Nuns & Bricks & High Strangeness in the PNW- Part II

                  As promised, more photo's from Saturday Sept, 26, 2020 in                                                               Vancouver, Wa! 

                                                   (Photo courtesy of Sara Schick)

 Photo's here, are from The Providence Academy (former orphanage & school). I will be sharing photo's of the Laundry and Stack in my next post. Please visit Sara's blog for further information on the status of the Laundry buildings per October 2020, (it's not good).  

                                                 On with the day. 

We met Janet in the back parking lot of the Academy (hi Janet!) and the first photo I took, was of a long narrow walkway along the back of the building. It's hard not to imagine bustling nuns in habits here, walking briskly back and forth. 

                                

             My immediate feeling of the building was of structure and no-nonsense                 busyness.  

The narrow walk way is repeated on the second story, going from doorway to doorway, with the bell tower jutting from the top of the building. 

Around the building you come across a closed in walkway (not completely closed in, as you can tell). There's a door here, that leads into the building, with windows on both sides. I'm not sure what this is all about. We did discuss several ideas but didn't really lite on one.

                               

The brickwork here was interesting to me. It mimics what you would see above a window or possibly a doorway but is placed at ground level. Vancouver is known to suffer from the liquid sunshine of the PNW, so maybe an escape for excess rain water? Whatever it was, it's been bricked up now. ((After staring at a couple other photo's that were taken, I think quite possibly, this area may have originally been part of the basement and that WAS originally brickwork above a window. Still not sure though...))

             The stone in this area is rougher & more foundation like. 

                                          I really liked it here.

It felt less intimidating and a little more...comforting. It's hard to describe.  

                  

                                                  (These photo's courtesy of Sara Schick)

                  

                    Bricked up doorway along the front of the Academy. As you can see in the postcard below, the Academy originally had the same walkways along the front of the building as they do in the back. It feels wrong and sad that such a liminal space such as a doorway has been closed up. It's a passageway but visually it's not anymore. Odd. 

                                               (Postcard photo courtesy of Sara Schick)     

                         1910 Postcard showing the front of the Academy. 

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                    I'd like to think this is the same tree we had our hands on.                                                                                                                                                     

                                                                                                                         

 

                                                     

                                       Sara & Janet doing some tree lovin'.

         There's something about pointing my camera up at things. People don't               really look up at structures (or trees for that matter), much do they? It's               such a different perspective. I think I got this from my dad. I've watched             him look up at things all my life, trying to figure out how it was done and             why it was done that way. Anyway...I digress.

                                Pillars and brick work and depictions in stonework, above

                           main entrance of the HOUSE OF PROVIDENCE.

 

Brick work above main door & depiction in stone.

Possible nun habit in this? I'm curious to know what others see?

Okay, that's it for now. Next post...photo's of the Laundry & Stack...