Sunday, June 7, 2009

Last glance at Baltimore


I didn't like Baltimore. I probably didn't see enough of it or at its best, but what I did see didn't really make me interested in going back. I spent most of my time at a pediatrics conference for the Day Job, but on the shuttle to and from it every day, I saw a depressed, boarded-up downtown. The skies were slate grey and rained much of the time I was there, which didn't help my impression either.
But I did see a bit of architectural sculpture. These figures on the defunct Hotel Junker caught my attention because this type of architectural ornament really doesn't appear anywhere in Toronto.

When these supporting sculpted figures are female, they are called caryatids, but males are known as telamones (singular: telamon) or atlantes (singular: atlas as in Atlas, who bore the sphere of the heavens on his shoulders.

Toronto actually does have one (below, as shown in Faces on Places), on the former Bank of Montreal that is now the Hockey Hall of Fame. He is mostly identified as Hermes, though - the god of commerce.

No comments:

Post a Comment