13 Things I Found on the Internet Today (Vol.782) 1. Once one of the world’s largest and most beautiful department stores, today hiding inside a Parisian office building Founded in 1856 as the Palais de la Nouveauté, Dufayel became one of the world’s largest department stores, famous for selling furniture and household goods on credit. At its height, the business employed approximately 15,000 people. The store closed in 1930. The premises subsequently became offices, notably for BNP, before their latest transformation. General view of the Grands Magasins Dufayel, giving an idea of their immense size at the time. Can you imagine the inventory?1 The former Grands Magasins Dufayel in Paris’s 18th arrondissement has recently undergone a major restoration and conversion into a modern office complex called WOW. As of November 2026, the redevelopment is substantially complete, but the property is no longer a department store or public shopping destination. It is being marketed as premium commercial office space. The staircase, a sweeping, bifurcated stair with ornate iron balustrades, one of the most theatrical interior features of Dufayel, is one of the key historic elements that has allegedly survived. The catch is that, like the rest of the converted interior, it is now inside a private office building, so it is not normally open to the public for visits. The recent redevelopment states that the “escalier patrimonial” / historic staircase was restored, alongside the façade and the Eiffel-style metal structure, rather than removed. VINCI Immobilier likewise says the project aimed to preserve notable elements including the stairs and part of the original floors while modernizing the building for office use. Photograph by Alexis Paoli Recent descriptions of the completed WOW project say that this historic staircase was renovated “à l’identique” — essentially restored in kind — and remains at the heart of the building. But I’ve yet to see any photographic evidence of that and I have serious doubts, though the staircase was perhaps lost long before current redevelopments took shape. A challenge for some Paris-based sleuths to confirm?! If I have time this week, I may pop out of the shop myself to check. Found on Wikipedia. 2. Traditional wooden architecture downtown in the ‘Garden City’ of Georgetown, Guyana, South America. Found in Reddit Architecture. 3. This amazing London house for sale Built around 1700, just 34 years after the Great Fire of London, Number 1 Goodwin’s Court a converted haberdasher shop, is now a freehold London home, celebrating well over 300 years of existence with the completion of its painstaking ten-year revival. Part of a row of Grade II* Listed buildings within the Covent Garden Conservation Area, it’s a rare survivor of a building type reflecting the conditions of London’s Georgian working-classes and a living piece of London’s rich history as well as more recent fame as the inspiration for Ollivanders Wand Shop in the Harry Potter film franchise. A piece of London history for sale in Covent Garden. Just need a mere £1,595,000. More information on the Unique Property Company. 4. Vintage movie theater concession stands Found on The Academy Tumblr. 5. The Stanley Kubrick Auction of the century is coming The live auction will take place at Bonhams 101 New Bond Street, London on Wednesday 3 February 2027, with an online auction ending on 4 February from 12pm. The auction will be preceded by a free public exhibition of the full sale at Bonhams New Bond Street, London (18 January – 3 February 2027). Get a sneak preview of the collection on sale here. 6. Pure Nostalgia: The Oral History of ‘That Thing You Do!’ If like us, you rank Tom Hanks’ “That Thing You Do” as one of your favourite feel-good movies, you’ll love this ode to the film that turns 25 this year, including lots of fun trivia and interviews with the cast & crew. Find it on The Ringer. 7. Once Upon a Time in Harlem It has a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. 8. Kuphar Boats of Iraq Known also as a kuphar and by various alternate spellings, the quffa was described in the 5th century BCE by Herodotus, who stated that they were built in Armenia for one-way trading trips on the Euphrates. In his account, they were round, built of willow frames and covered with leather. The insides were protected by straw. They carried wooden casks of wine from Armenia to Babylon, along with at least one donkey and two paddlers. More found here. 9. The Piganino A conjectural musical instrument using a keyboard as to produce sound from pigs by poking them. Louis XI of France was said to have challenged Abbé de Baigne to develop such an instrument, believing that it was impossible to do so. The Abbé, a well known constructor, anecdotally accepted the order against payment. The instrument was a variant of an organ using a keyboard to pick the pigs, which were sorted sizewise. That brutal monarch, Louis XI of France, is said to have constructed, with the assistance of the Abbé de Baigne, an instrument designated a “pig organ,” for the production of natural sounds. The master of the royal music, having made a very large and varied assortment of swine, embracing specimens of all breeds and ages, these were carefully voiced, and placed in order, according to their several tones and semitones, and so arranged that a key-board communicated with them, severally and individually, by means of rods ending in sharp spikes. In this way a player, by touching any note, could instantly sound a corresponding note in nature, and was enabled to produce at will either natural melody or harmony! The result is said to have been striking, but not very grateful to human ears. Found on Wikipedia. 10. Having a BBQ on top of a Submarine Redditor shanbuscus found a photo of his dad on top of HMAS Onslow, a diesel submarine operated by Australia’s navy from 1968 to 1999. The boat is now on display and open to visitors at the Australian National Maritime Museum in Sydney. Found on Reddit 11. Key Guns From at least the 17th century untill the mid 1800s, some lock makers integrated guns into lock keys for use by jailers. The idea was that if the prisoner tried any funny stuff, the jailer could fire a round through the lock at the prisoner. Some of the key guns were very basic, requiring the jailer to use a a cigar, cigarette or match to ignite a touchhole, while others used sophisticated percussion cap and flintlock mechanisms. Original German 18th Century City of Nuremberg Jailer’s Key Gun with Lock (source) Found on Pinterest. 12. Leonor Fini’s Train Journeys More about this Forgotten Bohemian Queen of the Paris Art World. 13. Ari Versluis and Ellie Uyttenbroeks pent 30 years people-watching and cataloging how they dress “People are not always aware of their desire to sub-classify,” said Versluis. The two have made those sub-classifications the basis of their three-decade-long art project, which now exceeds 200 groups arranged by visual likeness. Each category features 12 individual portraits organized in a grid, named and arranged with precision. The book is available here. https://www.messynessychic.com/2026/11/03/13-things-i-found-on-the-internet-today-vol-782/ #internettoday #magasinsdufayel #things #london #grandsmagasins #found #wow #recent #garden #vinciimmobilier #rss #feeds #linksharing #qwibbit

13 Things I Found on the Internet Today (Vol. 781) 1. A Great name for a zine Print of the postcard for sale on eBay. 2. Imagine this was your front door In Provence, only 10 kilometres from Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, this village is made up of two hamlets around the remains of a 12th-century Cistercian abbey. The house’s facade overlooks the main square of the village and the property includes a square stone defensive tower with a pointed-arched porch at its base. The tower overlooks the two-storey house, with a rendered stone facade beneath an almost flat roof of barrel tiles. The main entrance is via a door fitted with anti-mosquito and anti-i netting, flanked by two windows, above which there are two others but offset in relation to their position. The house has a surface of approximately 110 m², to which future occupants could add the more than 70 m² of tower’s attic space after conversion. The courtyard is around 60-m² with an additional 30-m² terrace. The local community is actively involved in vegetable growing and handicrafts, with produce sold locally around its Romano-Byzantine church, schools, supermarket, bars and restaurants. A market with a typical Provence ambiance is held here every week. Asking 275K euros. Found on Patrice Besse. 3. Inside a Gilded Age Mansion Designed to Hide Its Servants 4. Someone is scanning restrooms around the world, building the Restroom Archive The internet still doesn’t disappoint me. Discover them via the random filter or search by location: The Restroom Archive. 5. Hop on a Train to Anywhere and watch the world go by Railpass lets you stare out the window of an endless train ride anywhere around the world with real footage – with sound too! A little escape from the world. 6. Fun fact: Shell, the energy company, traces its origins to a London antiques business that began selling seashells in 1833 In 1833, Marcus Samuel decided to expand his London business. He already sold antiques but decided to try selling oriental seashells as well, capitalising on their popularity in the interior design industry at that time. The demand was so great that he began importing the shells from the Far East, laying the foundations for an import-export business that would ultimately become one of the world’s leading energy companies. Found on Reddit. 7. Take a local discovery stroll with Walkipedia Type in somewhere — a town, a street, a landmark, a postcode — or let your browser say where you are. Every Wikipedia article with coordinates inside a 30-minute walk goes on the map. Start here. 8. A font, designed by a Tree Occlusion Grotesque is an experimental typeface that is carved into the bark of a tree. As the tree grows, it deforms the letters and outputs new design variations, that are captured annually. The project explores what it means to design with nature and on nature’s terms. A project by Bjoern Karmann, and you can download the font here. 9. A trove of disturbing Halloween Costume Ideas Found on Stiff Vintage 10. This Rare 19th-Century Nine-Piece “Prostitute Set” with Mother-of-Pearl Dagger, Revolver & Garter Belt Dating to the 19th century, this fascinating nine-piece collection, historically described as a “Prostitute Set,” tells a story of glamour, temptation, deception, and self-preservation. An elegant mother-of-pearl dagger rests alongside a matching mother-of-pearl-handled revolver, perhaps offering protection in a world where women had few protections of their own. A delicate perfume bottle suggests femininity and seduction, while a mysterious sterling silver-capped glass vial leaves us wondering what secrets it once held. A floral garter, ornate trinket boxes, and a concealed card-cheating device complete a collection that seems almost too intriguing to be real. Recently sold for $14,000 on the Estate Sale Edit. 11. An unusual periodical, written and produced by residents of the New Orleans state mental hospital in the mid-20th century More about this historical newsletter published by the Louisiana Hospital for the Insane of Louisiana on the Historic New Orleans Collection. 12. I just love this and would love a miniature one, perhaps I should propose the artist “The lost ones are whispering”, a multi-year performance project from 2015-2023: embroidery floss, linen, thread, notions (on dress form). Rare and endangered plant embroideries were stitched by performance audiences who participated in sewing circles in public spaces during 26 performances; additional embroidered imagery by the artist. . The headdress is a separate piece, “Head Trip”, 2016-2023 using embroidery floss, embroidery hoops, hardware, organza. Discover artist Liz Harvey’s website here. 13. Midnight Movie of the Month: A Forgotten “Rocky Horror” Sister Film What’s your favourite midnight movie? That one totally weird film you tell your friends about at parties, a vintage masterpiece that slipped through the cracks of mainstream culture, because it was just too strange to find a traditional audience, and instead found an unlikely cult following elsewhere. We’ve discovered a midnight movie that’s slipped under our radar all these years. It’s just as retro, hypnotic, and freaky as say, the cult musical Rocky Horror Picture Show— but you might even say it’s a little more chic? It’s called Dr. Caligari (1989), and it’s going to be our new favourite Halloween classic… The film basically revolves around Dr. Caligari, a sex-crazed mad scientist who performs experiments on her captive patients at the C.I.A (Caligari Insane Asylum). She swaps the mind of a cannibalistic serial killer with that of a nymphomaniac housewife. She’s prancing around in a shiny, bubble-gum pink ensemble on minute, and a canary yellow power suit with a Madonna-worthy wünder bra the next. So where on earth was the idea for this gem born, and how has it fallen into obscurity for even some the biggest cinephiles we know? Travel nearly 100 years back to the 1920 release of the German silent film Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari (The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari), which played one Paris theatre for seven co years. It’s definitely not the same comedy-erotica-surrealist-horror gem as its ’80s sequel, but it was a ground breaking work of German Expressionist Cinema, and is actually considered to be the world’s first real horror movie. When you look at the 1980s version, you feel traces of that same spirit in everything from the set design, to the ability to push the horror genre into revolutionary territory. The latter reason of which, we might add, is why the Caligari sequel fell into obscurity: it was just a little too weird. And one midnight movie pioneer, Ben Barenholtz, once said: “You can’t make a midnight movie; the audiences make a midnight movie.” Over to you. You can stream Dr. Caligari (1989) online on Shudder or via the AMC+ Amazon Channel. https://www.messynessychic.com/2026/10/28/13-things-i-found-on-the-internet-today-vol-781/ #rss #feeds #linksharing #qwibbit