Free Republic

The queen consort of George V was consistent in her sense of duty and unswerving in how she expressed it. Crowned with dignity and corseted with confidence, at five feet six inches, Mary of Teck was the same height as the king, but they were called George the Fifth and Mary the Four-fifths. Of her many benefactions to Empire, not least, and perhaps most conspicuous, was her habit of removing climbing ivy from regal residences and public buildings. Her detestation of climbing ivy was a life-long obsession, quite the opposite of Queen AnneÂ’s love affair with boxwood. Even in...

On the Biblical Roots and Requirements of Church Design Msgr. Charles Pope • July 30, 2015 • In yesterday’s readings at Mass we read about how Moses laid out the “tent of meeting” exactly according to the pattern God gave him up on the mountain. A millennium later John described a similar scene of the sanctuary in Heaven.Few Catholics today realize that God actually did indicate a good deal about how He expects our churches to be designed. And while some degree of variation is allowed and has existed, most modern churches have significantly departed from the instructions God gave....

We were probably right to leave behind many hallmarks of yesterday's home, but it's time to reconsider these 15 once-popular details, not for their novelty, but for their practicality.

Bishop Castle, 46 years in the making, which one man dedicated his life to building, has been turned over to a new owner. A frequent visitor of the castle and friend of the creator is now in charge but the family who built the attraction says they were conned into signing over the deed. The creator of the castle, Jim Bishop, has been fighting a rare form of cancer for the past few months and his family now feels like they've been taken advantage of.

Everyone should respond thee way they feel. IMHO this may not be the best time to post, discuss what's on your mind. My reaction to seeing it was to just look at it, ponder the terrible, unbelievable irony, tragedy of what the future, fate had in store for all those involved and beyond.

ANAHEIM – By day, county Supervisor Shawn Nelson sees a sand crab when he drives past the new transit hub in his district. By night, he thinks “disco roller rink” when colorful lights illuminate the building. “I don’t think this is what the taxpayers had in mind,” said Nelson, who is also board chairman of the Orange County Transportation Authority. Many local architects, however, call the Anaheim Regional Transportation Intermodal Center, set to open Dec. 6., a modern marvel and the future of transportation.

The Denver Post is wondering if Union Station is itself racist. Columnist Ray Mark Rinaldi wonders, "Did diversity miss the train in Union Station's architecture?" He continues, (emphasis mine) "The urban playground at Union Station isn't drawing people of color and it may be the building's fault." How can an inanimate object be racist? The newly designed Union Station is very popular, says Rinaldi. "If, that is," he warns, "you are white and not paying attention. Or if you think diversity doesn't matter." It's design is an "Architecture of exclusivity," he writes. "The symmetry, arched windows, ornate cornice and stacked,...

Cintas has released the names and locations of the top 10 public potties for its 13th annual America's Best Restroom contest and the excitement over who will be named winner is palpable. “We’ve assembled an engaging field of unique public restrooms and expect a lot of spirited competition,” said John Engel, Cintas senior marketing manager in a news release. On the list of best public facilities is the Trail Restroom in Austin, Texas, which was designed by Miró Rivera Architects in partnership with the city of Austin. Located on the Ann and Roy Butler Hike–and–Bike Trail at Lady Bird Lake,...

One day fifteen years ago, I happened to be channel surfing past the Eternal Word Television Network when I was greeted by a momentary flash of heavenly beauty across the screen. Quickly flipping back, I realized that it was a Mass being celebrated in an unusually majestic church with an extensively gilded and marbled interior.Having never seen this church before, I distinctly remember asking myself why today’s churches can’t still be built to glorify God the way this beautiful “old” work of art had been. Within minutes, however, I felt as though a joke too good to be true...

Explore in 360 degrees the Sistine Chapel, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and many more - all online.Christians have been making pilgrimages to holy sites and churches around the world for centuries. Can’t make a pilgrimage? Here’s the next best thing! Some tours are embedded on this page, while others can be found with the link provided. Enjoy! 1) Sistine Chapel – Vatican CityBuilt in the 15th century and painted in the 16th century, the Sistine Chapel is one of the great artistic masterpieces in the world. Michelangelo painted the ceiling and the Last Judgement fresco, while the frescoes...

A little something for the weekend.Over at Real Clear Religion, Nicholas G. Hahn III has a slideshow of the ugliest churches in the world. They represent several denominations, but the vast majority are – you guessed it – Roman Catholic.Below are just a few of these architectural miscarriages, all of them Catholic. See the rest here.       

Several years ago, the best thing that could have happened to my boyhood church in Pennsylvania did in fact happen. One evening the pastor entered the church, turned on the light switch, heard the pop of a short circuit, and peered into an impenetrable cloud of smoke. He ran out of the church and called the fire department. But there had been no fire. The smoke came from tons of plaster that had crashed fifty feet to the floor. The ceiling had collapsed.Saint Thomas Aquinas Church was built in the 1870′s by the same rough Irish coal miners who...

A hot tip from reader Abigail lead us to this 5,153 sq. ft., impeccably maintained — and impeccably detailed — 1959 split level time capsule home, listed for sale in Kettering, Ohio. The home has an impressive collection of original bathrooms — three full and two half — filled with stunning mosaic tile walls, walk-in sunken showers, double vintage laminate vanities with colorful sinks and some amazing wallpaper. Throughout the house, stunning stone and brick walls seem to await around every corner, along with many other fantastic midcentury details, preserved and loved by the large family that called this house their home since the day...

Castles have played an important military, economic and social role in Great Britain and Ireland since their introduction following the Norman invasion of England in 1066. Although a small number of castles had been built in England in the 1050s, the Normans began to build motte and bailey and ringworks castles in large numbers to control their newly occupied territories in England and the Welsh Marches.1 Caernarfon Castle Caernarfon Castle (Welsh: Castell Caernarfon) is a medieval fortress in Caernarfon, Gwynedd, north-west Wales. There was a motte-and-bailey castle in the town of Caernarfon from the late 11th century until 1283 when...

Christian Scientists have won their long, twilight struggle against brutalism -- so says a wrecking ball at the corner of 16th and I streets in Washington, D.C. For what seemed like an eternity, members of the Third Church of Christ, Scientist fought with architecture historians and city bureaucrats over the right to tear down their own church. Churchgoers never liked their 1971 classic brutalist structure -- an architectural style that is well, brutal -- and have even suggested it has something to do with their dwindling numbers.

In my college years I worked with a company that built and serviced pipe organs around the Washington DC area. During those years I probably entered some 300 different churches both Catholic and Protestant.Of course, as a Catholic, I particularly loved going to the Catholic churches. I especially loved visiting the older city parishes that were built back before the revolution. I had grown up in the suburbs where almost every church was built after 1955, when church building took a decided turn for the worse: Ugly bland, beige buildings with carpeted floors and potted plants. A plain wooden table...

'There is nothing left': Family's $4MILLION medieval-style dream mansion that took them three years to build burns to the ground A sprawling $4 million mansion built by an Ohio family has been gutted after a fire broke out on Friday afternoon. Homeowner Maria Decker, who had only added the finishing touches to her family's dream home last year, was on vacation when the fire broke out. Plumes of smoke and flames as high as 30ft could be seen as the fire ripped through the 22-room stone-built mansion.

Architects in Zurich have erected an impossibly ornate room entirely from 3D-printed blocks. The designers say it's the first time anyone has used a 3D printer to design a work of architectural art from sandstone and could suggest a new way of thinking about building construction. "We aim to create an architecture that defies classification and reductionism," said the architects on the project's website. We'll attempt to classify and reduce it anyway: It basically looks like Antoni Gaudí crammed all the flourishes of La Sagrada Familia into a 172-square-feet room. Designed by "customized algorithms," the architects say the work (called...

Catholics have often endured the charge that we are an unbiblical Church. Strange accusation, really, for the Church that collected the Scriptures, determined the canon of Scripture and preached it for 1,500 years before there ever was a Protestant denomination. The fact is we are quite biblical and often in ways that are stunningly powerful.For the Church, the Scriptures are more than merely ink spots on a page. The Scriptures are manifest and proclaimed in how we live, how we are organized hierarchically, our sacraments, our liturgy and even in our buildings.Long before most people could read, the Church was...

Whether they march or soar, straddle or slide, the best bridges take command of the landscape as though they were destined to be there all along. By that standard, the new eastern span of the Bay Bridge falls short. There's a lot to like about the 2.2-mile procession from Oakland to Yerba Buena Island. Small details catch you by surprise and the main attraction, the web of cables slung from a central tower to cradle the roadway within, has the feel of an airy cathedral inside. Viewed from afar, the white lines of steel radiate a gracious strength. But the...