July Theme Day: façade

It's the first of the month, and you know what that means! Theme Day for CDP bloggers!  This month's theme is façade.  A lot of City Daily Photo bloggers are posting photos of buildings right about now, and I'm no different, but many of them live in cities like Paris, Prague, Manhattan, Melbourne... let's just say that they have AWESOME buildings to take pictures of! Colorado Springs, however, was only founded in 1875, so we just don't have the same kind of architectural legacy.  Of course it would have been easy for me to find a fine Victorian or Craftsman home and take a photo of it, but they really don't have grand façades, just nice, deep front porches ;^)  And there's always the gorgeous Belle Epoque Broadmoor, but I didn't have a good "stock" photo of it in my archives, nor did I have time to go and take a shot of it.  So I decided that one of my favorite styles of architecture, second only to Mid-Century Modern, would be my theme day choice: Art Déco.  But the problem was that, even though Colorado Springs was growing by leaps and bounds during the 1920s and '30s, not many Déco structures still survive in our downtown.

I did find this gorgeous specimen at 311 East Pikes Peak Avenue, though.  I've noticed it before but never photographed it. This photo was taken during the very last few minutes of daylight on Saturday, June 29th, as Pat and I were on our way to the Hill Climb Fan Fest downtown. You can see how stormy the sky was. In fact, we were downtown for only about 20 minutes before the deluge began and everyone fled -- but that is a story for another post.

I never do this but I can't decide which is better, the color version (below) or the monochrome, so I'll show you both. Which do you prefer? I don't love the yellowy color cast from the street lamps in the color version, but I do like the sky. On the other hand, the monochrome version is so dramatic!

For more photos of façades from City Daily Photo bloggers worldwide, click HERE.