New Haven City Hall

The City Hall building is on the far east side of the New Haven Green.  The building was designed by Henry Austin and was built in 1861.

  It was listed on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places in 1975 and is a significant early example of High Victorian Gothic architecture.

Center Church on the Green

Center Church on New Haven Green was organized in 1639 by the Puritans who founded the New Haven Colony.  The current meeting house is the fourth, designed by Ithiel Town, a New Haven architect.  

Town modeled the meeting house in the Post-Georgian or Federal style after St. Martin’s in the Fields in London.  It was built in 1812 - 1814.

Duck Stamps

 The USA has sold "duck stamps" since 1934 to fund conservation activities.  Since 1949, the design for the annual duck stamp has been chosen in an open competition.  Sale of duck stamps over the decades has raised more than $1.2 billion for conservation work to help migratory birds.

  Last week Bruce Museum opened an exhibition of every painting chosen for the annual duck stamp design.  This 1974 painting of wood ducks by David A.  Maass (above) won the completion, as did one of his 1982 paintings.

Three Hautman brothers (Joe, James, and Robert) have been perennial favorites in the Duck Stamp Contest, winning 10 of the last 24 competitions.  Above clockwise from top left are paintings by  Robert, Joe, James and Joe.

Aggregations

 

Tiara Donovan's large-scale installation at Bruce Museum in Greenwich, Connecticut, is composed of tens of thousands of acrylic rods carefully joined together to form a composite sculpture.

From a distance it seems fluffy, but up close the masses of sharp individual acrylic rods are visible.

It will be in the Sculpture Gallery through March 2025.

Plexus No.43

Mexico-born artist Gabriel Dawe's colorful installation is in the main stairwell of Bruce Museum in Greenwich, Connecticut.

 

Dawes produces these large-scale and highly intricate Plexus installations with thousands of multicolored sewing threads that harness the full color spectrum of light.

The Benjamin

 

The Benjamin is a fine dining restaurant in Ridgefield.  It is named after Benjamin Franklin.

Jazz nights are very popular.

In one dining room and a hallway, there are several colorful 3 x 4 Warhol-like paintings of Benjamin Franklin.

And on a wall behind the table where I sat, there was a colorful painting that looked more like George Washington than Benjamin Franklin, but who am I to judge?

Glenellen

High Ridge Avenue in Ridgefield has been called "Publishers Row" because many of those who built big houses here were from New York City publishing houses.

Glenellen was the longtime home of a member of the Henry Holt & Company publishing house family.  Ellen was his wife's name.

Corn!

 I was just about to drive past when I spotted a "Corn" sign, so I pulled in fast.  

Got just a couple of ears.  They were delicious.  

No one was in the building, just an honor payment system.  I will bet that it is rare for anyone to skip out without leaving the money.

Bedford Presbyterian Church

 Bedford (NY) Presbyterian Church is a stunning building.  I like those vertical stripes, the mismatched towers and the various windows.

The church was organized in 1680.  At the outset it bounced back and forth between Congregational and Anglican depending on the minister.  The current building is the fourth, constructed in 1872.  It is part of the Bedford Village Historic District.

E. W. Morris Memorial Library

 

In 1900 a New York businessman who summered in Ridgefield, James Morris, bought land on Main Street in Ridgefield and had a library building constructed.  The building blends Art Deco, Beaux Arts and Chicago styles of architecture.  Morris dedicated it to his late wife, Elizabeth.  It opened in 1903.

Though the Morris Library has been incorporated into much bigger and more modern library buildings, four of the original rooms remain in service.

One reading room houses newspapers and magazines.

A second reading room contains the library's fine and performing arts collections.

A special collections room contains poetry, plays and literary criticism.  And an unremarkable small boardroom (not shown) is off to the side.  In a big, active, 21st century library, the rooms in the Morris Building are all designated as quiet spaces.

John Casey

 John Casey is an artist who uses pieces of steel, iron and glass to create interesting sculptures for the landscape, These parts come from junkyards, dumpsters, found items, estate sales and thrift stores.  He has at least three of his works on the lawn of Ridgefield Library.

One of his sculptures is Bad Dream.

Mother Nature has her arms up in frustration at humanity.

Black bird #2.

Rides at the Goshen Fair

Kids had fun on the rides.

 

A mom let her son sit at the controls of a piece of farm machinery.

Face painted?  Check.  A fun ride?  Check.

Riding Horses at the Goshen Fair

Riders put their horses through a course requiring sharp turns around barrels.

I took numerous photographs and couldn't decide which I liked.  Here are three. 

People Watching at the Goshen Fair

 The Goshen Fair was as crowded as any fair I have ever seen.  I saw many folks worth photographing, but it was so crowded that getting clear and unobstructed photographs was almost impossible.

I have written and deleted several comments.  Maybe I will just let his shirt speak for him.

Two Public Buildings

Before I conclude showing photographs from my recent trip around Vermont, western Massachusetts and Boston, here are two notable public buildings in Boston.

The Massachusetts State House stands on land once owned by John Hancock, above Boston Common.  It was designed by the noted architect, Charles Bulfinch, and was completed in 1798.  When it was new, the State House was celebrated for demonstrating the architectural sophistication of the new nation. 

 Several British potters including Joseph Stubbs (above) produced views of State House, Boston, around 1815 - 1830 on plates and platters for sale to Americans.  (I collected blue and white transferware for forty years and this is one of the few I have retained.)

In the modern era, Boston decided to replace the rundown Scollay Square neighborhood with a new government center.  A collaboration between Gerhard Kallmann, Noel McKinnell and Edward Knowles, was chosen to design a new city hall in May 1962.  The building opened in 1969.

The Brutalist style has not worn well in public opinion, though I occasionally whisper that I like it.  The bottom third is open, to invite citizens to come inside to transact their business with the city.  The middle section is complex, housing the mayor's office and the city council.  The top three levels are uniform, reflecting the administrative work and paper-pushing that occurs within.