round, exposed-masonry columns around Boston

This squat column supports the corner of a building on Boston Avenue in Somerville, Massachusetts.

Three-story brick columns guard the front of the Old Courthouse in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Round, two-story mortar-stacked stone columns blur into the facade of a building on Vernon Street in Framingham, Massachusetts.

another sign in Montreal

Rather than putting a giant sign across the front facade of this slick building, the architect placed the sign for the Rosalind and Morris Goodman Cancer Research Center behind glass, high up on the back wall of a tall conference room at the front of the building, where it won't distract from the clean lines of the building's design. Avenue des Pins, Montreal, Quebec.

trace of the past in Montreal

I'd like to restart this blog with a new feature. From now on I'll be posting photographs that I've taken of details and curiosities, some intended and others unintended, that I find interesting on buildings or in urban environments. My hope is to encourage others to notice the details that give character to the built environments around us. Here's something that caught my eye recently in Montreal:

Green stains from long-gone oxidized copper lettering are ghostly evidence of this building's former function as a school, "Ecole Cherrier." Rue Cherrier, corner Saint-Hubert, Montreal, Quebec.