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Category / Nostalgia

Amsterdam is Turning its Bridge Houses into Tiny Hotels

Well that’s it for me. I’ll never stay in a normal hotel in Amsterdam again now that 28 of the city’s bridge houses have been transformed into charming little hotel rooms. For over a century, these canalside gate houses accommodated the storied bridge keepers whose task it was to conduct the city’s water traffic and allow…

The Mad Beach Party of 1923

In the summer of 1923, an American husband and wife could be credited with two rather surprising things. Their name is seldom remembered in the context of the glamorous 1920s, but the French Riviera became the summer destination it is today thanks to the infectious expatriate couple known as the Murphys. Gerald and Sarah convinced their circle…

Mansion of the Month: Miami’s Villa Viscaya

It rose from the mangrove swamps of Miami; an Italian Renaissance paradise surrounded by dense tropical forest in Coconut Grove, the city’s oldest continuously inhabited neighbourhood. They called it the “Hearst Castle of the East”, even though Villa Vizcaya came first. James Deering was heir to a harvesting fortune, a lover of the arts, an antiques…

Artists and their Bohemian Ateliers

This is the Parisian atelier of painter Jules Thulot, little-known today, but in this photograph we get an intimate look inside his personal space. A fabulously bohemian lair, begging to be explored inch by inch. It was the discovery of this photograph that sent me on my hunt for today’s compendium of artists in their…

Tango on the Seine, for Strangers in Paris

As long as the weather is good, tango enthusiasts (advanced and never-before-danced) gather at the mini amphitheatres along the Seine in the 5th arrondissement, to dance seductively until twilight. If you don’t want to join in, sitting with a bottle of wine on the steps, watching these dancers is still absolutely mesmerizing and incredibly atmospheric. A little old…

The Little Barbie that grew Breasts

Skipper was launched by Mattel in 1964 as Barbie’s kid sister. Ten years later, Mattel decided that it was about time Skipper hit puberty like the rest of us. That is, if anyone else experienced puberty by rotating their left arm and voila: boobs! In 1975, ‘Growing up Skipper’ led to controversy in the media…

This might just be the Largest Collection of Outsider Art to ever Go on Sale

There are a lot of antique collectors on the world wide web. Professional seekers of this-n-that, people who track down rarities solely to turn a profit – which is all fine and well. But Dale Smith is different, and our ears perked up when the story of his collection landed in our inbox. “I don’t…

Manhattan’s Last Farmhouse

In the midst of towering apartments and neon-lit bodegas, you’ll find the Dyckman Farmhouse, Manhattan’s oldest abode and only farmhouse. The white clapboard cottage has been perched on a hilltop on present-day Broadway for 234 years, slipping under the radar of tourists and New Yorkers alike and looking like a bit of a mirage in its…

A French Chateau Hoarding the World’s Largest Private Collection of Fighter Jets

At no other chateau in all of France will you find a Soviet helicopter parked on the back lawn. Or a 1970s hovercraft. Or a record-breaking collection of World War II fighter jets for that matter. Not to mention a warehouse full of vintage firetrucks, 200 antiques motorbikes, 36 racing cars – and the list…

Inside America’s Secret Atomic City

Most of the 75,000 residents of Oak Ridge, Tennessee had no idea they were processing uranium until the bombs dropped on Hiroshima in 1945. They had settled in the mysterious town, a “secret city”, with very little knowledge of what they would do there, other than the promise that their work was going to help…

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