Jonathan Cohen's photos with the keyword: dusk

Impressively primordial in appearance, these groups of Australian and New Zealand tree ferns tower over other flora and lean out over the paths just south of the Conservatory of Flowers and toward the Lily Pond. I must admit that the experience was a little spooky – I kept wondering whether a carnivorous dinosaur would suddenly emerge from behind them! Not surprisingly, this part of the park was a favourite of the hippies in the 1960’s when it was sometimes referred to as Mescaline Grove.

The Conservatory of Flowers is a greenhouse and botanical garden that houses a collection of rare and exotic plants in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, California. With construction having been completed in 1878, it is oldest building in the park. It was one of the first municipal conservatories constructed in the United States and is the oldest remaining municipal wooden conservatory in the country. It is an elaborate Victorian greenhouse with a central dome rising nearly 60 feet (18 m) high and arch-shaped wings extending from it for an overall length of 240 feet (73 m). The building sits atop a gentle slope overlooking Conservatory Valley. The structural members are articulated through one predominant form, a four-centered or Tudor arch. The building consists of a wood structural skeleton with glass walls set on a raised masonry foundation. It was constructed of wood rather than iron, as was common in the later part of the 19th century, because wood was plentiful in the west. Cast-iron greenhouses do not appear to have been widely manufactured in America until the 1880s. The entire structure has a shallow E-shaped plan that is oriented along an east-west axis. The central 60-foot (18 m) high pavilion is entered through a one-story, glassed-in vestibule with a gable roof on the south side of the pavilion. Flanking the rotunda to the east and west are one-story, symmetrical wings framed by wood arches. Each wing is L-shaped in plan, with cupolas adorning the intersection of the two segments. The conservatory is a haven where visitors can browse some of the world’s most exotic-looking blooms. Highly praised in the world of history, architecture, engineering, and nature, the Conservatory of Flowers has been placed on the National Register of Historic Places, and is one of San Francisco’s most valued landmarks.

Fish Grotto, the Southwest Stark Street seafood restaurant that had existed in Portland in some form for more than a century, closed its doors in January, 2014. The restaurant was originally established in 1891 as Zack’s Oyster House.

The Star Theater is a historic former silent film theater in Portland, Oregon, United States. It opened in May 1911 as the Princess Theatre at Sixth and Burnside Street with 300 seats. It was one of many "semi-fireproof picture show[s]" that opened that year in Portland and the first in Downtown Portland to comply with the new fire codes. It was being run by the Sax Amusement Company circa 1923; it became the Star Theater in 1939, but was also known as the Star Burlesk, 4 Star Theater or New Star Theater at various times. In the 1940s it became a live burlesque theater. Featured dancers included Tempest Storm, Betty Roth as Candy Renee, and Arabella Andre. It closed briefly during Dorothy McCullough Lee’s mayorship, but reopened in 1953. Jim Purcell, Portland’s Chief of Police, was a regular at the Star Theater and was especially interested in Candy Renee. In the late 1960s, the Star Theater became an adult theater which showed erotic movies and also had strippers on stage. In the 1970s the Star Theater experimented with presenting everything from underground and classic comedy films to controversial "live sex shows." Eventually the Star Theater went back to the somewhat less controversial adult movies and live strippers. The Star Theater was closed in 1985. The Star Theater was the business in question in the landmark City of Portland v. Tidyman Oregon Supreme Court ruling handed down by Oregon Supreme Court Justice Hans A. Linde in 1988 (long after the incident(s) in question happened in 1979), which helped establish the State of Oregon’s strong free speech protections, possibly the strongest free speech protections in the U.S. This ruling eventually led to an abundance of strip clubs and live nude entertainment in and around the city of Portland, now known around the country as having "the most strip clubs per capita" of any city in the U.S. The theater briefly re-opened as another nightclub called Five Star Theater, held some shows in October 2008, but then was shut down again on September 27, 2009 by the Portland Police Bureau and the Oregon Liquor Control Commission for selling alcohol without a liquor license and violating building codes. Local news outlet KATU described Five Star as a modern speakeasy. As of 2011, the theater seating and original interior have been removed. The upper two-thirds of the exterior facade is almost completely original except for the marquee and sign, but the lower third was completely covered over in the 2001 remodel. In February 2011, the owners of Dante’s took possession of the business and began to remodel and restore the theater into a live music and performance space. The old neon marquee sign was rebuilt in August 2011 in time for the 100th anniversary of the building.

SONY DSC

SONY DSC

The church was built between 1804 to 1807 to the designs by noted American architect Asher Benjamin for the Third Baptist Church. Before the Back Bay neighbourhood was reclaimed from the water, the church was located at the edge of the Charles River which it used for its baptisms. In the years before the American Civil War, it was a stronghold of the anti-slavery movement, and was the site of notable speeches from anti-slavery activists Frederick Douglass, William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, Harriet Tubman, and Sojourner Truth. The Meeting House is part of the Boston Black Heritage Trail. The Baptist congregation sold the structure to the First African Methodist Episcopal Church in 1876. The building served as a Universalist Church of America church from 1949 to 1961, then Unitarian Universalist after consolidation from 1961 to 1978/1979. In 1979, it was sold to a private owner and was converted in the early 1980s by the architectural firm of John Sharrat Associates into four floors of offices with shops on the ground floor. The nineteenth-century altered sanctuary was relatively intact but much of the rest of the interior held little architectural significance in comparison with the exterior. The National Park Service then permitted extensive vertical and horizontal internal subdivision provided that the developer incorporate some existing ornamental features. The exterior was completely preserved.