Conservatory of Music," but I believe that the building began life as part of the First Presbyterian Church next door, which has more ornate elements of the Gothic Revival style.
Here's the Harrison Street side of the building, which happened to be in sunlight for a few minutes yesterday morning.
June 15, 2010
May 15, 2010
February 7, 2010
April 20, 2010
Like some of the trees and bushes in town, this one has pretty green lichens on the branches.
As you can see, it's another wet day. The flowers are a perfect color for a town famous for salmon fishing. Do you agree?
Are these buds opening or closing? I hope they're opening.
Today, December 23, 2009, it's chilly with a lot of sun between the clouds. Recently we've had several days on end of below-freezing weather, and we've had lots of rain, but we haven't had them at the same time, so we haven't had snow. Maybe we'll have some this year and maybe not. Last year we had more snow than I've ever seen in Astoria. Some years since my arrival in 2001, we've had none at all. Last December 23rd was our 7th day in a row with snow on the ground. I thought I would make a post of my photos from one year ago today. I took photos on each of our snow days, and I'll probably post some of them over this holiday season. It's always fun to see the snow here because it's so rare and of course, it makes everything look so different.
Here's the fountain. On the left were roses with ice on them. I took a picture of a bright yellow rose covered with ice and snow, but it was badly out of focus.
The camera really doesn't show you how steep this hill is on 12th Street. It's one of the steepest grades in town, although the steep grade here is only a block long. At the top is the foot path through the trees and vines that is an extension of 12th Street. The lovely green Italianate Victorian house at the end of that post is hidden behind the buildings on the right.
Some Christmas decorations downtown on Commercial Avenue. In the next few days, I'll show more downtown snow pictures.
No fake snow this year. The building is Hughes-Ransom Mortuary. When I was looking up their name in the phone book, the next ad I saw read, "Bad Smells? Too Much Dust?" Quickly I made sure I wasn't under the same heading. Uh, nope. It was Furnaces. Moving right along. . . .
Here I'm walking along Exchange Avenue toward 11th. The bit of yellow you see at the top with spires is the First Presbyterian Church, shown in an earlier post.
As I said, the plants were not expecting this snow with its melting and freezing days following . . .
. . . although the holly was probably happy about the weather.
It was fun to see how people approached this unusual condition in Astoria. The crows were always interesting, too. They seemed to be everywhere, because of course now we could see them - animated black against the white.
Now back to the Columbia River. I'm standing near the River Walk at the front of the Maritime Museum looking toward the Astoria-Megler Bridge, the radio tower, and the general downtown area.
Here's the River Walk just past the Maritime Museum. You can see the river between the trees and the tracks of the Riverfront Trolley.
Near where the last photo was taken. It was eerie to see the ships with snow for a foreground and background. One can almost imagine they're sailing through the Arctic. The building on the right is the old train station.
Here's the view looking up Coxcomb Hill vaguely in the direction of the Astoria Column.
I've always loved this little house at the corner of 10th Street and Harrison Avenue. The picture suggests the name, "House on a hill," but in fact how many houses in Astoria are not perched in some manner on a hillside? Not many. It would be harder to find a residential building that was not on a hill. It's always interesting to see how foundations, stairways, garages, and all manner of other parts of the houses are built to adapt to the slopes.
I've been wanting to find some representative views of Astoria, and I concluded that there are a lot of them! This is a pretty typical residential area on the north (Columbia River) side of the hill. It's also typically overcast and the ground is typically wet! Other typical aspects are green growing things (with 70 to 90 inches of rain per year and not much snow, they just grow and grow), flowers, the older houses (charming and interesting but not ostentatious), hills sloping several directions in a two-block area, and the forest within the town. This isn't the edge of town, and that's not someone's private tract - there are houses and streets on the other side of it. The trees are growing on part of a block that's too steep to build on. I've seen deer right where I was standing to take the photo, just walking down the street or into a back yard. Once there was a mother and two fawns that would come day after day. Are they following old trails, or did they come for the apple trees? I took this photo on Harrison Ave. where it crosses 11th Street. That's seven blocks uphill from the river and three blocks up from downtown. Also typical is that many people can walk just about anywhere in the downtown area and some walk quite a ways just because it's nice. Unfortunately, the power lines are also typical, and they mar what would be many, many picture postcard views. It will be one of my challenges to take photos where wires and poles don't get in the way. And we have so many lovely and interesting places to practice!
