View of downtown Los Angeles through the arches at the front of the Griffith Park Observatory. Hondista was laid off today and I took off a couple of hours early and we drove up. I haven't had a chance to get up there since the huge renovations that took place from 2002-2006. They put a huge new exhibition hall in beneath the building and maintained the integrity of the original structure. Yay!
Part of the Hugo Ballin ceiling mural in the central rotunda. I love this 1930s style art so much.
The Foucault Pendulum seems to move around the dial to knock down the little pegs, but actually the pendulum remains true while you and the earth rotate around it.
Wow.
The GPO is really special to me. When Hydra and I first moved out here we lived about a mile below this elegant building. We were broke and craving open space, so we came up to Griffith Park to hike and every time people visited we brought them up here for the spectacular views. Today we could see the coastline and Catalina Island beyond, planes taking off low from LAX to the west and to the east, the mountains on the far side of the San Fernando Valley.
It's wonderful to come here in the late afternoon and watch the sunset and then the city lights.
In the hallway down to the new part of the building, there's this amazing time-line (not yet fully marked) made of about fifty feet of undulating pieces of jewelry collected by a former board member over the course of twenty-five years and donated to the museum.
I love that this kind of craziness has been honored and that her collection has such an amazing use.
Jupiter from above. It must be 15 feet in diameter. See the guy sitting on the bench down to the right?
He's reviewing a paper he's going to give tonight. (Yeah, I'm an eavesdropper.) That's the Earth above their heads.
The Astronomer's Monument. Again, that wonderful Thirties stylization.
Rent Rebel Without a Cause before or after visiting and see why there's now also a James Dean monument up there.
3 comments:
Wow, that first shot of the arches doesn't look real! I thought it was a silkscreen print. The blues of the sky, the whites/creams of the building, are all so flat and evenly colored.
Any news of the birdie's family yet? Glad the birdie at least found you!
Hee! The blues are kind of creamy, aren't they? I took several pix through the arches with similar results. Breathtaking day!
We finally got notices posted at the local market and near our mailboxes on Wed and Thu, and the FOUND ad will appear in the weekly local paper tomorrow.
It will be a big deal to incorporate another bird into the flock, if we do, so we'll be okay with whatever happens.
I love GPO. And that dome painting was creepy...in the large shot it's covered with EYES. I didn't remember that. Beautiful photos.
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