Whimsical Windows - Lake Shore Smiles

This week's edition of architectural meme Whimsical Windows/Delirious Doors takes us to a familiar subject, that of my Grandpa, Ralph I. Villers (1902-1981) of Steubenville, Ohio. He liked to take a lot of pictures wherever he traveled, perhaps to show others just where he had been. Here is the Summer of 1964 in the Windy City of Chicago, at the Lake Tower Motel. Long gone by a high rise condominium on the pricey lakefront on Lake Shore Drive, it shows a cool 1960s charm, with newer buildings way more glitzy but devoid of charm. Grandpa's smile in these B&W prints adds a element of his happiness in chronicling his travels...

Whimsical Windows - Happy New Year 1964

For Toby's fun meme Whimsical Windows/Delirious Doors, I offer an old view and I think that I think I know what it is. As some know, I have been scanning a lot of old photos in an effort to digitize the Villers past. My Aunt Terry has been sending me old prints I don't have and I am compiling complete sets of old pics, maybe 2000-2500 in total, to put by subject into a series of CD/DVD slideshows. 

So what is this? I believe is New Year's  Eve 1963, my grandfather upstairs overlooking Times Square in Manhattan as the ball drop commenced at Midnight - check the clock on the Bond Clothiers as the big and little hands are both neatly lined up at the number 12...

How can I be reasonably sure of this? This pic was in a sequence that included our grandparents visit for the holidays in 1963 and they always went home via NYC. The Christmas tree was in the dining room of our new home in CT...and 1963 was the only year the tree was in the dining room. If my memory remains in working order over the past five decades :)

Whimsical Windows - Perspectives

Toby's fun meme, Whimsical Windows/Delirious Doors is back. Readers of this blog know that I am still in the process of scanning a lot of old prints taken by my grandfather over many decades. The curious thing about many of these is that there are bereft of notations - so it is a sort of mystery as to just where it is. However, I believe this to be in Chicago, from 1964 and if my big sister Michele (that I know) on a trip away from home with my grandparents...the perspective here is the large edifice in the behind to the ten-year-old. Big vs, small, merely a different perspective...

Shadow Shot Sunday - Fathers past and present...

Father, son, grandson. Brigantine Beach, NJ, 1964

Dad and family, August 1996

Today’s Shadow Shot Sunday 2 arrives the day before Father’s Day in the US, Canada and UK. Some consider it an artificial holiday, but not I. Obviously, we like to show appreciation when we are kids for a dad (last year they grilled salmon, Ciabatta bread and vegetables – a delicious celebration :) 

However, as a father himself, the pride and happiness of our children is to be celebrated too. From the past as a child to the present day, it is a fine holiday. Add shadows, and it becomes a perfect day!

Shadow Shot Sunday - Kids will play

Shadow Shot Sunday 2 is back this week, and often I return to archives for shadowy memories in black-and-white. In this photo posted before, this is a view of suburban East Hartford in my youth in 1964. I straddle my Columbia bicycle on the drive.

The players are jumping rope and other activities we rarely see neighborhood children partake in anymore. The vehicles beyond the rope are a French SIMCA Aronde, the family VW Microbus, a tricycle and the neighbor's Rambler. Shadows abound this neighborhood playground on this sunny winter day. Thanks to SSS2 for prompting these memories...

Also posted as part of Tina's 29 Days