Details. It struck me as I was sitting in the recently restored Capitol Theatre one night, admiring the gilded griffins and festoons; the stenciled ceilings; the majestic female statues flanking either side of the stage, standing crossed legged and eternally offering their wares to the heavens. Details. Wheeling is full of them. And it’s part of what’s kept me coming back to this wonderful city.
When I first moved to Wheeling in 2004, I was dumbstruck by the amazing architecture I saw on nearly every corner. Having just enrolled in Belmont College’s Building Preservation program, I felt blessed to have stumbled into a city of such architectural wealth. When I again moved back to Wheeling in 2007, I had the chance to not only work on some of these buildings I had so admired, but began to learn the captivating history of this city through these buildings. And when I again moved back to Wheeling just a little over a year ago, my fascination for this city and its architecture grew even deeper as I began working in the library archives.
Our history isn’t just in our papers, our photographs, postcards and publications — it’s just as much in our architecture as in our documents. The story of our city surrounds us. To walk down our streets is to take a step back in time.
![Reymann Carriage House [Padden Pharmacy], 1414 Eoff Street](https://i0.wp.com/www.archivingwheeling.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/IMG_20141129_192725.jpg?ssl=1)
And so it is our intent with Archiving Wheeling’s Instagram account to document all these fine details that make our city such a beautiful destination, a wonderful reminder of our rich past, a step back in time as we look up and as we look down. In the everyday hustle and bustle, it can become easy to overlook the fine details that make up a whole. I’m as guilty on that point as the next person. But when I consciously take the time to slow down on my walk from here to there and really stop and appreciate all the fantastic details of this city, I once again feel blessed to live in such an architecturally and historically interesting place — this place I now proudly call home.
Follow the hashtag #archivingwheeling on Instagram as we continue to post photos of Wheeling’s architectural details on our account. http://instagram.com/archiving_wheeling/
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Impressive! I hope many more architectural details are being archived before more historic buildings are lost.
Thanks, Judy. Our hope to bring attention these great architectural details so that these buildings won’t be lost, but in the case that some buildings can’t be saved, at least a record of all these wonderful, ornate, and intricate details will be kept.
Friends of whg produced a poster to show whgs architectural details years ago,they may still have some available.