Grand Rapids was my bonus level in Michigan. I had only planned to visit Flint, Ann Arbor, Detroit, and Lansing on the trip, but efficiency won the day. Former president Gerald Ford was born and grew up in Grand Rapids, his presidential library and grave site has price space on Read more
The Lehigh Valley Heritage Center is the history museum and artifact archive of the coal mining, steel smelting, and war loving region in the Great Appalachian Valley. The coal was used to power ships, the steel used to build ships, and men sent to operate the ships. The ships were Read more
Human ingenuity led to the industrial revolution but it was powered by coal. Long hours and low pay, coal miners fed the machines in Detroit that built Ford Model T’s on a production line, the locomotives that shipped them all over the world, and cooked the food of the people Read more
Allentown in the Lehigh Valley was named after its founder William Allen. His son, James Allen, built Trout Hall that stands as the site of the county’s historical museum. Its baseball team is called the Iron Pigs, named after the city’s early steel industry that began in the 1850s, the Read more
Scranton had a trolley system from 1896 to 1954, the first economically sustainable system in America. The Lackawanna valley was rich in anthracite, top-notch coal, and the trolleys were powered from the nearby coal-fired power plant via a third rail, unusual for interurbans. But one line, the Northern Electric Railway, Read more
The stench of diesel wafts through the air of the industrial centre of the Pocono Mountains. Diesel locomotives transit through carrying hundreds of cars of assorted goods and commodities, they idle and stink. But not all of the trains in Scranton ran on diesel, it’s electric trolleys that were ripped Read more
Alberta used to be part of the Northwest Territories so paintings of NWT governors still hang on the walls of Alberta’s Legislature. Its main interior architectural oddity is a water fountain installed to celebrate the visit of Queen Elizabeth II. Its sound echoes around the walls of the rotunda until Read more
Universities are a public good, even more so when they run museums with free admission. Yale University runs the Yale Center for British Art, which houses the largest collection of British art anywhere in the world outside of the UK. Visitors are greeted by friendly and helpful staff in a Read more
Yale ranks as one of the world’s most prestigious universities and is the third oldest in the US. Founded in 1701 in New Haven, the Ivy League private institution is one of the most well-endowed in the world and it shows through its impressive museum collection in its art museum Read more
I’ve lived in Europe and been all over New England. New Haven is a little bit of both. It has that classic British colonial layout with green church squares interlaced with criss crossing paths, an intimate streetscape with mixed commercial and residential use, and a Yale University campus that looks Read more