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Category / Editor’s Picks

The Rotting Underwater Ballroom of a Victorian Bernie Madoff

Beneath the lake of a once lavish Victorian estate built by a flamboyant mining tycoon, a secret awaits… (c) Forgotten Heritage At murkey water’s edge, a stone structure being overtaken by greenery hides a locked door. If you happen to have the right key, it will lead you down a spiral staircase and underneath the lake…

Borrow an East London Time Capsule House

At number 4 Princelet Street in East London, there is an 18th century yellow brick Georgian time capsule behind the Old Spitalfields Market. The double fronted merchant’s house, conserved in its original condition from top to bottom, is one of the last of the original houses to be built on the street where dozens of…

13 Things I Found on the Internet Today (Vol. CXIII)

1. A French postcard with the tallest, shortest and fattest men of Europe playing cards in 1913 Found on So Bad So Good 2. This Paris Loft For Sale A factory-loft-turned-home in Paris in the 11th arrondissement … gabled glass roof rests on a early 20th-century steel structure created by famed French architect…

Big Empty Italian Castles For Sale

There is an Italian real estate agency that currently has 70 castles up for sale on its books. That’s an unusually high amount of castles, wouldn’t you say? Each more breathtaking than the last, I spent the morning scrolling through 59 pages of deserted castles, villas and historic properties for sale on the Florence-based realtor’s website,…

13 Things I Found on the Internet Today (Vol. CXII)

1. The Beatles’ Last Public Performance On the 30th January 1969, The Beatles surprised a central London business district with an impromptu concert from the roof of Apple offices at Savile Row, London… The police arrived to halt the proceedings, but the band continued to play. Despite their protest, no arrests were made, and the performance continued for…

Vintage Hotel For Sale, straight out of a Wes Anderson Film Set

On the off chance that anyone out there reading might be considering getting into the hotel business, I thought this little piece of local real estate news was worth sharing. Sent to me by a reader, I was immediately enchanted by the Opinicon Resort on the shores of Rideau Canal at Chaffey’s Lock in Ontario,…

Documenting the Giants of Roadside America

California native, Debra Jane Seltzer, must have the most sizeable independently-run website I’ve ever come across– and that’s not just because it’s full of the roadside giants she documents. Roadside Architecture is literally huge, containing more than 2,300 pages and over 60,000 photos. Banging away at her website for nearly 15 years now, Debra has…

What Happens when You Discover 31 Rolls of Undeveloped Film from a WWII Soldier

“Lucky Strike Beach”, “Start of Train Trip”, “Roll of French funeral, 1947”; these are some of the labels found on 31 never-developed rolls of film taken over 70 years ago by an American World War II soldier. One film was wrapped in some kind of a letter that reads: “I’ve always had a lonesome life, dreaming…

The Vintage Menu Collector: 25,000 Restaurants by One Woman

I love reading menus. They are the shop windows of the kitchen and provide a playful sense of gambling for what might just be the best of worst meal of your life. Today I stumbled upon a rather mind-boggling collection on the NYPL Digital archives of thousands of restaurant menus dating as far back as 1851.…

Then & Now: The Rolling Stones’ French Villa of Debauchery

In the Spring of 1971, Keith Richards began renting a villa on the Côte d’Azur for $2,500 a month. The British government was threatening to confiscate the bands’ funds if they did not leave the country by April 5th of that year as part of the Labour government’s punitive 93% tax on high earners. The Rolling…

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