25 March 2008

Wonder Wall


One of the more depressing aspects about recent developments in the City is the uniformity of their windows. All the same shape, all the same cut, all boring two-paned affairs. And don't get me started on lintels.

That's why, more and more, I enjoy facades like this one, with its chaotic assortment of portals, each probably installed at a different time over the course of a hundred years or so. A scene from a Feydeau farce or Jacques Tati film could be played out in such a building. And it makes for an amusing pastime to imagine how the rooms are laid out inside based on the positioning and size of the windows.

4 comments:

Greg said...

C'mon, someone obviously dessicated what were once beautiful bay windows by bricking them over. You picked a strange example.

Brooks of Sheffield said...

You're right, no doubt. But the facade's strangeness is exactly why I chose it.

Anonymous said...

More of the windows were obviously originally of the same size and shape, since changed.

The top window split into two tiny windows is obviously used by two separate, tiny bathrooms inserted into a small space to serve two different one-room apartments.

And the "This blog DOES NOT accept Anonymous comments" policy is just plain stupid.

Brooks of Sheffield said...

No it's not. People having to assign themselves a name makes them a pause a second or two, and thus curtails their tendencies to mouth off like a jackass. There's a great drop-off in intelligence, civility and cogency between the Anonymous comments I receive and the named ones.