I Turn My Back for Just ONE Afternoon

and look what happens!




At 9:00 AM there were walls and doorways ~



but by 3:30 in the afternoon, the walls were down and the dust was everywhere! including on the camera lens - see the gray haze in the photos?

Yesterday the crew removed the window trim. We're saving it to reuse, but it needs to be cleaned and repaired. The exterior walls will be insulated and the window sashes rebuilt before everything goes back together again.

Buried!

If you're asking where I've been lately, and why the postings have stopped, I'd have to refer to these photos and just say, "Buried!"



While the apartment floor is not completely soot-free, it's as close as it will get until the refinishing process. Prospective walls and partions are chalked on the floor, which has helped us tweak the layout. Working in the apartment (and watching HGTV) has produced some cool ideas about how to enhance the space.

The 40 foot long awning visible in previous apartment photos (it can also be seen in the 1920s photo posted in October - Sixty Years) has checked in to rehab at Dave Long's Protective Products near Iowa City. Andy thinks that with a bucket of grease and some new threads, they can bring it back to being a classy-looking, fully functional, hand-cranked awning, not just another shady character.

Oh. There was one other achievement under the heading 'Buried' ~

Twins? Siblings? Distant Relatives?

The caption with this photo identifies the view as the west side of Second in downtown Los Angeles at the corner of Spring Street. "That's the Hollenbeck Hotel in the immediate foreground to the left, beyond which we can see the full majesty of the Bryson Block. " He's talking about the red brick one with the tower and the gabled roofline.

Apparently John Bryson was just warming up while he lived in Washington!

The LA Times maintains a daily blog about life in the city 100 years ago, and this article about John Bryson's later life was posted last October. Death of a Millionaire

Coincidentally, the Los Angeles Times building is located on the Bryson Block site today. At least Washington's Bryson Block is still with us.