Mother & Daughter Buy an Abandoned Chateau, Invite You to Stay as they Restore It

Back in 2013, we broke a story about a couple that bought an abandoned chateau and started a blog to share their journey. Widespread interest, longing and general FOMO (fear-of-missing-out) ensued on the internet. Several years later, we’ve found a similar fairytale: an architect from Austria, Elisabeth Herring, and her daughter Valerie, adopt a neglected 16th…

Building Mr. Eiffel’s Penthouse Apartment: A Tower Under Construction

A Parisian friend dropped some very interesting photographs in my inbox this week, some that I’d never seen before of the Eiffel Tower in its earliest days. I had previously come across time-lapse photographs of the Eiffel Tower in its various stages of construction, but none like this; none that went behind the scaffolding, right up close inside the growing skeleton…

The Witch-Proof Windows of Vermont

Drive around enough of Vermont’s picturesque streets, and you’ll become puzzled over an architectural anomaly that even the locals can’t explain. Or, maybe it’s just that the explanation is a little too eerie for comfort. You see, the anomaly in question is called a “witch window…” Witch windows are cockeyed windows that have been a staple…

Vacation Inside the Belly of California’s Whale House

There’s a sleeping giant in the trees of Santa Barbara, California. Some call it “the Whale House”; others the “the Snail House” thanks to its hypnotic curves, which camouflage so well into the trees that they’re easily missed. The mansion is like a portal into a 1970s SoCal fairytale for locals, and the occasional tourist, of…

Unearthing Hollywood Treasure in an Arctic Ghost Town

Dawson City, Canada’s favourite “living ghost town,” is finally starting to flesh out again after decades of falling into ruin. The Yukon settlement located about 350 miles south of the Arctic Circle was born from the glory and greed of the Klondike gold rush, and ushered in 40,000 people in just two years. Today, its story…

Living the High Life at the Mushroom House

Peering out of the tree-tops in Pittsford, New York is a collection of pods whose aesthetic falls somewhere between Alice in Wonderland and War of the Worlds (if the aliens were hippies, that is). Locals have crowned it “the Mushroom House,” and for a price you can put down roots there yourself… Built in 1969, it was…

The Vault

George Washington’s Dinner Table Is Still Set in This Manhattan Tavern

Fraunces Tavern is a whisky-soaked lesson in some of the weirdest, most wonderful moments of American history . It was the go-to spot for all Revolutionary festivities, from the farewell dinner that a certain George Washington held for his officers in 1783, to the “Evacuation Day” party thrown by the governor once the British split. Whether it was…

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Inside New York’s Greatest, Liveable Cabinet of Curiosities

Paige Stevenson doesn’t quite live in the same world as the rest of us. “People talk a lot about what it means to make art,” she says on the foggy Sunday morning when we visit her home, while biscuits warm in the oven, “I just think, why not live it? People get so caught up…

Brooklyn’s Best Kept Secret: A Wes Anderson Versailles

You know that great aunt who arrives early, and overdressed, to parties? The one who smells like powdered Shalimar, and guards every single family secret under layers of costume jewellery with her life? That’s Grand Prospect Hall personified. The four-story banquet hall is the last outpost of Victorian grandeur in New York, and for nearly…

A Rock Band’s Vintage Closet on the Run

Starling and Rein Irving are on the run. In a good way, mind you, and in extremely stylish fashion. You see, the 20-year-old-ish sisters have been making pilgrimages across the United States, with a collection of vintage treasures in tow. Their vessel? A 1959 green Chevrolet Viking bus they found abandoned in a field. Their…