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London | Architecture | Night Photography | London Underground | London Eye
London is not characterised by any particular architectural style, having accumulated its buildings over a long period of time. Few structures predate the Great Fire of 1666, notable exceptions including the Tower of London, Westminster Abbey, Banqueting House and several scattered Tudor survivors in the City of London.
In itself, the City contains a wide variety of styles, progressing through Wren's late 17th century churches and the financial institutions of the 18th and 19th century such as the Royal Exchange and the Bank of England, to the early 20th century Old Bailey (England and Wales' central criminal court) and the 1960s Barbican Estate. Notable recent buildings are the 1980s skyscraper Tower 42, the Lloyd's building with services running along the outside of the structure, and the 2004 Swiss Re building, known as the "Gherkin".
London's generally low-rise nature makes these skyscrapers and others such as One Canada Square and its neighbours at Canary Wharf and the BT Tower in Fitzrovia very noticeable from a distance. High-rise development is restricted at certain sites if it would obstruct protected views of St. Paul's Cathedral. Nevertheless, there are plans for more skyscrapers in central London (see Tall buildings in London), including the 72-story "Shard of Glass", which is now completed and is currently the tallest building in the European Union.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Architecture_of_London#Skyscrapers_...
London Fisheye Architecture
The Dime Building is one of Detroit’s oldest skyscrapers, having towered over Griswold Street for more than a century.
But why did they call it the Dime? Because it was built by a bank.
The Dime Savings Bank of Detroit was founded in 1884. The institution was backed by only $60,000. With so little money in its vaults, it set out to lure as many customers as it could. And it came up with a novel idea. Anyone could open up a savings account at this bank, and you could open one with as little as 10 cents. And that, the story goes, is where the bank got its name. This story led one newspaper to quip that the bank was “begun with capital a few cents short of a shoestring - and a belief in the power of a dime.”
The bank enlisted American architectural master Daniel H. Burnham to design a 23-story skyscraper. Burnham would deck the 323-foot Neoclassical beauty out in the white terra cotta that was a trademark of his Chicago School of architecture. Work started in 1910, and the building was ready to go by 1912. The building housed the bank’s vaults and tellers on the first floor and offices - both for the bank and other tenants - above that.
In October 1925, Livingstone died in his office in the Dime Building. He would be succeeded by his youngest son, Thomas Witherell Palmer Livingstone. T.W. Livingstone was one month shy of his 34th birthday when he took the helm, making him one of the youngest bank presidents in the country. And it would be under his watch that the Dime Savings Bank would disappear.
On April 16, 1929, the board of Dime Savings Bank agreed to merge with the Merchants National Bank. At the time, Dime Bank’s deposits totaled more than $63 million - the equivalent of more than $794 million today. The merger with Merchants created the Bank of Michigan, which had assets of nearly $100 million, $1.26 billion today.
In 2002, developer Waad Nadhir sunk $40 million into renovating the Dime into a Class A office building. It was noted at the time that the owners were respecting the building’s historical integrity. Despite the renovation, the tenants didn’t come. The building was hovering around 40% vacancy when Wells Fargo Bank seized the Dime through foreclosure in 2009.
In June 2011, Quicken Loans founder Dan Gilbert added the Dime Building to his portfolio of downtown office buildings. Gilbert’s Rock Ventures LLC bought the Dime and its accompanying parking deck from Wells-Fargo Bank for about $15 million. On April 30, 2012, Chrysler Group LLC announced that the company would lease nearly 33,000 square feet and move its Great Lakes Business Center and some of its corporate functions into the Dime.
Source: HistoricDetroit.org (web). historicdetroit.org/building/dime-building/
Worms cathedral romanesque architecture, the medieval west front of Worms Cathedral with the typically German feature of having a westwerk apse on the front of the cathedral. Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. Sony Nex3
Landshut architecture, looking down the Altstadt street to the massive medieval gothic church of St Martin. This medieval building has the tallest brick spire in the world, at 130.6m high it is skyscraper tall!!! Bavaria, Germany.
A long exposure of Canary Wharf for sunset. The reflection turned out better than I thought with all the wind.
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I've had serious man-flu for the last week, so this is my first upload in a few days :-( I'm so looking forward to a few weeks of good health at some point in the year!
Porvoo, Southern Finland.
This Old Town Hall was erected in 1762-64. It and the Cathedral are the most important buildings in the Old Town of Porvoo. A two-storey structure with a mansard roof, atop which is a small wooden clock tower. It is one of two 18th-century town halls still standing in Finland. Nowadays this Townhall is a museum.
Thank you for your visit and comment!
The entrance to the Dublin Castle in black and white. Shot consists of 2 horizontal shots, stitched to make a vertorama. Yes ,i know, its skewed to the right! =D
Have a nice week ahead!
View it large
Vertorama from 2 Horizontal Shots
Shot @18mm, aperture of f/6.3 with ISO value of 200
Automatically sticthed in CS4
Post processing and Adjustments in Photoshop CS4
have been given the opportunity to shoot some pretty special places recently, this is the view from one of them...love this perspective as it has a lot happening in it...
in the center right of the image is the axa building, what was once the tallest structure in sydney...dwarfed by its neighbours now...
harry's mlc tower also makes it into the shot...always thought this was a tall building until i visited new york...there the woolworths building (near downtown i think, built in 1913) is only slightly smaller...made me feel like sydney was a provincial town...
annnnyway, some come for the harbour, some for the surf...me, i stay for the (ur)banality...
now, back to the grindstone...