Friday My Town Shoot-Out: A building

The idea of the My Town Shoot-Out is to post photos of your local community every Friday. This week's assignment was chosen by My Town Blogger Team: a photo study of a building.

I decided to do my photo study of the Art Center, the building that Gordon chose in a "Whose Town Izit" post a while back. At the time I didn't recognize the building, which has undergone extensive changes since this picture:

(Gordon where on earth did you FIND this?)

But last weekend was the annual Fall Festival in Corvallis, and the area was surrounded with booths, artists, performers, and spectators. It was almost impossible to get a picture of the place! So I quickly gave in to the fun of just attending the festival. I put away the camera.


Well, except for this shot of the Arts Center looming behind a crowd. This is the front of the building, which used to be a church. It 's easy to see why I didn't identify it in the old photo above (right?)


We had to park about a half mile away, and as luck would have it we ended up strolling past this adorable little house on the way from the car:


Whoever lives here has done a splendid job of keeping it in shape. There was a plaque on the front that said "Wilson House--1892" so I googled it and found a fabulous way-over-my-head description. There were interesting words like this:
Queen Anne style, transom, corbelled top, flashed glass, one-over-one-double-hung. The history of this house includes a man named Bushrod Wilson who was a whaler on the Pacific Ocean. Bushrod was his first name?

This sweet house was built for Bushrod's (don't snicker) son James, just before his marriage to a young lady named Lulu.

I bet they were happy.

I wonder if it was yellow in 1892.

The fence was freshly painted.

I loved the interesting fence. But you can see that the surrounding neighborhood is rather lacking in charm. There is a good bit of ugly student housing nearby. Still, this little house stands like a small, proud jewel, and somebody has cared for it all these years. That's a happy thought.