Sunday, March 06, 2011

sidewalking



this sidewalk has glass embedded in the pavement.  i'm sure there is a reason - in fact i feel like petrea over at pasadena daily photo has mentioned this before.  regardless, this is a pretty interesting feature of our walkable city.

4 comments:

Bellis said...

I love the old glass - it was clear once, but turned purple with age. When I did the underground tour of Seattle, we walked along passageways below the sidewalks illuminated by light coming through this kind of glass, it was ethereal.

Anonymous said...

I love this look! I think the glass in the sidewalk was to illuminate the basement/storage areas of these buildings. In fact, in addition to these glass "lights" as they are called, you can sometimes sees the traces of the 'in the sidewalk elevators' that were used to transport goods from "topside" to "down below." Now I'm going to figure out if there is any way to add more quotations marks to this comment! :)

ben wideman said...

Awesome insight, you two! Thanks for helping give some life to this photo.

Petrea Burchard said...

Ha! I just deleted some shots I took of this very sidewalk (Oakland, is it?) because they weren't very good. This does it justice. And Kat's right. I wonder if the Culinary School uses the underground rooms illuminated by these lovely skylights?