Terminated Vista

One principle of great design is the "terminated vista," a landscape or building at the end of your line of sight that sort of takes your breath away. Here's an interior view in downtown Sacramento where the eye floats out  through a doorway, sails across a small plaza and lands upon a dark grove of California Redwoods.  If you keep your eyes open the world is full of small, pleasant, and surprising sights.

Consider the simple flower pot at the end of a walkway. This is Half Moon Bay Lodge south of San Francisco.

American High-Rise Afternoon

City Beautiful 1918

In the final year of World War I our civic ancestors, exhibiting the excellent aesthetic taste of their era, produced still another stunning Andrew Carnegie Library, in downtown Sacramento. Writes Dan Flynn in his 1994 "Inside Guide to Sacramento,"  "The original library was donated by industrialist Andrew Carnegie and was designed by San Francisco City Architect Rixford in a Florentine Renaissance style...The original library is now used for conference rooms and special events."

The entrance to those events

A closer view of the rich details of this triumphal arch 

One of a dozen lion heads that guard the first floor

Indulge me this nostalgia. Weren't those the days?

California Dreaming

The days are getting longer in Northern California. Welcome, to early January, when warm rays of sunset light the architectural treasures on the way to my bus stop.