Third Street between Sixth and Seventh Avenues is a most excellent spot for stoop sales. This is largely due to the amount of pedestrian traffic we get. But the big front yards between the limestone buildings and the sidewalk make for ample display space, which add to the overall appeal.

Some years are more stoop-saleish than others. It depends on the mood. When our apartment feels particularly cluttered, a stoop sale can seem like a clear path to a minimalistic existence. I tend to price items very low in the hopes of selling everything and not having to cart unpurchased items to the Salvation Army or back upstairs.

Sometimes the kids, those little capitalists, decide to sell their no-longer needed toys and books at a stoop sale. But it’s amazing how little they are willing to part with. When my daughter decides to "sell all the toys she doesn’t want anymore" her inventory is usally pretty sparse as there are few things she is EVER willing to part with. My husband is the same way.

Friends, who live on less ideal stoop sale blocks, often ask if they can use our stoop for a sale. And we always acquiesce because there is nothing more festive than a stoop sale even if we do have to step over merchandise on the way in and out of the building.

On Sunday, a clothing designer-friend set up a clothing rack on the street and sold her chic skirts made made from vintage and upholstery fabrics, embroidered t-shirts, and hip kid’s clothing. The name of her company is Fofalle, which means Wicked Girl in French, and her designs are available at various Brooklyn boutiques including Flirt and Shangri-La.

Business was steady for most of the day. Customers tried on the appealing skirts in the vestibule of the building, which happens to have a full-length mirror, and makes a perfect, if slightly public, dressing room.

Fofalle’s sale inspired some of the younger members of the building to create a lemonade stand. Manicure and pedicures were also offered for a decent price if you didn’t mind a little extra nail polish around your toes and fingernails. The girls sat at a small Fisher-Price picnic and water table waiting for customers, occassionally shouting out: "MANICURES, LEMONADE! MANICURES, LEMONADE!"

More than one passerby asked if the Fisher-Price picnic and water table was for sale.
"No!" came the quick reply from one parent or another. The funny thing is: that table was given to the building when it didn’t sell at another Third Street stoop sale. Nobody wanted that thing just a few weeks ago; today it was a hot item.

The various sales also inspired another resident of the building to sort through the abundance of stuff in her apartment for items suitable for her own stoop sale. As is often the case, this kind of "sorting" can lead to domestic distress, when one spouse’s garbage is another spouse’s gold. I have that problem myself and it is a source of almost constant frustration. My propensity for "sorting" leads my husband to inspect out-going garbage on a regular basis checking to make sure I haven’t discarded any "treasures."

Suffice it to say, that stoop sale never materialized. But neighbors sat at the green metal table eating potato chips, drinking the children’s lemonade, and watching customers come and go, encouraging some to buy (skirts, lemonade, manicures) but in a very low key sort of way.

The shops and restaurants on Seventh Avenue used to have a "captive audience" attitude: you’re stuck out here so we can damn well be as nasty as we want, serve as lousy food as we want, sell what we want, and charge what we want.

It’s a whole new ballgame now. But that’s how it used to be.

I’m not naming name but there were quite a few nasty shopkeepers on Seventh Avenue back in the day. Some shops didn’t exactly have the vaunted "Customer is Always Right" ethos.  Wacky return policies, bad stock, unhelpful service: some of the stores were downright unpleasant.

It was a commonly held belief that Slopers didn’t spend their money on Seventh Avenue (except for books, groceries, toys, teacher gifts, etc.) They’d go into Manhattan to really buy. And I think this created a kind of  bitterness; the sense that nobody appreciated the shops nearby. The Clay Pot was always an exception: a home-grown business that Slopers always felt comfortable spending lots of money in.

But there wasn’t money then like there’s money now in Park Slope. In the past, a few brave souls tried to bring good food and merchandise to the nabe – but it rarely worked. There were all those doomed restaurants in the doomed restaurant spots. Before Yamato, there was one restaurant after another. Boom, boom, boom. For years and years. Same with the Maggie Moo spot. Years ago, tragedy struck there when a news dealer was shot and killed. And it’s been a doomed restaurant spot ever since.

On Seventh Avenue until fairly recently, there was no where to buy basic clothing items like nice jeans and t-shirts. For the most part, it was a desert here and everyone felt it. ‘Why don’t they open a Gap here?.’  was and still is a common question. Well, the answer is: there just isn’t the weekday street traffic to support it. That may not be true anymore: Aersoles and other national chains seem to be raking it in. Here’s hoping Seventh Avenue doesn’t become a "mall" of national chains.

The Slope was without decent food for so long that no one really considered going out for special dinners around here except to Cucina.

Well, Al Di La changed all that.

When someone does the history of the Park Slope/Fifth Avenue restaurant scene, they will probably point to the hour and the day that Al Di La opened their doors, and when a few weeks later they got the rave review in the Times.

Now, Park Slope seem to be the food capital of New York City, it’s where the adventurous, non-corporate restauranteurs want to be. There’s passion, there’s taste, there’s great talent out here now.

Who would have thunk it back in the day when Tutta Pasta, Snooky’s, Aunt Suzies, and Two Boots were the only games in town. But boy are there options now: 58 restaurants on Fifth Avenue. Sette, Miracle Grill, and Toast on Seventh Avenue.

Retail is also coming into it’s own now. There was a time when every store on Seventh Avenue was a cutsey gift shop or a real estate firm. There are still too many real estate places on Seventh. But who hasn’t noticed all the trendy, stylish, and smart retailers out here like Loom, Living on Seventh, Lolli, Bird, Baby Bird, Nest, Shangri La and more.

Fifth Avenue is filled with interesting shops like Matter, Diana Kane, Kinara, Nancy, Nancy, Scaredy Cat, Eidolan (one of the first quirky, home-grown retailers), Flirt, Goldy and Mac, and Romp, a very stylish, design-centric store for children’ s toys and furniture.

Not that there aren’t wonderful old-time Park Slope establishments. Little Things certainly fills the birthday party needs of the neighborhood and has the most comprehensive selection of Yuppie toys for miles. There’s the barber shop between 3rd and 4th Streets that seems to be loved by many. New Prospect certainly persists on  Flatbush with its 1970’s style healthy, comfort food. And Cousin John’s is an excellent, if excessively buttery bakery that’s been here forever. Community Books, in its latest incarnation with Catherine Bohne at the helm, is beloved. As is Soundtrack, which is owned by a born-and-bred Park Sloper, and has a good selection, is willing to order anything, and has prices that beat Virgin and Tower.

So I’m not knocking anything here. I’m just saying, I’m just saying.  There’s more money now which means the merchandise is higher quality, which means the shop keepers are a little more competitive, and the stakes are higher. Better for the shoppers of Park Slope, better fo the merchants. We’re not a captive audience anymore…

I’m just saying…

Excuse me for ranting. And I don’t mean to "flame" Firefly, the off-price European children’s clothing shop on Seventh Avenue between 4th and 5th Street.

No, they’ve got some gorgeous stuff. Just the kind of things my daughter loves. Sophisticated. Tasteful. High Quality. Some glitter and bling.

It’s what we used to call "Grandmother Clothes." That is, clothing a grandmother would buy as a gift – sweater sets, matching pant and shirt, party dresses. The kind of expensive Euro stuff a mom never buys. Not a mom who shops at Target or
Children’s Place. It’s the special stuff.

And they have great sales. I’ve  been known to wander in when they have their big 50% Off Summer Sale sign in the window. It’s hard to resist when my daughter needs just one more summer item, another bathing suit or something.

Well, I did it again. I was lured in by the promise of something really nice and European for a good price. So off I went. Doh dee doh doh…

But there is something about that place. The owner is, well, a little… let me put it this way, she’s really IN YOUR FACE when you shop, which always makes me a tad uncomfortable. "Have a look at this. How about this? What size are your looking for? Isn’t this adorable…"

But she was pulling out some really nice stuff.

Then, I saw a bathing suit and a matching cover-up and decided, y’know, my daughter really does need one more swimsuit…

Big Mistake. Once I got it home, I discovered that European swimsuits run on the small side. A size 10 was way too small for my petite 8-year old daughter. And the striped cover-up was way too short. "Too small, too small," my daughter said handing me back her freshly bought swimwear.

But me worry? The owner had urged me (as part of the hard sell) to take the suit. "Have her try it on at home. You can always bring it back and exchange it," she said. But I guess I didn’t pay close enough attention. She must have said something like:  "You can always bring it back and exhange it for something else…that’s on sale." The part about it having to be an item on sale is what I missed.

Well, I went back the next day with my too small swimwear and a saleswoman (not the owner) warned me immediately that I MUST choose something that’s on sale. "Oh, I’m going to exchange it for another suit, I said cheerily. "But what if I don’t find anything now, can I come back?"  No, you really need to buy it now," the saleswoman said.

Okay…

Easier said than done. There were hardly any cover-ups left, and certainly none that matched a swimsuit. Finally I settled for a larger swimsuit and a non-matching cover-up. And they were even cheaper than yesterday’s purchases. Woo hoo. I was a happy shopper. For a moment, at least. And when all was said and done the store OWED ME $12 dollars.

I assumed they’d give me the cash. But how wrong I was. "I’d like to do it," the saleswoman said. "But I’d get fired."

Then she suggested that I see if there was anything I’d like to buy for $12 dollars. At this point, it felt like I’d been in the store for what felt like an hour. There was a cute set of rubber duckies I’d had my eye on for my sister’s baby Sonia. But noooooooooo. "You can’t buy that," the saleswoman snapped. "You can only buy a sale item!"

Another saleswoman, she may have been a manager, looked really embarassed, "Oh I think it would be okay."  But then she took it back. "No, you better not. It’s store policy. We might get fired."

Well, now I had to search the store to find something for $12 dollars that was ON SALE. And this was no easy task. I did manage to find a pair of French pants for my sister’s baby Sonia for $7 dollars but I still had $5 dollars to go. Then they sent me off to the $5. basket in the front of the store. Gritting my teeth, I was able to find a cute t-shirt with cherries on it and the French word: Cerises. Tres chic, goddamit (I WAS SO ANNOYED BY NOW I COULDN’T CARE LESS).

I brought my items over to the saleswoman and she did the complicated arithmatic on her little calculator.

"You owe us $1.50." she said without any humor.

I was fit to be tied. I didn’t say anything. The aforementioned and embarassed saleswoman said something like, "I think it’s a wash. Just let her have it." She was rolling her eyes as if to say, "This is so stupid." I appreciated that she shared my point of view.

The other saleswoman put my items into a bag and said, "Well, you had to look around a lot." By way of explaining why she was cutting me a deal on that $1.50.

The clothes are pretty nice. I think my sister will like Sonia’s new pants and cherry (excuse me, cerises) t-shirt.  Hopefully the other suit and non matching cover-up will fit my daughter.

And if it doesn’t, that’s it.

You won’t find me shopping at Firefly no more, no more.  You won’t find me shopping there no more.

OTBKB is looking for a few good writers to write POSTCARD FROM THE SLOPE while she’s away on vacation.

I can’t pay. But OTBKB photogarpher, Hugh Crawford will take a portrait of you or someone you wish to have a picture of.

Please e-mail OTBKB at louise_crawford@yahoo.com and tell her what you’d like to write about.

A friend I haven’t seen in 14 years turned up in Park Slope on Monday. I was walking down Third Street and saw him standing on my stoop. He just stared at me until I figured out who he was. I knew immediately – he looked exactly the same – and yet it took a moment to register. Then we embraced and laughed. And then embraced some more.

He and his partner moved to Findhorn, a utopian community in Scotland all those years ago. They lived in a trailer for ten years until they got a house on the outskirts of Findhorn. Nine years ago they had a beautiful daughter, who is visually a perfect blend of them both; she attends a Waldorf school there.

My friend is an artist with a remarkable gift for life drawing (see above). At Findhorn, he is developing an arts and exhibition space.  His partner heads up the Foundation’s weaving department.

We used to work together in the corporate media business. I was a video producer and he was a designer at a small, creative company in the West Village called Zacks and Perrier. It wasn’t the most interesting work in the world but the pay was good, the projects were good, and the people were great.

Even then, my friend was visionary: he only freelanced six months a year and spent the rest of the year traveling and painting. But even working just six months a year, it was obvious that he longed for something more in his life. He said that with humor-tinged  seriousness practically every day. So many people do. Few actually do something about it.

When Zacks and Perrier merged with another company a lot of people’s lives changed direction. I know mine did. I hated the new company (it was called: The Partnership Works) and couldn’t wait to be released from working there. Eventually, I was laid off with severance and began to do work that really mattered to me, which eventually led me to writing. My friend hung on for a while but then moved to Scotland. "I never looked back," he said the other day. "But I did think it was strange that I just walked away from all those years at Zacks and Perrier and never saw anyone again."

But he had a great influence on me. For one thing, he was the first person I knew who lived in Park Slope. This was back in the early 1980’s and I was very Manhattan-centered then. But my friend was religious about this neighborhood. He bought a small coop on Garfield Place between Sixth and Seventh Avenues for $9,000, was a member of the Food Coop, and talked up the Brooklyn Museum, the Library, the Botanic Garden, and Prospect Park. He was the first to use the term "stroller gridlock" and he encouraged me to move out here and not, say, Carroll Gardens or Cobble Hill. "There’s nothing to do there. In Park Slope we have so much cultcha."

I’m pretty sure he used a thick New Yawk accent to say culture. He’s a funny guy full of Yiddish phrases, with a light, sarcastic, sometimes ironic approach to things. Yet, he is also extremely serious about life – someone you can have long conversations with about spirituality, art, the meaning of life, the silliness of things.

Seeing him the other day brought back a flood of memories, jokes, people I hadn’t thought about in years. And I’m sure my friend rarely thinks about that stuff in Findhorn.
But talking together, these small bits of remembered moments were like tiny gems we were finding on the floor. It felt good to honor that time, that place where we devoted so much energy.

I can see that my friend has found a place to live that truly suits him. His family can exist on  practically no money there (he who used to dabble in day trading). The quality of life is good, the healthcare is free, his daughter’s school is inexpensive, and they can stay where they are for the rest of their lives.

And it’s a very unique place dedicated to to the sacred, deep listening and personal sharing, the spirit of service, and the opportunity to work alongside community members. He said that when he moved there he found out there was another way to exist, another way to look at life and oneself. 

Park Slope seems really foreign to him now. Life is so much more simple where they are. I found myself feeling very conspicuously Park Slope-ish with my iced coffee, my cell phone, my Netflix envelope in my purse, my date book scribbled with too many appointments, my incredibly Brooklyn-centric view of things.

My friend and his family return to Findhorn in a few days. He’s invited me to visit and it’s something I might do. Just to have the chance to see this former Park Sloper in the place he now calls home — the place he is really meant to be.

Because it’s summer and a hot and humid one at that, we’ve been to the movies an awful lot in the last few weeks. We saw CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY,which all of us, passionate fans of both Tim Burton and Roald Dahl, enjoyed thoroughly (critics be damned). We managed to avoid Herbie. And I actually enjoyed Madagasgar and The Fantastic Four (okay I was prepared to hate both and my expectations were rock bottom).

There were several films this summer that I wasn’t sure would be appropriate for my 8-year old daughter but actually turned out to be right up her alley.

BEWITCHED is good, post-modern fun. A trip down memory lane for me, my daughter enjoyed all those snippets of old Bewitched episodes. Plus Nicole Kidman.  She loved it.

THE SISTERHOOD OF THE TRAVELING PANTS is a well-acted and entertaining look at four teenage girls that I found to be simultaneously fascinating, clawing, funny and tear jerking. Okay, we both loved it.

MAD HOT BALLROOM, a documentary about competitive ballroom dance teams in the New York City public schools delivers on every level: it’s a smart, feel-good film that’ll have you laughing, crying, thinking about social injustice, and enthralled by raw talent. We both loved that one too.

Perhaps you’ve reached the point where you’ve seen everything worth seeing that’s in the theaters and you don’t know which DVD’s to rent from Netflix anymore. My friend Nancy Graham has created an ever-expanding and useful blog site called Alternative Films for Kids. She describes it as "a browser’s guide to some independent films, world cinema and
animations that will add welcome variety to a Disney-based diet. Not
all were produced with children in mind, but all may be enjoyed by
children." 

An expat Park Sloper, Graham is a writer and animator with a master’s degree in Cinema Studies from NYU, who really knows movies (both experimental and mainstream). She’s also a resourceful homeschooling parent who, with her husband, is bringing up two kids in a big house in upstate New York with as little contact with mass culture as possible. The kids make their own movies, read a great deal, and watch from a hand-picked selection of alternative films like those mentioned on her site.

And their taste in film is by no means boring or safe. NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS is a family favorite as are Ingmar Bergman’s MAGIC FLUTE and Cocteau’s BEAUTY AND THE BEAST.

Alternative Films for Kids includes reviews of: MARCH OF THE PENGUINS, The FILMS OF CHARLES AND RAY EAMES,  THE PUPPET FILMS OF JIRI TRNKA, KIKI’S DELIVERY SERVICE, AND THE COSMIC EYE a collection by animator Faith Hubley.

Graham’s  site will turn you on to films you never heard of, as well as films you may never have thought to share with your children. Her comments are always informative and thought provoking, even if you don’t hate post-1960 Disney as much as she does. There are  recommended age ranges here, but Graham reminds parents to pre-screen for  sensitive young viewers!

The site is being added to constantly and should grow into a large resource for parents in need of alternative viewing options. Graham went looking for a site of this kind on the web one day, couldn’t find one, and decided to start her own. Born out of need is the way a lot of good ideas happen. Luckily, Graham decided to act on it and Alternative Films for Kids is the result. Check it out.

Disasterous things happened to a friend of mine on July 27th for three years running. It was many years ago when we were both teens. But I still think of her every year on that day. No matter where we are. She’s always in my thoughts on that day.

This year she is in the south of France, one of her favorite places
to be. You can bet that she’s taking it easy. After the third incident
all those years ago, she vowed never to even move on July 27th;
I’m sure she doesn’t take it that far any more. But I’ll bet she
doesn’t fly on airplanes  or do anything risky. I just have a feeling.
The day has that kind of power over her. And me too.

The first incident occurred on a hosteling trip in Camden, Maine. The group was hiking when the group-leader fell off a mountain to his death. That’s all I know. The teenagers had to find their way out of the park to get help. I remember she told me about it a few weeks after it happened and I was stunned that something so dramatic, so real could have happened to her. And it seemed unspeakably sad.

The second incident came a year later. Also on a hosteling trip. A friend of hers fell into a glacier lake in Rocky Mountain National Park. He couldn’t get out for more than an hour and nearly died. Fortunately, he was saved and lived to tell the tale.

The third incident occurred in a national park in Washington State. Again she was on a hosteling trip. This time the group was poncho sliding down an icy pass. My friend went flying into a tree and broke both of her legs. She had to be helicoptered out of the park (strapped to the outside of a helicopter)  and taken to a hospital in Port Angeles where she was wrapped in body cast; she couldn’t leave the hospital for three months. Eventually, she was able to fly back to New York having missed three months of eleventh grade.

The year after that, we were together on July 27th, which felt sort of exciting and scary, too.  We didn’t do anything on that day and joked that we were just going to sit very still. Afterall, the day was cursed. We were in a summer arts program in North Carolina feeling far away from home and family and spent the day in a local park having a picnic, swimming, taking it very easy.

When I was a teenager, I really looked up to this friend (and still do) for her sense of adventure, her fearlessness, her drive. Some people might say that going on hosteling trips three years in a row was pushing it a bit. Strange to say, I think I actually envied her these disasters:  they seemed so dramatic  even if they were tragic. Isn’t that what teenagers live for: drama, the real stuff.

I imagined losing someone I’d only known for a few weeks but had grown quite attached to and even called by a cute nickname. I pictured her trying to save her friend who nearly died in that icy Colorado lake. And her stories about the park ranger who visited her at the Port Angeles hospital…It was all so…grown up and, dare I say it, exciting. My life paled in comparison.

Ah, the strange logic of a teenage girl. But that’s how I thought about things then. And I still take it easy on July 27th, try to anyway. I wouldn’t want my life to take a dramatic turn. Not now anyway.

My daughter is  loving Kim’s Kids Day Camp and that’s a good thing. At the beginning of
the summer she was vehemently anti-camp. She tried a day camp two years ago and
said, "Never again," It was a gymnastics day camp and I guess she had big
expectations: she probably expected to spend the entire day jumping on
a trampoline and doing cartwheels.

Turns out, the kids had to
do quite a bit of exercise in the morning. Warm-ups. And my daughter  wasn’t
too crazy about THAT. One time they went to a public pool on Douglas
Street in Brooklyn and OSFO claims the water was really, really
shallow: "Two feet high, Mom. Not so great for swimming." She didn’t
much like the kids either.

Okay, okay. So I let her quit
after a week and she happily hung around the house. I tried not
to think about the hundreds of dollars wasted.

Last summer,
day camp was, of course, out of the question. We spent
afternoons at the pool in the Mariott Hotel in downtown Brooklyn, where we enjoyed the sauna, the whirlpool, and a chance for my daughter to take
swimming lessons.

As this summer approached, I wasn’t sure what my daughter would be up for. When I  found a chess camp at a
place called "Let’s Play Chess," a small storefront on Fourth Avenue
between 8th and 9th Streets, I was surprised when my daughter said yes. For
three intensive hours a day, it was chess, chess, and more
chess. I signed her up for one week as an experiment and my
"anti-camper" seemed to enjoy it.

At the end of the week,
the teacher gave my daughter a trophy because "she improved the most of
everybody this week." That was a big thrill. But there were no girls at
the chess camp. My daughter  was
itching to hang out with girls and to go swimming.

That’s when
she asked if she could join her best friend at a camp called Kim’s Kids
where they do swimming, hiking, and special trips.

"But you
hate day camp," I said. "I know. But I want to try this one," she replied. "Well, if I’m going to pay the money, you have to promise
not to quit. You have to make an effort to like it,"  I said
firmly. "I will," she said.

I  had to jump over hoops
to get her into Kim’s Kids which is run by a fifth grade teacher at
PS 321 who really knows what he’s doing. But I
was able to do it. I begged, I pleaded, I filled out the forms
and handed over a check for $475 dollars.

After the first day
at Kim’s Kids, I knew it was a go. "It was great!" my daughter exclaimed, still wet from the beach with swatches of sunburn under her
eyes. "And my counselor is really pretty," she added. All the kids look
exhausted but like they had enjoyed themselves. From that day on, I knew we’d found a camp that even a avowed "anti-camper" like my daughter  could enjoy.

This is definitely the summer of the green metal table and the green plastic chairs. Given to us last year by neighbors who moved back to Manhattan, they’ve been in constant use this summer.

And they’ve added a very festive dimension to summer on Third Street. This weekend, we ate dinner on Saturday and Sunday out there. On Saturday, a friend who is moving from 2nd Street to 16th Street, brought over the contents of her refrigerator and made quesadillas, which were utterly delicious. We drank bright red Rose, the drink of the summer, and talked until after ten, when weariness set in and the kids were too tired for fun.

On Sunday, my downstair’s neighbor called: "Are we gonna be hillbillies again tonight?" I loved the image: lawn chairs in front of a trailer, six-packs of beer, bags of chips and sour cream dip. We are a version of that sitting on our green plastic chairs with our bottles of Rose, our attempts at gourmet potluck.

But we’re hillbillies just the same. Park Slope style. I wonder if people think: There’s that building where everyone sits outside all the time. What’s with that?

They can think what they want. This is where we want to be, what we want to do.

My husband made a batch of his now-famous chicken curry with almonds and dried cranberries. Everyone had more than one helping. They couldn’t help it. It was that good. Sunday was a three bottles of Rose kind of night and some Czech beer, too. The children stayed inside for the most part, watching Madagascar in the first floor apartment. Steering clear of their parents, they were having their own kind of fun. 

Sitting on a green plastic chair is a great way to watch the world go by. I saw a family we know walking to Fifth Avenue for dinner, more than one couple sans children out for a  date night, crowds of teenagers lumbering from one end of the block to the other, dog walkers, twenty-somethings ambling to The Gate, the beer pub on the corner of Third Street and Fifth Avenue.  

We provide scenery for them (Look at those people eating dinner in their yard). And they’re our constant movie, the on-going flow of strangers and friends walking from Seventh to Sixth, Sixth to Seventh Avenues. They keep us entertained, are somewhere to put our eyes. 

The table is chained to the fence. But we leave the chairs out, unchained, every night and no one has walked off with them. Yet. We’d be lost without them. It’s the summer of the green metal table and plastic chairs. The only place to be. On Third Street. 

On Saturday, my mother and I decided to check out the Brooklyn Historical Society. For years, I’ve noticed the building on the corner of Perrepont and Clinton in Brooklyn Heights but I never knew what it was. Well, the scaffolding is off and the historic building has been restored to its former glory. And what a glory it is:

The four-story Queen Anne style building was completed in 1881 and was designed by architect George B. Post. Post’s bold use of extensive terra cotta ornamentation on the fa