Westcott House, part 2

 

This family home was built in 1908 for Burton J. Westcott, a prominent industrialist in Springfield, OH. It is one of the few private homes Frank Lloyd Wright built in Ohio and the only one in the Prairie style. There are also Japanese influences, as Wright had first visited that country in 1905.

Westcott House

We were fortunate enough to know someone who gives tours of the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Westcott House in Springfield, OH. Here we checked out some of the exterior before the tour.

MAZU

A nice lunch was had at MAZU, another interesting Yellow Springs restaurant. The fare was primarily Middle Eastern but also Far Eastern. As a lover of oyster mushrooms I couldn't resist the Yansu Mushrooms (lower left). The falafel balls (upper right, here called Fattoush) were also really tasty.

Buckeye Mocha

The cozy lobby of the Mills Park Hotel has a coffee shop and restaurant called Ellie's. It was here that I tried the Buckeye Mocha - not only the best tasting mocha of the trip, but one of the best of my life! Ohio has a tradition of combining chocolate with peanut butter and calling the resulting confections "Buckeyes". For me this combination is positively heavenly and perhaps connects to the Ohio in me.

Mills Park Hotel

Right next to The Smoking Octopus is the pleasantly grand-looking Mills Park Hotel. This is where we would have stayed had Yellow Springs not been in the grip of one of its festivals. It's a shame because the "newly constructed but made to look old hotel" seemed a lot more pleasant than the Springs Motel (their overflow lodging, where we stayed). At least at the Mills Park we had some good lobby time.

Smoking Octopus

 

This unusual building is apparently a smoke shop called The Smoking Octopus, but when we walked up to it there didn't seem to be much of anything going on. Nevertheless, as a strange piece of architecture, I give it a thumbs up. There's no doubt a story in there somewhere.

Y.S. stroll, part 2

Bookstore, cinema and old houses - generally signs of culture.