A sandwich board can be the first element for your store encouraging people to come up to it and touch to develop a connection with your store. For that reason, your sandwich board needs to be in an impeccable state of repair – no rusty wheels, peeling letters. Make your sandwich board of a high quality expressive of your story
This example of vehicular wayfinding sign in Albion, Michigan, is both attractive and also designates as people are “entering” and “leaving” the Superior Street Commercial Historic District in Albion, Michigan. There is one pole but two signs with a slight difference of messaging on either side. The Youngs Home sign in Oyster Bay, New York is identical on each side.
A parklet is not only a physical intervention but also an economic one. To transform a parking spot on average of 250 to 400 square feet into a place for people allows getting a greater return on investment. Various studies have shown that spending by parklet users can boost revenue at neighboring businesses by 2x or 3x. This spending is
Pavement to plaza is a global movement to reclaim parking lots and repurpose them for use by people. William “Holly” Whyte famously said people are most likely to sit where there are places to sit. Food is among the best tools to attract people. Put these together then you have a formula for active, loved, and well used places. Related
Flag signs are the worst. They obliterate the human scale and are difficult to read… unless your business is on the highway and you are trying to catch the attention of drivers for half a second while speeding by 60 miles an hour. I encourage every design conscious downtown to eliminate flag signs, and work with owners on more appropriate
Note: the story of how our family garden came to be is here. Below are brief updates from the garden. 2023-Feb-26: We started a new grow operation with approximately 300 seeds of 12 different varieties. These included favorites that we re-plant from seeds collected, year after year. There were also at least three new varieties of tomatoes – one is
George Hanemann built a bakery to the west in 1915 by designs from Alexander Merchant.[1] . Nathan Robins The 1876 Everts & Stewart Map shows this land with identification as “Est. N.R.” This was designation as estate of Nathan Robins who died in. Captain Nathan Robins (1782-1858) was forebear of the family. His son, also by the name of Nathan
Blame Vitruvius. In his treatise De Architectura around 27 BCE, the three elements critical to architecture were utilitas (function), firmitas (stability), and venustas (beauty). While so easy to articulate, in practice this harmony in buildings and places was and is so hard to achieve. Fast forward to Colonial America. Many prototypes for buildings and plans for cities hearkened back to
By Isaac D. Kremer To purchase: Means, Mary. Main Street’s Comeback: And How it Can Come Back Again. HammonWood Press. 2020. The story of the revival of historic downtowns across the US is inextricably tied to Mary Means. In her role as Field Director for the National Trust for Historic Preservation covering the vast Midwest region of 10 states, she
Portraits of Noah Brown and Lelia Anderson The origins of Noah Brown are not entirely clear, though a marriage record from 1888 gives a birthdate of 1860 in Amelia County, Virginia. Of interest in the same record is how his parents were listed as father “Johnson” and mother as “Betsy Ann Johnson.” Should this birth date be accurate, that means