A week of celebrations

 Sunday, our cousin and her beloved organized a socially distant engagement party in Central Park. It was the first time since February that we and our children were all together in real life and not just onscreen. I didn't take photos of our family, my cousin and her beloved, her older siblings with their families (including our newborn cousin), and our kids because I was too busy enjoying our time together to take photos. I apologize to the bride's parents for not taking photos because I was just having too much fun.

My youngest and I had to leave the celebration early. He has a weekly meeting with friends and I was tying tzitzit with Max and his family via Zoom.  We walked home because I am still not doing public transit.

This building seems to have been renovated recently. I am not sure if it was painted or if the decorative elements were re-cast and restored. I don't remember it looking quite so crisp and beautiful in the past. 

 Clearly, the old fire escapes have been replaced with jazzy looking Bauhaus ones. 

The restoration made a completely forgettable building something worth noting.

Brownstone is soft. The acid in pollution tends to wear away at all of the crisp and lovely details. Lately, I have been seeing lots of the previously melted away details on old brownstones beautifully recast and reapplied to house fronts. 

Below you see both restored decorative elements as well as the eroded version just to the left.

 Old decorative ironwork often rusts away if not properly maintained. In the great golden age of building on the Upper West Side, each building had its own custom ironwork that was created to add a bit of extra to a building.

This corner building had all of the elements of the ironwork preserved, here as a balustrade around a set of cellar stairs.

Here on a service door.

The motif is here on a basement window as well. 

As we walked we passed my brother-in-law's old home. 

In the late 1970s, a Barnard student was killed by a chunk of falling facade from a building along Broadway.  As a result of that tragedy, every building facade is inspected and repaired every few years. Scaffolding is put up and every inch of every building is inspected and then repaired. 

The repeating patterns of the metalwork are not exactly beautiful but are always interesting.

While the pandemic has made most things worse, it is because of the pandemic that I was virtually able to attend the wedding of my friend's son in Israel.

 

I loved seeing the beautiful relationship she has with her son.

I also loved seeing her parents, who I haven't seen since about 1973.

Hoping for more good things, more celebrations.