A few nice outdoor tiles for sale images I found:
Art Deco Mansion in Portland – see desc for more story
Image by Scrunchleface
There’s this mansion that abuts Portland’s Laurelhurst Park that I’ve long been obsessed with. Behind the overgrown fence, you could see a pool and a poolhouse, and the rest was obscured. I never saw anyone going in or out, and liked to peer through the fence like a young girl fantasizing about her secret garden. Later I read a more thorough description of it in The Architectural Guidebook to Portland.
It gracefully nestles into the arch of a curving corner, with a circular driveway creating a wide expanse of lawn between the driveway and the house. The house is tinged with faded glory, very Norma-Desmond style, Art Deco glory shamelessly, periodically remodeled. Anyways, evidently the patriarch recently passed away and the daughters are selling the house because they had an estate sale. We went inside and I took no pictures (though I have these pictures I took of it several years ago), but was fascinated to see the innards of this long-obsessed-over house. Supposedly the owners for the last few decades had been the ambassador to Lebanon, who threw lavish parties.
In the basement is a full out ballroom, with scuffed wooden floors, a bar the size of my living room, a small stage of the kind children adore, murals, faded hanging velvets from the 1920s; several storage rooms/pantries, and several furnaces the size of a car. In one of the pantries, devoted exclusively to party supplies such as plastic cocktail glasses, pieces of cocktail shakers and paper plates, we found 1 or 2 dozen cases of Champale, an individual sized (12 oz bottle) malt liquor/champagne beverage which explains "It’s like nothing you’ll ever taste-except champagne!" They were at least 20-25 years old and all the boxes were moldy (though we bought a 4 pack in order to see which of our friends Darwinian selection will take care of).
On the main floor was a grand entrance hall, a grand formal room with giant fireplace, a parlor, a banquet room, a dining room, a giant pantry, a reading-sunroom off the grand room tiled decoratively and with a tiled fountain in its center (!); and a large kitchen that had been remodeled with carpet(!) in the late 70s. Outside in back were half-size manicured gardens in the french style, with narrow boxwood hedges and tiny white wrought iron benches. There was also a crumbling greenhouse, the paint peeling off, many panes of glass broken, filed entirely with plastic plants (!!). The pool was short and narrow as well, but had the full range of deepness from 3 feet to 12, and had curling, elaborate wrought iron handrails (original art deco pieces) down sweeping stairs at the shallow end. A covered sitting area with an outdoor fireplace looked over the swimming pool.
Upstairs, the master bedroom was a good 1000 square feet, with several walk in closets, another rounded reading/sunroom, and several bathrooms with his/hers accoutrements. The residence of an elder at some point was apparent due to orthopedic shoes, toilet grab bars, and red and blue houndstooth wool suits. The master bed had a silken canopy and many elaborate built-in drawers in the wall; as did several of the daughters or guests rooms down the hall. Each bedroom had an elaborately tiled bath; the master bedroom in aqua/teal, others in pink, purple and green. Clearly the Lebanese influence had been at work to bring this fantastic piece of beauty that fit into the Art Deco theme; see pictures of tile work on the outside of the house here and here.
We could also tell that the family had several daughters, for they were selling portraits that had been done of them. ONe featured the entire family, circa 1981, the daughters all with identical raven-black, feathered/winged hair, and a giant Jesus looming over the family.
The closets were filled with the sorts of clothes that Carrie Bradshaw might have taken a chance on (and been able to pull off) in 1976 or so; hippie-vintage-esque women who obviously run resale boutiques in Portland were digging through them, exclaiming "This is a Drag Queen’s wet dream!!" (Unbeknownst to me, my [gay] friend was there earlier in the day and bought for me some gorgeous Mexican-folk-style flowing dresses with colorful, bold embroidery all over them..)
KANSAS CITY ART FAIR 2009 072
Image by roberthuffstutter
ON A WALL OF A BUILDING ON THE COUNTRY CLUB PLAZA IN KANSAS CITY, MISSOURI. A J.C. NICHOLS DEVELOPMENT, the Country Club Plaza was designed in the 1920s to become one of the nation’s first planned outdoor center for retail sales, not just a downtown area. It has been a successful project and is reknown for the Christmas lights that adorn the buildings from Thanksgiving until mid January.