plonq | Photo dump

Doors Open Winnipeg happened this weekend, and we took in a couple of venues. Last week we had been making a fairly impressive list of places we planned to visit, but when the weather turned rather sketchy this weekend we trimmed it down to the two that seemed the most interesting. Our first stop was the Ukrainian-Orthodox Holy Trinity church that is not too far down the road from our house. We drive by it twice a day on our way to and from work, but this has been our first occasion to stop in.

The church is newer than I had thought, but it was still interesting and storied. I imagine most churches have a tale to tell if you can find somebody who knows the history. While the story of the frieze on the front (designed by Leo Mol, built in Europe, then shipped over and assembled in situ) was intriguing, I was more interested in the fact that the church was actually a church built on a church. They built it in stages over the course of decades. The sanctuary pictured below is actually just another layer built on top of the old sanctuary (which is now the basement).

Here is a wider shot covering the whole front of the sanctuary. There is a dome overhead, but it is undecorated so I did not bother to get it in the shot. Our guide said that it is high on the list of projects to complete.

atara is amused every time I describe this building as "needlessly ornate."

These are just some flowers that I snapped when we were out at the Leo Mol garden a week or two back.

The other place we visited during the Doors Open event was the newly renovated Avenue Building on Portage. Since most of the apartments in it will be rented out by this time next year, this is probably the only year that it will be open to tours, so we wanted to get our chance to see it. Based on the line out front, we were not the only ones who had that idea. We took the elevator up to the 5th floor where they showed us through a few of the (modern, and very nice) apartments. As we were leaving, a small group of us broke off and took the stairs down.

The stairwell was one of the areas that they had cleaned up, but not modernized. It had cast railings and marble steps. When we got to the bottom I glanced up and decided it warranted a picture. The stairwell looks deceptively short in this picture, but it actually goes up 10 stories.

This was the view looking out one of the front-facing rooms on Portage Avenue. Portage was not much to look at when I first moved out here back in the early 90s, but it has cleaned up rather nicely over the years. I took this shot mostly because I liked the reflections on the counter top, but I may post a couple of the outside shots later to show off the scenery properly.

This is taken on top of the parking deck where we lease a space. As you can see, the building is showing its age.

This is also shot from the top of the parking deck. I would have to go through my archives, but I think this is almost pixel-identical to one that I shot during my 2010 Picture A Day project.

This is one of the city's more recognizable landmarks. There used to be a church attached to this front wall, but it burned down years ago. There is a replacement church built a bit further back, but you cannot see it in this shot.

When there is a shortage on cake, you do up a wedding bread. The Ukrainians are a resourceful lot. This was in the museum under the Holy Trinity church. It wasn't open when we arrived, but they opened early because they were getting larger crowds of visitors than they had anticipated.