I visited the Notre Dame Cathedral when I was 22 years old serving in the Air Force. I was stationed about 4 hours away at Ramstein Airbase, which is just across the border into Germany. I served for a year on the Base Honor Guard and on Memorial Day weekend, was fortunate enough to be selected for a small team that would be going to Paris for a few days to perform ceremonies in conjunction with the French military. Paris was full of beautifully structures, but one of the most memorable was the Notre Dame Cathedral.

This structure is an amazing site, especially from the river Seine. The cathedral is located on a small island called lle de la Cite on the river Seine in Paris, France. The island is surrounded by brick walls right on the shore of the river which are topped with all kinds of greenery. Beyond this is the towering Cathedral with a very large steeple and architecture dating back 800 years. It took almost 200 years to complete, from 1163 to 1345, during the reign of King Louis VII. At one time it was so dilapidated that it was almost torn down, but it was saved by Napoleon even before he was crowned Emperor in 1804. In 1909 Joan of Arc was blessed by Pope Pius X here at Notre Dame, which is still used by the Catholic Church for mass to this day.

The architecture of this beautiful building is simply breathtaking. From the towering spires on the outside, to the arch-like high ceilings on the inside. It is not hard to tell why this historic place has been such a key landmark in the French Capital for eight decades and will likely remain for many years to come.

Sources:

http://www.notredamecathedralparis.com/history

http://images.google.com

I grew up in Cleveland, TN which is a small City 20 miles northeast of Chattanooga, in the Southeast corner of Tennessee. Due to the close proximity, I spent a fair amount of down in Chattanooga and on many occasions visited the building which defines its skyline, The Tennessee Aquarium. It is by far the most significant large structure in the downtown area and sits just off of the banks of the Tennessee River. I have many memories here from my childhood and have even visited a few times as an adult, the most recent taking my own son there for the first time. It is not only a landmark for the city but a landmark in the memories of anyone from this area or who has ever visited.

Opened in 1992, it was the nation’s largest freshwater aquarium at the time. It was designed by a firm called Cambridge Seven Associates and soon received multiple awards, including the 1992 Boston Architects Honor Award and the 1993 Waterfront Center Honor Award for Excellence on the Waterfront. Multiple Waterfront projects have been commissioned over the years, but none have changed the city like this building. At the time construction began, the area was nothing but abandoned warehoused off of the shore of the Tennessee River. It was designed to represent the flow of that river from the Appalachian Mountains overlooking Chattanooga, all the way to the Mississippi Delta and the Gulf of Mexico. At the top are towering glass structures of a roof which encloses a natural light habitat and the beginning of the journey through this very large aquarium. I remember even as a young child seeing this roof from a distance and already knowing what that building was. Further down the building are 53 bas-relief depictions in the walls showing parts of the Tennessee Valley History. Outside, at the ground level is a plaza fool of plants and a miniature man-made river representing the Chronological History of the city, all the way back to its origins as a Cherokee Settlement. This mini-scale river is always full of young children running around and playing in the water, as we all did at that age.

In 2005 a new addition to the aquarium opened. A neighboring building would serve as a new Salt Water exhibit. A different firm was called upon to design this new building, although one of the members of this newer firm worked on the design of the original building, Peter Chermayeff of Chermayeff, Sollogub and Poole. The new building did not stick with the theme of the original but did feature a large, multi-level interior glass gallery surrounded by tanks full of hundreds of salt water creatures. The exterior addition to the Plaza stuck with the theme of Chattanooga History focusing on the area being the starting point for the Trail of Tears. I have only been in this addition a couple of times since it was built but it does enhance the journey as you first go through the salt water exhibits in one building, then go through the older and larger freshwater exhibit building, finishing in the plaza and following that down to the edge of the Tennessee River.

This entire complex connects the busy downtown area with a beautiful river walk and has transformed the area dramatically since I was a kid. It has converted a once struggling part of downtown into one of the most visited and economically thriving areas in the whole city. In addition, the original structure itself makes the Chattanooga skyline not only unique, but recognizable to me and anyone who has traveled there.

Sources:

1. Cambridge Seven Associates Inc Website:

www.c7.com/work/tennessee-aquarium

@. (n.d.). Tennessee Aquarium Architectural Design | Cambridge Seven Associates. Retrieved September 08, 2016, from http://www.c7a.com/work/tennessee-aquarium

2. Wikipedia

Wikipedia.org/wiki/Tennessee_Aquarium

Tennessee Aquarium. (n.d.). Retrieved September 08, 2016, from http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tennessee_Aquarium

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