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scollayunder.bsky.social
@scollayunder.bsky.social
35 followers 83 following 95 posts
Public transit stan. Architecture enjoyer. Lynner. He/him 🌃🚊🏳️‍🌈
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scollayunder.bsky.social
Pine Grove Cemetery, Lynn MA
Sculpture atop a cemetery memorial for the Stevens family. The moon is visible behind the sculpture, through trees in afternoon light.
December 1, 2025 at 9:26 PM
scollayunder.bsky.social
Therapist: The 4 story three decker isn't real, it can't hurt you.

The 4 story three decker:

(Columbia and Broadway
in Cambridge, Mass)
A 4 floor flat-roofed apartment building with bay windows with a dentiled cornice. The building is of wooden construction The siding is painted slate blue, the trim is dark orange and the cornice is barn red. The 4 floor flat-roofed apartment building. The side of the building has another set of bay windows. There are wooden balconies at the side rear corner of the building
November 12, 2025 at 9:53 AM
scollayunder.bsky.social
I’d say 1.2 square miles. Here’s how Wikipedia renders the info of a small MA municipality (Nahant) and using the land area of 1.0 sq mi like they do feels correct to me. I would have less understanding of that area rendered in acres I think.
October 16, 2025 at 1:40 AM
scollayunder.bsky.social
October 11, 2025 at 10:15 PM
scollayunder.bsky.social
Post a movie you like with a terrible Rotten Tomatoes score.
September 17, 2025 at 2:32 AM
scollayunder.bsky.social
Hello, I come with letters from Her Majesty Victoria
who learning how you’re trading now sang ‘Hallelujah, Gloria’
and sent me to convey to you her positive euphoria
as well as little gifts from Britain’s various- . . .
August 29, 2025 at 1:27 PM
scollayunder.bsky.social
Twitter screenshot. Cynthia Lee Fontaine 🍑 @lee_fontaine: May I know the tea please ? Thank you in advance
August 5, 2025 at 2:21 AM
scollayunder.bsky.social
December 28, 1887. The lead story in the Lynn Bee newspaper is Councilman-Elect Willis Browning, who had recently become the first Black elected official of the City of Lynn.
Newspaper headlines: BEE EXTRA! THREE O'CLOCK WILLIS BROWNING. History of Lynn's Colored Councilman-Elect. He Retains the Scars Made By the Raw Hide. At An Early Age Sold Upon the Auction Block. Received With Buckshot on Visiting His First Love. Startling and Interesting Stories of Slavery and Bloodhounds. body: For the first time in the history of Lynn, a colored man has been elected to the city council,. To Lynn people this may not seem strange but to people in the- An engraved portrait of Councilman-Elect Willis Browning. He is a man in middle age with curly white-grey hair trimmed tight to the head on the sides and crown, bald in front up to just shy of the crown. He wears a moustache. He is wearing a suit jacket that is constructed in the fashion of the time, which buttons just a few inches below the neck, which he has styled with a cravat or ascot around the shirt collar. He has a neutral expression typical of someone posing for a portrait, but his expressive eyes gaze out unflinchingly and calmly, conveying a sense of gravitas.
August 3, 2025 at 12:54 AM
scollayunder.bsky.social
Wow, the Champs-Élysées is so beautiful! 😍(Spring 2023, cropped portion of a panorama)
Chicago’s Loop skyline seen from south of the city. A vanishing point view down State Street divides the image into left and right. The skyscrapers of the Loop in the left background are framed by the low rises of Dearborn Park in left foreground.
August 2, 2025 at 1:29 PM
scollayunder.bsky.social
Had been hoping I’d get teh tarik but I am happy with sugarcane juice, that’s also a pretty good one.

Shout out to the fresh pressed sugarcane juice vendor lady at the Fort Lauderdale swap meet with the whole crushing contraption and everything.
July 30, 2025 at 7:10 PM
scollayunder.bsky.social
Lynn’s MBTA commuter rail platform above Central Square, June 28th 2019. I miss the proper station ):
A view of a train station island platform that is nestled between brick factory buildings in a city venter. The canopy is green.
June 29, 2025 at 3:49 AM
scollayunder.bsky.social
Map of US states, grouped by state bird.
A political map of the United States with states colored in according to species of state bird. States with a state bird claimed by no other state are left blank. Western Meadowlarks, Northern Cardinals and Northern Mockingbirds are shared by many states. Other birds represented by more than one state include goldfinches, robins, chickadees, chickens, and two species of bluebird.
June 3, 2025 at 8:32 AM
scollayunder.bsky.social
Had an insomnia delirious revelation that the Bombardier Multilevel EMU is just a squished Skoda CityElefant
June 1, 2025 at 10:30 AM
scollayunder.bsky.social
March 30, 2025 at 12:25 PM
scollayunder.bsky.social
Ski Trains used to run all across northern New England depending on conditions. Boston needs better car-free skiing. New Hampshire please just be normal about rail
Text: no effort all fun. Boston and Maine Snow Train A stylishly abstract advertising poster of a woman in fashionable 1940s color blocked winter sportswear, and holding two long wooden skis. The artist draws with washes of color and thick lines. Snow falls around her in spots that resemble chunky pieces of confetti. Text: Snow Train. Boston and Maine Railroad. Sundays and week-ends from the North Station. A mid century advertising poster of a steam locomotive running on wooden skis instead of rails.
March 4, 2025 at 4:34 PM
scollayunder.bsky.social
To eliminate a grade crossing, Chatham Street was excavated and lowered to make a railroad underpass. The buildings remain at the original elevation of the street.

One of the buildings even got a cool new front door — from the sidewalk right into the basement!

Lynn, MA
A street lowering down to a railroad underpass with a railroad bridge over it. The street has many 2 and 3 family apartment buildings which remain at the height of the original street — a full story or more above the modern road location. A 2 or 3 family apartment building at the lower part of the cut. It is so high there are 3 flights of stairs to the front door. However, it did gain a door onto the modern sidewalk elevation into, presumably, the basement.
March 3, 2025 at 3:12 AM
scollayunder.bsky.social
West Lynn once had a footbridge across the Little River?! The whole River Works/Needham's Landing area would feel a lot less isolated if this direct connection up to Tower Hill and Austin Sq still existed today.

There's always something new for me to learn hiding in these old maps of Lynn.
A hand-tinted street atlas from the 1920s, showing West Lynn. The Saugus River and Little River are wider in this map than they are today, predating the creation of some land with fill. A narrow footbridge is shown on the map crossing the Little River at a place downstream of Summer Street: from Needham's Landing Rd (north of Western Ave and NW of the MBTA Garage) to Avon St (SE of Northern Strand Trail crossing Summer St, SW of GEAA Field). Acts, 1907 - Chapts. 237, 238, 239 An Act to authorize the city of lynn to construct a BRIDGE ACROSS LITTLE RIVER, SO-CALLED. Be it enacted, etc., as follows: Section 1. The city of Lynn is hereby authorized, subject to the provisions of chapter ninety-six of the Revised Laws, to construct a bridge across Little river, so-called, in that city, between a point on said river easterly of Avon street on the northerly side of the river and a point easterly of River Street place on the southerly side of the river. Section 2. This act shall take effect upon its passage. Approved March 22, 1907.
January 31, 2025 at 5:39 PM
scollayunder.bsky.social
Latest Street View find: the Observer Building in Dover-Foxcroft, Maine, built 1854. A flatiron building with a gabled roof that is an equilateral triangle in the front and a right triangle in the rear — the roof and eaves twist between the two shapes down the length of the building!
A low-rise wooden building, pained cream with dark green trim. Other than the roof, the building looks very typical for Northern New England in the mid 19th century. A sign on the building reads "Dover-Foxcroft Historical Society". The gabled roof has two differently shaped triangles for gables at each end: the building is a wedge-shape and the rear of the building is wider. The roof pitch twists from shallower at the rear (right triangle shaped gable) and steeper at the front end (equilateral triangle shaped gable), including the eaves. The camera is looking at the rear of the building. A front-on view of the building, showing how much wider it is in the rear than the front. The shape of the building evokes the image of a fat cat that is sitting down on all fours. A side view of the building. The change in the pitch of the eaves is quite apparent from this perspective. The building has two doors on this side of the building at grouind level, along with 8 irregularly spaced windows on both the first and second floors. The building has two brick chimneys. In the foreground, a vintage red muscle car is parked on the street next to the building
January 27, 2025 at 2:11 PM
scollayunder.bsky.social
If you see this quote with a photo of a bridge from your own gallery. (Armour-Swift-Burlington Bridge in Kansas City’s West Bottoms, 2019)
A tall gray truss drawbridge for with a strange cable-based lift mechanism. A highway overpass and a rusting metal industrial gantry cross over the truss bridge at oblique angles. The bridges are over an overgrown abandoned concrete lot, perhaps a former industrial site.
January 27, 2025 at 1:29 PM
scollayunder.bsky.social
Throwback Thursday: Twin Cities Rapid Transit streetcar 1267, an H-6 'gate car' at Seashore Trolley Museum in May 2008. These streetcars are very, very wide and it really shows with how much the ends swing out when going around a corner. These were built in-house by Twin Cities Lines.
A yellow wooden streetcar approaches from the distance. It is turning a corner tonto the track approaching the camera. The streetcar's front ends are rounded and have tall sash windows. The roof is arched and forms a clerestory, with a stained glass headsign that reads "OAK-HARRIET". The streetcar has a device on the front to prevent people being killed beneath the wheels if they are kit. In the background, a silver-colored SOAC rapid transit train sits on a siding. A yellow streetcar navigates a turning loop, showing just how much the ends of the car swing out from the track through the tight turn. A yellow streetcar is seen from the side sitting in a turning loop. The wooden bodywork on the streetcar is refined but simple, almost resembling the superstructure of a ship. Trolley wires and poles can be seen. The rear end of a yellow streetcar sitting in a turning loop, with the rounded wide ends hanging far out from the sharply curved track. The streetcar's entrance is at the rear: rather than a folding door, the streetcar has a small open platform and staircase at the back, with a black metal gate mechanism. Through the rear window of the streetcar, the interior of the car with some vintage advertisements can be seen, as well as the other face of the stained glass "OAK-HARRIET" destination sign that is on the front end of the car. In the distance are some old post WWII city buses are parket, and the SOAC rapid transit train on a siding. The sky is overcast.
January 2, 2025 at 7:04 PM
scollayunder.bsky.social
Central Square Lynn before the Eastern Railroad right of way was grade-separated. I think this photo is from about 1890. These tracks saw 190 (!) trains per day by the time the grade separation viaduct project began.

That curlie-q reverse curve the streetcar tracks do stresses me out.
A train led by a steam locomotive rolls across the city streets of downtown Lynn in 19th century. The train blocks traffic across multiple streets and at least two streetcar tracks when it passes. A group of men are clustered perilously on the adjacent track to the locomotive. The station in the background has two simple boxy wings astride the railroad tracks, connected by a lightweight-looking arch roof that encloses the train shed of the station. A wooden sign jutting out at a right angle from a pole in the foreground states "RAIL ROAD CROSSING" on the top, horizontal board, and "LOOK OUT ENGINE" on the angled bottom board so as to form a triangle, with the "LOOK OUT ENGINE" board as the hypotenuse, "RAIL ROAD CROSSING" the top, and the pole the third side. The words RAIL and ROAD are bisected by the pole. There is a crowd of a few dozen people waiting for the crossing to clear so they can make it through.
December 29, 2024 at 11:51 PM
scollayunder.bsky.social
Forbidden Courtyard (Pevear Building, 491-507 Washington St. Lynn) via Google Earth
Google Earth imagery of downtown Lynn, Massachusetts, centered on a square mid-rise brick building with a square internal courtyard that is closed off from the street on all sides. It can't even be seen from the street. The building appears to have been built in 3 sections which eventually enmured the courtyard. A soot-stained brick smokestack rises from the courtyard. A number of other mid-rise brick commercial and industrial buildings are in the area.
December 29, 2024 at 12:01 AM
scollayunder.bsky.social
Had a lovely walk through the mist in Lynn’s Pine Grove Cemetery this morning.
A snowy scene in a cemetery. A few graves are scattered around. In the foreground is a tall gray granite stone monument for the Clark family. The monument has a tall base with pillars at the corners leading to a cornice with an acanthus motif. Atop this is a sculpture of a seated woman looking pensive. In the background are some large and stately looking deciduous trees which have no leaves. A number of graves in a snow covered cemetery. Deer tracks can be seen in the snow. The camera is looking out at a hillside in the distance which is shrouded by mist. There is a gray stone obelisk in the foreground, surrounded by closely spaced rows of small headstones. In the middle distance at far left, the rear of an earth-covered tomb can be seen. There are a number of large trees scattered around, mostly deciduous and lacking leaves, and a solitary white pine tree.
December 28, 2024 at 6:06 PM
scollayunder.bsky.social
Someone in a Tree
A fluffy orange cat stands confidently between branches high in the limbs of a tree
December 16, 2024 at 4:18 PM
scollayunder.bsky.social
Whimsical Street View find in Woonsocket RI, shouting distance from Memorial Square. What a delightful building — rowhouse by way of Neuschwanstein Castle. It looks like it’s been the last structure remaining of the row since 2018.
A tall and narrow four-story building with a mansard roof and a projecting bay window or turret on every corner. The building is grey and white. The bay windows begin at the second floor and end on the third. The turret, on the corner facing the viewer, has a pointed roof which extends into the fourth (mansard roof) floor. The bay windows and turret project quite a bit out over the sidewalk and the walls of the first floor; the first floor appears much skinnier than the rest of the building. Floors 2-4 are residential and the first floor is retail. The first floor is vacant and appears to have been for a long time: awning sign is too faded to read and the shop windows are boarded up. The upper floors appear to be in acceptable condition, if sunbleached.
December 5, 2024 at 5:09 PM