I have no reason to not have been posting on the blog since the return from my vacation (other than I got engaged and have been seriously preoccupied!), so I do apologize for my lack of attention to this space.    I honestly can’t promise that it’s going to get better either…but I did take a lot of great photos of the houses of Huron, South Dakota while I was there.   I love looking at houses…and I hope you do too.

This one looks like the Brady house, no?   “Marsha! Marsha! Marsha!!”

This house needs a paint job, no?

They’ve turned this beautiful old Victorian into a museum.

Note the little tiny church in the front yard of this house.  Weird, right?

For such a small town, there was a shocking amount of variety here.  Anyways…I found it rather enjoyable checking out their houses while I was visiting.  Oh, and Mt Rushmore, the Black Hills, and the Badlands were all great too!

The first thing that is important to understand about Philadelphia (for anyone who doesn’t live here) is the tremendous amount of [architecturally] beautiful homes there are here.   The second thing to know is just how many of those homes are falling apart because the neighborhood is crap or because it’s just plain difficult to keep up with old houses.   Anyways, the beautiful homes are one of my favorite things about this city.  Everywhere I turn there’s always a more beautiful house…that I wish I lived in.  (I mean, I didn’t name this blog House Obsession for nothing.)  Everyone that knows me well, knows that I am constantly saying “Oh, I wish I lived there!”  Maybe that’s why I’ve moved so many times in my life.  There are always more houses to decorate, after all!

At any rate, today N and I took a walk to the “nice part of the neighborhood” so that I could torture myself with falling in love with every house.   I’m sure the people who lived around there wondered why we were taking pictures of their houses, but it’s just something I like to do – dream of what the insides of those houses must look like.  Anyways, here are my favorites from today’s walk.

I mean, how cute are those shutters?  I can’t even stand it!  I love them so much!

Is it possible to burn with porch envy?   I imagine sitting out here drinking tea and rocking in a rocking chair.  I think this is a former twin (like mine) where the person actually owns both halves and has turned it into a single home (not like mine).   I also love that they painted the brick.  I’m not usually a fan of that, but this house just looks so good in person.

This house is one of those that is so ridiculously huge that you have to wonder just who originally built the house.  Was he an inventor or a banker?  Nevertheless,  I certainly wouldn’t want to have to clean this huge home…nor would I want to pay the gas bill, but oh what I wouldn’t give to get to live there just for a month.   The owners must get lost in there sometimes!

There are so many things to love about this house, such as the curved porch and the two-color brick accents.   It’s hard to see in this photo, but it also has real leaded glass windows too.   Again, who built this house?!  It’s enormous!  I think you’d need an army to fill it (and clean it), but I’d love a house tour.

Okay, so this is not a photo of a house…but it IS a squirrel lantern in someone’s yard.  It’s a shame that whoever owns this house has let the lantern (and the rest of the house too) get into this condition b/c it’s seriously one of the best pieces of lawn decoration / lighting that I’ve ever seen.  The house itself was in such disrepair that I didn’t both taking any photos of it.  Such a shame…it breaks my heart.

I can’t explain it, but this one is my fantasy house of the day.  I love it’s lines…the porch…the stone wall in front…the overly bulbous top.   I hope the owners love it as much as I do.

Walking through the neighborhood window shopping like this lets me forget about all the renovation projects for a moment in my own house, and just dream about the endless possibilities of someone else’s space.  Now if only I could pick this house up and move it to the beach.  Now THAT would be a real dream house!

Oh, and completely un-related, we also saw a really cool custom hood ornament while walking today.  Pretty nifty, right?  It was on the hood of a small Ford pickup truck.  It looks very art deco.  Definitely not something I’d expect to see on an old pickup truck.

And we also saw the house below.  It was hard not to stand and stare because there are just so many things going on here.  First, the double doors on such a moderately scaled house jumped out at me immediately.  Add the hulking gargoyles on either side of the doorway and you know the people that live inside must have a real sense of humor.  (Hopefully, right?!)  And then top it off with the craftsman light fixture and the 70s aluminum siding…and you’ve got a mish-mosh of nuttiness.

At least their gargoyles made me laugh.  I seriously hope that someone in that house plays Dungeons & Dragons!

Prior to moving to the Northeast back in 2002, I’d never experienced very many abandoned houses before.  I mean, of course, they exist all over the country…but never had I seen the sheer quantity of derelict & abandoned homes [and businesses] as I experienced here.  Philadelphia and it’s neighboring areas astonished me with the number of beautiful buildings that were left to fall apart.   It was inconceivable to me that art deco factories, craftsman bungalows, brick row houses, and huge colonial revival homes alike were left to suffer with broken window panes, grafitti and boarded up doors.   They all [still] remind me of a poem I read when I was in junior high school by the American poet Joyce Kilmer called “The House with Nobody In It.”

Although I find it particularly sad, I also find these abandoned places beautiful in a sense.  Sometimes as you stand and look at these structures, you can almost feel the environment trying to reclaim them and take back what man created.  As a person that’s obsessed with architecture, design and how people live, it’s hard for me to see these houses left all alone and broken like this.  But I almost feel that by taking a second to acknowledge each one with a long glance or a photograph, I’m paying homage in some way to the life once lived there and the effort put into constructing each one.

I began to go down this sentimental road today b/c I saw the post over at Charles & Hudson about photographer Kevin Bauman’s series of 100 Abandoned Houses featuring beautiful & desolate homes around the Detroit area.   The photo at left is one of his gorgeous pics, and I highly suggest you head over to his site to check it out.

It obviously made me think about the many places all across the country that are hauntingly similar.  Seeing as how I’ve been obsessed with this type of thing for awhile, here’s a few additional links that you might like (if you’re also into this sort of thing):

1. Photographer Laura Kicey’s collection of UnInhabitation.

2. Opacity’s collection of Abandoned Places.   The Staten Island ship graveyard is one of my favorites.

3. A selection of Robert Polidori’s Chernobyl photos.

4. And of course no collection would be complete without Robert Polidori’s book “After the Flood” featuring pics from after Hurricane Katrina.

Some of my friends over at Minima have curated and organized an event for Design Philadelphia 2008 called “A Clean Break.”  It’s biggest highlight is an ACTUAL prefab Weehouse by Alchemy Architects from St. Paul, MN…which is extremely cool!!  The Weehouse is an interesting design that I’ve actually wondered about in the past, and so I’ll be excited to check it out in person.  (It’s especially interesting because it comes in several different variations and can be customized.)  Here’s a picture of the Weehouse getting installed into the Philadelphia exhibition space on Spruce St.

The show also features high design, low waste “innovations” by artists such as Michael Iannone, Daniel Michalik, In Liquid, Bolle Design, Pie Studio, and SMIT.  (Shown below is one of my favorite items by MIchael Iannone, his cork sideboard.)

The event kicks off on Thursday Oct 16th from 7-10pm, but is open daily from 11-7pm, Oct 17th – 30th.   The exhibition is located at 313 South Broad Street at Spruce, Philadelphia. Go check it out!!

Last week, I got the chance to go back home to Georgia for almost a week to visit my family and friends.  It’s always nice to see them of course, but the time I spend there never seems like enough and inevitably I feel guilty for being an only child that lives so far away.  When these thoughts come upon me, I begin to think thoughts like, “If I moved back home, what kind of house would I live in?”  And for a few moments, I allow myself to revel in the idea of finally getting to own/live-in my favorite style of house…the American Craftsman.

These four are just a few of my hometown favorites.  The first one is my particular preference (even though it’s in a sad state at the moment b/c it’s been a rental for the last several years) because I LOVE the huge front porch.  A friend growing up used to live in a very similar house, and it was phenomenal on the inside.  The details…the layout…the enormous space.  My dream is to one day own a craftsman just like it.  Hopefully it will be on a really quiet street where I can enjoy sitting outside on my porch in the afternoons.

The rest of these are fabulous too.  I’d gladly take any one of them.  I don’t know what it is about a house with a porch, but I realized not that long ago that every house I’ve ever owned has had a porch.  (This is my third.)  I don’t know what it is about them…  Maybe it’s my Southern roots showing it’s colors.

But for now…I live in Philadelphia.  I’ll just keep these images in my inspiration file in case one day…things change.

When I think of beautiful architecture, I rarely think of rustic landscapes or log cabins. And when someone says the word cathedral, I certainly NEVER think of simplicity and beauty of the sort that architectural photographer Richard Davies captured in his travels through rural Russia. This month’s issue of World of Interiors features his stunning photography. These structures are like nothing I’ve ever seen. It seems almost as if someone made them out of old popsicle sticks..and for some reason I feel compelled to own a HUGE print of one of them. If only I could track him down…and afford it.

More photos after the jump

The July issue features quite a number of images from this series (and trust me…my scans don’t do them justice). In fact, they’re so beautiful that I’m shocked he doesn’t have a coffee table book for sale. (Hey Richard…if you read this…you should create a book!  Blurb.com is a good source for self-publishing.)

UPDATE: What do you know?! I did manage to get in touch with Mr. Davies, and it turns out he has a website (linked above and HERE)…plus he’s also having an exhibition of his work until July 25th at Pushkin House, 5A Bloomsbury Square, London WC1A 2TA. For any of you living in London, stop by and check him out. For those of us who can’t easily stop by, he also has small versions of the images on his website. Prints of his work are also available. £350 framed, £250 unframed. (Now I just have to work that cost into my budget!)