One is a quixotic blend of Moorish fantasy and Venetian gothic, another has a stepped roof covered in tiles, like a Dutch merchant's house intoxicated by fiesta.
Its footprint is small, its black-painted facade trim and elegant, with a Dutch-style stepped roof, a fire-engine-red door and a matching flower box hung below white-painted windows.
Though much of early Elmhurst has been built over, its past can be seen in the old churches near Broadway and Corona Avenue and in Newtown High School's stepped roof and baroque terra-cotta details, which recall the first immigrants' European origins; now, roughly 60 percent of Newtown High's students are Hispanic, and about a quarter are Asian.
From the first moment you register some marvelous architectural detail -- the pigtail curlicues of a Carpenter Gothic porch, the Palladian grace of a fan window, an elaborate chimney above a stepped roof straight out of a Bruegel painting -- you're obliged to slow down and pay attention to what each building has to offer.
The stepped roof, clamshell bonnet, alpine lights and command driving position are all intact, but design boss Gerry McGovern and his team clearly couldn't resist importing some Range Rover cues.
Advanced construction techniques used in Market Street include: curved staircases, "stripped paint" sections on the walls, interchangeable floors, Dutch/Belgian stepped roof, a basement, offset windows, and wrought iron-look decoration and gate.
There are notable features that you wouldn't see anywhere else, such as the ubiquitous white stepped roofs.
In the last four years, the developers have put up four new towers, with pinkish brick walls and stepped roofs.
Directing our eyes up the slope, we see the monastery complex's 12-story tumble of geometry come into focus: the Little Potala, as it is called, after the original in Lhasa, all stepped roofs and cantilevered walls, scaling the crag like a fairy-tale medieval fortress.
Never step on roof felt before it is securely nailed, as it may slide, causing you to fall off the roof.
