Unfortunately, I cannot provide a more concrete cultural or historical background to this question - I really don't know anything about what I am seeing, but I'm curious about it.
We have here, something that looks like a cast iron hook, attached to a building which is at approximately ground level. I would like to know what these kinds of objects were used for. The hook is attached to the building via some rudimentary hinges. The hook can swing out over what is now the sidewalk, but maybe at one time was a trolley route. The building is on the Spokane historic registry, and is currently a masonic temple.
Here's the picture of the hook: http://imgur.com/BfKPuMK
Here's a google street view of the hook: https://www.google.com/maps/@47.6590416,-117.4285865,3a,75y,182.68h,102.54t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s4Heyr8Qc5zKYogaFYUggtA!2e0!7i13312!8i6656
Here's some information about the structure: http://properties.historicspokane.org/property/?PropertyID=1872
Thanks for any insights!
hey dude, you ever figure this out? I've been looking at it for the last thirty and best I can figure is that it was used as brazier. A couple points for and against it.
The biggest reason against it, is the lack of obvious smoke stains compared to the rest of the facade. However, it does look like a lot of stone work is smoked stained. I think it is a good assumption to make that most of the trim work between levels was white marble at one time and has since been darkened. Also, it might just be the lighting. But most of the columns look noticeably darker on one side than the other, this could be from smoke damage (or again an artifact of the lighting)
However you can see that they have placed flood lights right above where the hooks are, so they do light up the area, my guess is they also light up the columned area too. Those lights are just hidden from view. It matches pretty well with images I've found from the front of the building.
They look well designed for the task of holding up a fire, it looks like there is some kind of mechanism attached to the hinges. I'm guessing it is to lock the contraption in an outward facing configuration.
Without knowing anything for sure, I'm going to say that at one point a significant amount of the facade was illuminated by fire and the swinging hooks were part of that system.
Also, what's up. I found your reddit profile googling for advice on secret cinema costumes.
edit: I didn't realize till after I posted that this was askHistorians. I love this subreddit and I know this breaks the rules, so I'm very sorry. As this is a month old maybe I'll get lucky and no one will see it? I really just wanted to use this post to chat with an old friend on an interesting topic.