The bottle, jade blue and less than half a foot in height, was plucked in 2016 from the soil dividing traffic on Interstate 64 between exits 238 and 242 in York County. William & Mary archaeologists were inspecting the area for any remaining artifacts in advance of a highway-widening project by the Virginia Department of Transportation...
Witch bottles can be traced to the East Anglia region of England in the late Middle Ages, according to a summary of research on the subject by JSTOR Daily. The bottles typically included human urine, hair or fingernail clippings and sharp objects such as nails, pins or thorns.
The objects were intended to lure witches or malevolent spirits with the urine, hair or fingernail clippings, then trap them with nails or pins — a low-tech witch hunt. Nearly 200 have been found in Britain, where researchers have launched a multiyear survey and study of witch bottles, complete with a social media-aided #WitchBottleHunt campaign to educate the public on identifying the artifacts. Last year, contractors razing an old pub found a suspected witch bottle containing fish hooks, teeth and a mysterious liquid.
It is a debate playing out in towns and cities across the country, as the priorities of historic districts collide with the growing enthusiasm for clean energy. From the Great Lakes to the Black Hills, property owners worried about climate change find themselves debating the fine points of dormer contours and shingle color with preservationists worried about architectural integrity.When we moved into a Madison subdivision twenty years ago, the neighborhood association guidelines allowed solar panels but advised placing them in inconspicuous locations, out of view from the street. This past year one neighbor retrofitted his house and garage roofs with dozens of panels directly facing the street, with no objections from anyone. But perhaps a 40-year old subdivision is different from a 200-year-old one.
The conflict is especially acute in Washington, where a concerted push for solar is taking place amid historic preservation agencies that in their territorial and procedural complexity rival the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros. Some permit seekers have found themselves snarled for months, or even years, trying to convince regulators of the aesthetic merits of proposed solar installations...
Green said she has no problem with existing historic district regulations that allow solar cells on flat roofs, where they cannot be seen from the street. But she believes it would be a mistake to permit installations on sloped roofs like those visible on the facades of many bungalows in her neighborhood...
“I think people just get stuck in trying to preserve a certain look when, gosh, I mean, we do have to evolve,” Stanslaw said. “If that is going to require that we change our views on what is aesthetically pleasing, we really have to find some common ground.”
"The roof employs a “weight pole” system consisting of split oaken clapboards held down by the weight of heavy poles laid upon them. Nails, which were scarce and expensive in the late 18th century, were not employed in such a roof."- which gave me a new search term, which led me to another living history site depicting weight poles being applied to a roof -
In 1963, an inhabitant of Derinkuyu (in the region of Cappadocia, central Anatolia, Turkey), knocking down a wall of his house cave, discovered amazed that behind it was a mysterious room that he had never seen, and this led him room to another and another and another to it ... By chance he had discovered the underground city of Derinkuyu, whose first level could be excavated by the Hittites around 1400 BC
Archaeologists began to explore this fascinating underground city abandoned. It managed to forty meters deep, but is believed to have a fund of up to 85 meters. At present 20 levels have been discovered underground. Only eight can be visited at the highest levels; others are partially blocked or restricted to archaeologists and anthropologists who study Derinkuyu.
The city was used as a refuge for thousands of people living in the basement for protection from the frequent invasions suffered Cappadocia, at various times of their occupation, and by the early Christians.
The city benefited from the existence of an underground river, water wells and had a wonderful ventilation system (52 wells have been discovered vents) that amazes engineers today.
Climb Real Estate Sales Agent Michelle Stephens, who put out the listing last week, told Yahoo Finance that the reason why she didn’t “dress the place up” was because she wanted to be “more transparent — they need to know what they’re buying.”It's not a total dump. The full listing has 30 photos. The basement is unfinished, the yard is primeval, but the San Francisco house does have locationlocationlocation.
Stephens added: “There’s only so much lipstick you can put on the pig. And it just didn’t make sense. It’s visceral too, because you get to the property and there’s an actual aroma as well. Years of not cleaning up kitchen grease has really impacted the property.”The tenants had moved out a year ago and insisted on the million-dollar price tag.
"With 25,000 euros and 1000 hours of work, Maurizio Cesprini and his partner Paola Gardin rebuilt a ruined home in the medieval village of Ghesc, Italy. They hope other young families will consider their example with a plentiful supply of medieval ghost towns. They also feel drawn to save the rich architectural heritage of artisanal stonework dotting villages throughout the Alps, and beyond."This is a long video, but a relaxing and uplifting one to watch. Even if you skip through with the slider, it will still be impressive.
At his most productive, Twain practically chain-smoked cigars, and his craving for a quick burn was conspicuous at 250-acre Quarry Farm, a nest of solitude away from the social hurly-burly of Hartford.
Mindful of her health, perhaps, sister-in-law Susan Crane had a windowed study built specially for Twain in 1874 not far from her Victorian farmhouse. Equipped with a writing table, wicker chair, cot, fireplace and cat door, it was designed to resemble the pilot house of a Mississippi steamboat.After a steak breakfast, Twain would saunter 300 feet across a lawn flecked with buttercups and black-eyed susans and climb the stone steps to a promontory where the octagonal cabin was perched. Amid the chirp and crackle of nature, overlooking a panorama he called a "foretaste of heaven," Twain often churned out as many as 2,600 words a day...To thwart vandals and accommodate tourists, the cabin was moved down to the Elmira College campus in 1952.
I would love to have a similiar tiny "hut" in the north woods of Minnesota to use as a retreat.“It is the loveliest study you ever saw…octagonal with a peaked roof, each face filled with a spacious window…perched in complete isolation on the top of an elevation that commands leagues of valley and city and retreating ranges of distant blue hills. It is a cozy nest and just room in it for a sofa, table, and three or four chairs, and when the storms sweep down the remote valley and the lightning flashes behind the hills beyond and the rain beats upon the roof over my head—imagine the luxury of it.”—Mark Twain, Letter to William Dean Howells, 1874
Deconstruction... entails taking a house apart, piece by piece, down to the foundation. The majority of what is removed from a house via deconstruction can be recycled or reused. Everything removed from the house and donated to a qualified 501(c)3 charity can be claimed by the property owners on their taxes as a donation at fair market value...Kudos to people who do this rather than bulldoze the old house. More information, and a gallery of photos, at the Washington Post. (embedded photo cropped for size).
The deconstruction appraiser determines what materials can be salvaged and estimates the value of the donations. As the process unfolds, the appraiser prepares a report that lists every component to be donated and its fair market value; completes IRS Form 8283 for the donor valuing the material (the nonprofit recipients complete the form, too); ensures that the donor has the required documentation to claim full benefits from the donation, and stands behind all this if the IRS has any questions about the donation. The deconstruction company dismantles the house, sorts the materials and transports them to centers for recycling or resale...
Deconstruction costs more than conventional demolition because the materials need to be carefully removed and preserved in usable condition. Stahl says demolition might cost $8,000 to $11,000 for a typical house and take up to a week to complete. Deconstructing the same house might cost as much as $24,000, she says, and take two weeks...
Generally speaking, Smith says, “85 to 90 percent of a house can be recycled or repurposed. About the only things that cannot yet be salvaged or repurposed are drywall, rotted materials and broken pieces of ceramic tile or marble.”
What typically can be salvaged? The list is long: hardwood flooring, carpeting, interior lumber, beams, cabinets, appliances, molding and trim, doors, switch plates, light fixtures, ceiling fans, mantels, bathroom vanities, toilets, mirrors, tubs, shower surrounds, granite and laminate countertops, sinks, windows, vent covers, shelving, insulation, heat pumps, hot-water heaters, air-conditioning units, washers and dryers, screens, siding, slate roofing and sub-roofing, flagstone, bricks and decking.
"The super-rich are maximizing property value in the heart of London as never before. But they're not building up, they're digging down, creating mega-basements or 'iceberg homes' - nicknamed because there's more square footage under the ground than above. Over the last ten years an estimated 2000 new basements have been dug in central London. Into these multi-level subterranean structures owners are building anything from cinemas, swimming pools, beauty parlours, squash courts, wine cellars and servants' quarters. Some take as long as three years to complete. As well as the noise of the digging, fleets of concrete mixers and lorries taking away the dug soil service the sites. So life for neighbours in some of London's poshest addresses has been hell.
As the Royal Borough of Kensington Council responds to angry residents and tries to regulate the number of mega-basements and the disruption they cause, this BBC film goes behind the hoardings to look inside the extraordinary structures and talk to builders, owners and irate neighbours to tell the story of the conflict that has gripped the millionaires and gold-paved streets of London's smartest postcodes."
Minneapolis can now add the credential of having one of the top urban forests. The City of Lakes is home to an abundance of varied parkland — a park every six blocks — including those designed for off-road cycling and those for hiking, canoeing and swimming. Minneapolis’ tree canopy of 31 percent is only 6.5 percent shy of its potential canopy of 37.5 percent based on geographic information system (GIS) analysis and modeling. Minneapolis was actually one of the first cities to use the U.S. Forest Service’s iTree assessment tool to determine the benefits of its urban forest. Today, it’s estimated that the city’s urban forest has a structural value of $756 million and also reduces energy use by $216,000 per year.The photo shows Minnehaha Creek above the falls, by zuluadams, via Stuff about Minneapolis.
Utrecht-based architectural practice, BK. Architecten, have designed the Waanders In de Broeren project. Completed in 2013, the 15th-century cathedral has been converted into a modern book store and can be found in Zwolle, The Netherlands.Architectural details and a dozen more photos at Adelto, via Erik Kwakkel.
This radical concept in a 15th-century Broerenkerk cathedral spans over three floors and includes a shop in the former church building. The architect radically changed the interior design of the 547-year-old Gothic building, but had to ensure they left the original features, such as the pipe organ, stained glass windows and decor intact.
"A coastal town in the Samar province of the central Philippines that was wiped out by Typhoon Haiyan is shown in this Nov. 11 photo. The typhoon, which packed 150 mph winds and 20-foot waves, swept through the archipelago Nov. 8, leaving a trail of devastation in its wake."This coastal town was effectively built on a sandbar, with virtually zero setback from the ordinary high water level.
