ABC Wednesday - E is for egg, as in the ornamental device egg and dart

Wikipedia has this to say about egg-and-dart.

Here's what I have to say about egg-and-dart. Last week I took these two photos at the Hamilton Building,529 SW 3rd Avenue, downtown Portland. In fact, I was looking for ABC Wednesday subjects as well as architectural details to photograph for a contest sponsored by the Architectural Heritage Center.

I walked along, stopping here and there, looking up at the riches of downtown Portland. When I realized that I could lean against a wall in the doorway of the Hamilton Building, parallel with the street, and focus with my zoom completely out of the way of others on the sidewalk, I settled in for the moment. When I looked through the camera, I got even more excited. Just two days before I had discovered egg-and-dart in the dictionary, complete with an illustration. I looked, thinking, "I've seen this downtown. I just know it." If realized that if I could find some photogenic egg-and-dart, I could, to paraphrase, shoot two projects with one click. Happy at the Hamilton, I took lots of photos, moving from the wall to first one column, then the second one where I zoomed out and discovered the reflection of the last column and the brilliant blue sky in the window.

Of all those photos, I picked these two for ABC Wednesday.





Here's what Wikipedia has to say about the Hamilton Building--The Hamilton Building is a historic office building in downtown Portland, Oregon. It went through a renovation in 1977, and was listed on National Register of Historic Places in March of that year. It is the neighbor of the Dekum Building, a fellow NHRP listing on Third Avenue.

The building, completed in 1893, is an anomaly among its contemporaries. While many buildings built during the late 19th century were often ornate, the Hamilton building has little decoration. It is said that architects Whidden & Lewis designed a ground-breaking building, built decades ahead of later (and similar) trends in commercial architecture. Decoration comes in the form of granite-clad cast iron entry columns and cable mouldings, set against a Japanese-brick facade.

The Hamilton Building is 6 stories tall, and is named after Hamilton Corbett, son of Henry Corbett. It is also the first building in Portland designed in the Classical Revival style.