Dear Reader, 

As a connoisseur of architecture (and a general iconoclast), I am often asked two questions: first, what sparked your radical love of historic buildings and their many splendors? Secondly, why are you standing on one leg? To both questions, I have but one answer: it’s in my DNA. 

The modern world races, paying more attention to the steady rise of a speedometer’s needle than to the details, left behind like breadcrumbs by a wandering Gretel, that carve out a time and a place. The buildings that we build and inhabit, regardless of scale or ceremony, are soaring testaments to the intricacy of the human heart.

In researching these buildings, in taking in their forms and admiring their fortitude, we resurrect them. They are no longer just brick and mortar, but beating heart and lively spirit. I, a proud romantic, could never turn my head away from such beautiful stories so openly shared. Should you heed my advice and journey to the stone and concrete and glass to which I point you, these stories may become your own (a lesser bird would make a ‘stories’ pun).

With all due respect and a mouthful of shrimp,

Frederico the Flamingo, esq. 

PS: if it wasn’t clear, the standing bit is in my DNA because I am a flamingo. 

PPS: the stories pun would be something about stories that you tell and stories in a house, but I am no lesser bird.