Stuart Arthur
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stuartarthurwrites.bsky.social
Stuart Arthur
@stuartarthurwrites.bsky.social
420 followers 670 following 99 posts
Writer of speculative fiction. Fascinated by the history of Philadelphia and southern New Jersey. Has quite possibly explored more abandoned and derelict buildings than you have.
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stuartarthurwrites.bsky.social
Delaware River at Chester, Pennsylvania.
#photography #landscape #Riverscape #Chester
March 19, 2025 at 8:37 PM
stuartarthurwrites.bsky.social
Here's a nice article on Victorian ghost photographs. These used the same double exposure techniques as the same age's spirit photographs, but for purposes of narrative/melodrama. A lot more fun, at least to my taste!
#photography #history #ghosts #Victorian

rarehistoricalphotos.com/stereoscopic...
March 17, 2025 at 9:23 PM
stuartarthurwrites.bsky.social
FDR Park, Philadelphia, 2025.
#photography #blackandwhite #lookup #Philadelphia
March 16, 2025 at 2:06 PM
stuartarthurwrites.bsky.social
Here is a close relative of the Philadelphia porch lion (see yesterday's post) - the South Philly stoop cat. Green eyes and a 1,000-yard stare!
#Philadelphia #Urban #Cats
March 14, 2025 at 8:19 PM
stuartarthurwrites.bsky.social
A Philadelphia porch lion roars at the street. March 2025.
#Philadelphia #photography #urban #lion
March 13, 2025 at 2:28 PM
stuartarthurwrites.bsky.social
Looks like it was a peaceful morning on the Delaware back in 1918. Photo from the Philly archives, Pier 8 North, Cherry Street side. Much more here: phillyhistory.org

#Philadelphia #history #photography #blackandwhite #urban
March 12, 2025 at 11:21 AM
stuartarthurwrites.bsky.social
St. Martin and the Beggar, French stained glass, 1245-1248. Recently saw this at the Baltimore Museum of Art. #art #stainedglass #Baltimore #museumsky
March 11, 2025 at 1:05 PM
stuartarthurwrites.bsky.social
View from roof of Divine Lorraine Hotel (pre-renovation), Philadelphia.
#photography #cityscape #urbanphotography #Philadelphia
February 4, 2025 at 2:51 PM
stuartarthurwrites.bsky.social
1906 photo of the Carrol School Farm Garden. All the other photos of school gardens from this period show docile children tending to vegetables.

These Philly kids, on the other hand, seem to have taken over the garden, trashed it, and started a bonfire... At least they look happy! #Philadelphia
February 2, 2025 at 10:31 PM
stuartarthurwrites.bsky.social
The school garden movement of the progressive era took public school children outside to tend gardens – good for their characters and hey, free labor!

The photo in the linked post is from Phillyhistory.org
More on school gardens here: www.nal.usda.gov/collections/...
February 2, 2025 at 10:30 PM
stuartarthurwrites.bsky.social
South Philadelphia, evening, 2025.
#photography #blueskyartshow #light
February 1, 2025 at 9:40 PM
stuartarthurwrites.bsky.social
Tinicum Marsh, Philadelphia, 2024.
#photography #blackandwhite #landscape #Tinicum #Philadelphia
January 30, 2025 at 10:56 PM
stuartarthurwrites.bsky.social
Given the "flood the zone" approach of the new administration, this photo seemed appropriate for today.

Philadelphia archive photo: Ace Dump, Delaware and Oregon Avenues, Philadelphia, 1953. More here: phillyhistory.org

#political #toxic #waste #history #Philadelphia #photography
January 29, 2025 at 8:36 PM
stuartarthurwrites.bsky.social
Philadelphia, corner of 12rg and Federal Streets, January 2025.
#photography #digital #art #urbanphotography #Philadelphia #winter
January 29, 2025 at 1:37 PM
stuartarthurwrites.bsky.social
Guastavino tile ceiling at the long vaulted walkway of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. This space was recently reopened to the public by the recent renovation/expansion designed by Frank Gehry. More on the Guastavinos here: savingplaces.org/stories/7-ma...

#Philadelphia #art #museum #Guastavino
January 28, 2025 at 4:43 PM
stuartarthurwrites.bsky.social
Quaker Comet news - "The Return of Benjamin Lay" is opening in Pittsburgh this Friday, scheduled to come to the Quintessence Theatre Group in Philly in May. Looking forward to this!
#Pittsburgh #Philadelphia #Theatre #Theater
January 28, 2025 at 1:28 PM
stuartarthurwrites.bsky.social
"What makes the King?", William Makepeace Thackeray, The Paris Sketchbook, 1840
January 28, 2025 at 12:42 AM
stuartarthurwrites.bsky.social
A shaman for Monday morning. This is a detail from a mantle woven in Peru circa 450-175 BCE, recovered from a burial site on the Paracas peninsula.
#textile #weaving #shaman #Peru #Paracas
The Paracas people are renowned for elaborately embroidered textiles. Most were found as burial clothing: these stunning garments were likely wound in many layers around a tightly bound body. These bundled remains were then placed in stone-lined crypts in the dry desert of the southern Peru coast. Mantles and skirts were among the largest funerary textiles, their complex ornamentation and size indicating the deceased's high status in society. This extraordinary mantle and skirt are embroidered with the so-called "ecstatic shaman figures," identified by flowing hair, prominent rib cages, and bent and twisted bodies implying ecstatic performance and spiritual flight. The shaman, in a trance state, would travel between the natural world of the living and the spiritual realm of the dead, and thus was a suitable companion for the deceased and symbol of the transition to the afterlife.
January 27, 2025 at 12:21 PM
stuartarthurwrites.bsky.social
Manhattan, 2012
#Photography #BlueskyArtShow #Pattern #Urbanlandscape
January 25, 2025 at 2:29 PM
stuartarthurwrites.bsky.social
In Atlantic City, this used to be a thing! Don't know how the horses felt about it, though...
January 25, 2025 at 1:29 PM
stuartarthurwrites.bsky.social
January 25th is Moose Day! This particularly noble moose lives at Philadelphia's Washington Monument, right across from the Philadelphia Art Museum.
#Photography #Philadelphia #moose #alcesalces
January 25, 2025 at 12:35 PM
stuartarthurwrites.bsky.social
Commodore Barry Bridge, Chester, Pennsylvania
#photography #bridge #art #blackandwhite #DelawareRiver
January 23, 2025 at 11:23 PM
stuartarthurwrites.bsky.social
The smoking ruins left by the great January fire of 1897. It destroyed over 60 buildings between 13th and Juniper/Market and Filbert. Almost burnt down Wanamaker's and City Hall. Philadelphia archive photo (Phillyhistory.org)

Full story in alt text & here: blog.phillyhistory.org/index.php/20...
“It was a fearful morning to fight a fire,” reported the Inquirer. “The thermometer was near zero, and the first line of hose, as it was unreeled, burst and covered everything surrounding with water that turned to ice the moment it struck.” “Firemen worked under the most discouraging conditions, the hosemen and laddermen taking their lives into their hands as they crawled cautiously up the ice coated rungs of their ladders, dragging after them their lines of hose, which were encased in a solid covering of ice. The streets around the fire were coated with ice… The fronts of the surrounding buildings upon which the water had been played presented a beautiful spectacle as they flashed back from their icy walls the rays of the morning sun.” “The firemen feared that the great Wanamaker establishment would go… At 8am, when “the Market Street front of the Hirsh building fell into the street…a torrent of fire rolled out and flowed across… and broke against Wanamaker’s. The building shriveled and blistered beneath the fierce deluge, and a tongue of flame shot up from the high clock tower at the corner of Thirteenth and Market Streets. Much to the dismay of the firefighters—and Mr. Wanamaker himself—“the jets from the hose could not reach the flames in the tower and the entire building seemed threatened with destruction.” Just as the chimes in the burning clock were striking 8:15, the “entire tower toppled over and fell with the great crash.” This “proved the salvation of the building, for the firemen were then able to fight the heart of the fire, and soon had it under control…” To the west, City Hall survived, although the heat was so intense employees couldn’t “bear to stand within five feet of the windows, which, to a one, cracked or broke.
January 23, 2025 at 1:16 PM
stuartarthurwrites.bsky.social
Sky over Passyunk Avenue, Philadelphia, 2025.

Taken standing in the vacant lot that once was the mighty Melrose Diner. ("Everyone that knows, goes to the Melrose")

#Photography #digital #cityscape #Philadelphia #SouthPhilly
January 22, 2025 at 6:54 PM
stuartarthurwrites.bsky.social
Stonework decoration, Philadelphia City Hall
#photography #blackandwhite #Philadelphia #history #art
January 21, 2025 at 2:01 PM