I was writing on the subway train this morning. I missed my stop.<\/p>\n
It wasn’t that I was writing anything important, just some notes for an article for work. But so engrossed was I in the words, so lost in the thoughts was I, that only as the train pulled out of the State Center stop I realized my mistake.<\/p>\n
I alighted at the next stop instead — Lexington Market — putting me out amongst the concrete canyons.<\/p>\n
I waited in the rain for the light rail train. I had an umbrella with me. I didn’t bother raising it. The rain was too light and too fine. And I found something appealing about standing in the rain, living out however briefly the romantic ideal of the urban rat, standing amid the towering buildings in the rain.<\/p>\n
Opposite the Lexington Market northbound light rail stop stands the Hutzlers Brother building. Once home to a department store, now it stands, at least to my observations, silent and empty. A sign hangs in the front window, contact information for the real estate firm renting out the retail space. A fence has gone up since last I was down that way. Construction of some sort has begun; part of the polished ebony art deco-styled facade on the first floor has been removed, revealing old brick and plaster, the black slabs neatly piled behind the fence.<\/p>\n
It was not the construction — nor the art deco facade — that interested me, those fifteen minutes in the light rain. The Hutzlers building is four, maybe five stories tall. Above the ebony facade, etched with a 1931 construction date, the building’s original facade remains. Built in the 1880’s, the building has ornate reliefs carved into the granite — faces, lion heads, Columbia herself, sunbeams, vines. Intricate work, from another time. These reliefs were carved when my great-grandfather, the one whose name I bear, was just a child in Georgetown. He would have seen them a few years later, living in Baltimore after the death of his father, William.<\/p>\n
I wondered idly if my great-grandfather, a man I never knew, who died years before I was born, ever gazed at the reliefs. I wondered what he thought of them if he had. I wondered what the artist that created the reliefs thought as he sketched out the design upon the stone, as he took hammer and chisel to the rock. I wondered if the man who carved the reliefs could have dreamt that anyone, a century and a quarter hence, who lives in a world he couldn’t have possibly imagined, would have marveled at the intricacy of his work. I wondered if he would have imagined that his work would have endured for so long.<\/p>\n
The train arrived. I boarded, after holding open the door and letting a woman with a suitcase board before me. I took a seat in the back. Light rain fell against the car’s windows as it pulled away, heading northbound.<\/p>\n
Soon, downtown fell out of sight. Soon, the train would rumble through woods, across a lake, and northward.<\/p>\n
Still, I wondered.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I was writing on the subway train this morning. I missed my stop. It wasn’t that I was writing anything important, just some notes for an article for work. But so engrossed was I in the words, so lost in the thoughts was I, that only as the train pulled out of the State CenterContinue reading “On the Things That Last”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[114],"tags":[424,4093],"class_list":["post-2282","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asides","tag-baltimore","tag-life","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2282","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2282"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2282\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2282"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2282"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2282"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}