Brick Building By the Railroad Tracks

The back of a nicely-made brick building, in an unknown town. Excellent brickwork, ball finial at the corner, backing the railroad -- but no identifying signs on this site. I did my best, scanning and rescanning at highest resolution, using PShop tricks to try and coax out the words on the overhang, on the far right side, with no luck. It's just not readable. I know I called it an 'old brick building' in the filename, but it was definitely not old at the time of the photo: taken in the 1920s or 1930s, it was probably 30 years old, at the most -- if it still stands, it's around its 100th birthday these days. [more]

Stay At The Auto-House

This funny little tin house is a throwback to an earlier time -- one before houses were automatically assigned a wide-open, roofed, cement-floored siamese twin known as a 'garage'. When people started buying cars they needed someplace to put them, and one of the competitors in the 'automobile storage kit' was the Rusk Auto-House, an overtly-fancy steel shed that owes its beauty to its Fargo-based manufacturer: a producer of embossed tin ceilings and copper cornices. Sadly, the metal shortages of the World Wars put an end to tin ceilings, copper cornices, and, as you might guess, stylish little steel car-homes.