Shadows of a Forgotten World

My friend found a great ghost sign on the far north side of Lviv. I'm pretty sure it says "fryzjer" which is Polish for "haidresser."

Last weekend I joined a couple of free tours that were organized as part of European Heritage Days of Lviv. On Sunday I went on one dedicated to Lviv Seccession (Art Noveau), where we learned about the Lviv “Montmartre” district and visited the former homes/studios and now museums of the painter Oleksa Novakivskyi and of my favorite Ukrainian artist Olena Kulchytska. We also explored the Lviv “Wall Street”  —  the streets Hnatiuka and Sichovykh Striltsiv, which at one time were lined with banks. The tour guide showed us something very unique in the building on the corner of Sichovykh Striltsiv and Kostiushka Streets (one block from where I live). In one of the stairwells of this 1911-1913 building is a valve left from a dust collector apparatus. A hose would have been attached to the valve to vacuum the stairs that would have been carpeted. A valve would have been found on every floor, but now only one remains. I was a bit overly excited when I saw this  —  ...

I've been seeing more and more establishments use their facades to list the products that they sell or services that they provide, the old-school way. I particularly like it when the items are listed in several languages, as used to be done in Lviv before WWII. Before the languages used were  Polish, Yiddish, and German, and rarely Ukrainian. Now it's Ukrainian, English, and sometimes Polish and German as well. This is a continuation of my first such post .  I think some are hand-painted, others stenciled. I like the trend. Cafe-Bar Ukrainian patriotic book and music shop Pub  Cafe Hair salon Minimarket In Ukrainian, German, English, and Polish Beaty Salon Haberdashery Flower Shop Cafe Liquor Store  Candy and nut shop renovation, clothing, cornices, towels, curtains, tulle, table cloths Shop and Cafe Hotel

Lviv, like most cities in the nineteenth century, needed chimney sweeps to keep chimneys clean from the soot that accumulated from burning coal. The bas-relief of a chimney sweep on Anhelovycha Street is one of the only reminders of the era of chimney sweeps . At the beginning of the twentieth century, the owner of the building which has the sign was a master in chimney cleaning.  Several years ago, the restaurant Dim Lehend (House of Legends) installed a statue of a chimney sweep on the building's chimney. A wonderful song about a chimney sweep by the band the Decemberists                                                            "The Chimbley Sweep" I am a chimbley, a chimbley sweep No bed to lie, no shoes to hold my feet Upon the rooftops in dead of night You'll hear me cry, I'll shake you from your sleep...

I found another hitching post in my suburb Winnetka. There other ones can be seen here .