Category: Contest

You have until noon on Tuesday to guess it. City and/or state first, then country. Please put the location in the subject heading, along with any description within the email. If no one guesses the exact location, proximity counts.  Be sure to email entries to VFYWcontest@gmail.com. Winner gets a free The View From Your Window book. Have at it.

A reader writes:

A couple of days ago Frum had a story about the slowing India economy. Your latest contest made me think that slowdown may be premature. I too looked at your contest photo and thought instantly it was India. But about 10 seconds later I discounted that when I saw the construction crane at the top left.  I did a stint over there setting up a call center in 2007 and took the attached photo from my office there. I watched every bit of steel and cement carried up 8 floors by hand by an army of workers who lived on site with their families in those shacks.  The photo was taken about 11 miles due east of contest's, in Viman Nagar, on the other side of Pune. Nowhere I travelled in India that year did I see a crane on any high rise development.

Another writes:

Oh. My. Goodness. I am kicking myself. I have spent almost my entire life in Pune before coming to the US and I'm a rabid VFYW fan.

Previously, I used to spend many hours trying to figure out window contests and even wrote an explicative-filled rant on how futile it is to spend hours searching for the window location (which you posted). I stopped cold turkey many, many months ago when I realised I was plain awful at guessing, and not well traveled at all. Since then, I have only observed the results and have not spent any time working on guessing the locations. 

This week's contest OFCOURSE screamed Pune – the dry, dusty landscape, the thorny trees, small maruti cars, the buildings and specially the hills in the background. I smiled nostalgically and thought "Ya right, Pune. Ha ha. It's probably in Africa like the Dar es Salaam window which looked like Pune". Recently, I even missed the Atlanta window, where I now live.  Sigh.

On a trip home to Bombay-Pune during Christmas, I was off the Dish for six weeks, but was reminded of it here, there and everywhere. I laughed out loud when I realised my backpack was called "Trig". Funny videos were always filed away as mental health breaks, and I was clicking views from my window where ever I went. Tons of them.

Above is one such photo we found in the Dish archives, labeled "Marietta, Georgia, 10.47 am, May 11, 2008". We didn't post it back then because we have a strict policy against views featuring animals, especially non-dogs. But consider this a consolation prize, dear reader.

A reader writes:

I knew you would hit us with something hard after a couple of less challenging Views, and you didn’t disappoint.  I feel we are in East Africa, based on the vegetation, metal roof architecture, small cars, and what appears to be a motorcycle graveyard. The construction suggests we must be in a growing capital or larger city, but one with space to move out into its hinterlands.  Dar es Salaam might work – it's booming and might have a wasteland like this on its outskirts – but in my self-allotted 15 minutes of Googling I am positively and absolutely uncertain.

Another writes:

Cedar trees, arid climate, signs of both rubble and rebuilding in the background, person with a full-length blue gown in the second-floor balcony, lots of scooters and subcompacts in the junkyard, illegible sign on the building appears to use a non-Roman script, the only visible license plate is white, skinny, and long.  I'm thinking Lebanon.  Since the window appears to be located in mostly flat terrain on the outskirts of a city, my guess is Haret Hraik, Lebanon, in the coastal plain just to the south of Beirut.

Another:

It looks like Beirut (which I just moved to six days ago), but I can't check on Google Earth for sure because the Internet connection in Lebanon is absolutely horrendous and I'd end up spending a week just to scan a few square kilometers. I'll go out on a limb and say it's in the Fern el-Chabbak area of the city.

Another:

I know it's not Palm Coast (or "Calm Post" as some refer to it), Florida; it's likely somewhere in the Eastern Mediterranean or North Africa. BUT! The scenery does evince Palm Coast – and many other Florida municipalities. Half-completed structures? Check. Abandoned automobiles in severe disrepair? Check. Trash? Check. Nobody around? Check. There's even a huge mountain of shit in the distance! (That'd be Daytona Beach.) And yes, I live in that area.

Another is correct:

I'm predicting this is one of the very few weeks where no readers are able to guess this!

I usually do my research by googling some key words that stand out about the place. Last week it was "historic wooden water towers" that brought me to Mendocino, but the only key words I can think of when I look at this is "craphole" and "sadness," which don't bring up the most helpful google image results.  I'm guessing Sombor, Serbia because the name just seems to fit the picture.

Another gets on the right track:

It is rare that I have ever looked at a VFYW and felt like I immediately recognized it. Today, I looked at the entry and thought THAT'S INDIA!

In the last few times I've visited India, I've been struck by how much open land exists and how rapidly it is being developed. The contrast between the buildings and the vast openness in this week's photo is similarly striking. The pink tint of the building on the right also struck me very Indian – the buildings are painted with such colorful hues of yellows, pinks and blues. But it feels like this picture could have been taken anywhere in the country. I've seen similar scenes in Bangalore, Chennai, Gurgaon, and Haridwar, because development is just happening where across the country.

Another:

Well, straight off I am sure this is India.  The smaller cars, the water tanks both in the workshop and out on top of the pink building (called Sintex tanks I think), and the arid topography screams India to me.  The hard part is to identify which part of the country.

After trying for many hours without much success to sharpen the letters on the name of the pink painted building to identify the language, which would be the big key to the geographic location, I am leaning towards three places. If the letters are of Tamil language, we are talking the outskirts of Chennai. If the letters are of Telugu language, it would be the outskirts of Hyderabad. If those are of Hindi language, I am in trouble, since that could be a lot of places in North India. For the sake of picking one, I am choosing the outskirts of New Delhi as my final answer.

Another gets very close:

I got hooked on to your blog a few years back when I was doing my Masters in USA. I am back in India (at Chennai) now. I have been waiting eagerly for the day when you will have a VFYW from India. God, I sure hope I am right. There are so many clues. The multi-colored small residential building, the black water tank in the car shed, the haphazard way the cars and bikes are present in the shed, the TATA cars in the shed, etc. Most of all, it is the building construction in the background. Wherever one steps in India, there are so many new ones showing up. 

My choice of Mumbai is just a shot in the dark, as it is the most populated city in India. This VFYW can be a snapshot of pretty much any place in India right now.

No one this week guessed the correct location, which is the village of Hinjewadi, on the outskirts of Pune, a city in the Indian state of Maharashtra. But the following reader had both the most proximate guess and the most precise analysis, so she wins the prize this week:

The cars and scooters are definitely from India. The writing on the pink building looks like devnagari script, which is the script of the language marathi used in the state of Maharashtra. The vegetation also looks typical of the region. The area is developing and looks like the outskirts of a second tier city. My guess is it is Nashik, which is developing rather quickly.

Details from the photographer:

Marriott Courtyard, room 215, Hinjewadi/Pune, India.

I captured the view while I was in India on a business trip – software engineer gets training.  India, or at least Pune … remains the same, in a fervor of change – major construction in all directions, most of it upward – and right next door a Socialist-era apartment complex, dreary as can be, and a hundred yards on a brightly colored temple, but no sign of the formerly endemic small phone shops, where you could go in and call someone for a few bucks, as the cellphone industry has wiped them out. To me it's inspirational, bewildering, exhausting, and, looking at the roads, just terrifying.

(Archive)

You have until noon on Tuesday to guess it. City and/or state first, then country. Please put the location in the subject heading, along with any description within the email. If no one guesses the exact location, proximity counts.  Be sure to email entries to VFYWcontest@gmail.com. Winner gets a free The View From Your Window book. Have at it.

A reader writes:

I haven’t submitted in quite a while, since it is so easy to get sucked in and spend hours combing the Internet. So I am going to put a time restriction on myself, and submit my best answer that I can provide in five minutes. This week, we are obviously in the U.S., if the pickups didn’t give it away, the U.S. flag did. Looks coastal, northern, so I’m going to go with a “Downeast” Maine fishing village.

Another:

I’m guessing Maine.  The cars parked on the right side, including the two heavy-duty trucks, make me think America and not Europe.  Foliage looks East Coast.  Vinyl siding is American, too. Colonial architecture.  Makes me think New England.  Maine has a ton of alternative energy, which makes me think those weird wood structures are mills of some kind.

Another:

I know it’s in the United States given the flag. Also, I bet it’s in the Northeast somewhere, given the vegetation and climate. But after that, I’m at a loss. But it sure sparked an obsession for me! I dare you to go to Google’s image search and look for wooden water towers and not get completely mesmerized by their strange beauty and variety. Then search for wooden water towers and find out why New York City has all those water towers atop their buildings (hint: it’s the pressure). I then found out about the water tower crochet cozy created by Robin Love (video here). Of course, part of this obsession could be because I’m a little stoned.

Another nails it:

This one was waaay too easy for me, a frequent visitor to the historic logging village of Mendocino, on the spectacular Northern California coast, some 3 hours’ drive from San Francisco.  The village is dotted with these old wooden water-towers, some of which have been adapted to other uses, in this case a gift shop. The photo was taken from the top floor of this handsome building, on the southwest corner of Ukiah and Kasten Streets:

The last time I was in Mendocino, a couple of years ago, the building was empty – there used to be a terrific art gallery on both floors.

Another:

For nearly 40 years, the Odd Fellows Hall housed the William Zimmer Gallery but now it is privately owned and available for special shows and events. It was the favorite gallery for our family and kids to visit in Mendocino because of its eclectic collections of art in many types of media (from furniture to jewelry and sculpture and all kinds of framed art). Mendocino has been an artist colony since the 1950s and now is a favorite weekend getaway for folks from the Bay Area and California’s inland towns and cities. In the late ’60s, it became a frequent destination for many alternative-lifestyle young people who settled there and have contributed to its amazing diversity and talents. The Mendocino Coast has wonderful restaurants and wineries and rugged coastal scenery, etc.

Another sends an aerial view:

Another does some reporting:

After narrowing down the possibilities based on the balcony railing, I googled around for tenants of the Odd Fellows Hall, and *gasp* phoned one of them. I just had a delightful 15 minute conversation with a woman named Janet who belongs to a non-profit community organization called FLOCKworks. After I told her a quick story about the Dish, and guided her to the VFYW post, she was kind enough to walk upstairs and determine the precise location of the photograph. She told me that it was the third upright of the railing from the southeast corner, and if the photo was taken recently, then it might have been just a few days ago, judging by the weather. Live, on-the-ground confirmation! I might actually win this one, huh?

Another:

I’m looking forward to reading the background information on the Odd Fellows and all the water towers in Mendocino from your other readers. This VFYW surfaced a memory from my high school German class, in the early 1970s. Our teacher used music to engage our interest, and one of the most memorable songs was Michael Holm’s German adaptation of “Mendocino” (fair warning: don’t click on this if you don’t want the song going through your head for the next few days):

Another:

I was just in Mendocino recently, and one funny thing I noticed is that they have pot dispensaries open to the (viewing) public, and if you order $200 worth of product, you get a free pizza delivered to your hotel!

Another:

Thanks for this View From Your Window.  It brought back some great memories of a trip to California, including Mendocino, in 2005.  During this part of the trip we stayed at a ocean-front B&B in Elk, and had taken a trip to Mendocino on the day that Katrina hit New Orleans (that memory, clearly, was not-so-great). The water tower building in the center of the view is a gallery called “The World of Suzi Long,” Mendocino. Here’s a photo of Suzi (who’s probably getting barraged with phone calls today).

Another:

I know I have tough competition this week because this particular photo on Panoramio received 184 views over the weekend after averaging less than one view a day for the previous month. Thanks for a fun, easy contest to come home to after spending the holiday weekend out of town.

We actually received more than 300 entries for this week’s contest, the vast majority of them Mendocino.  Of the dozen or so correct guessers of previous difficult contests, one of them stood out as having entered dozens of contests over the past few years without securing the prize. So she wins this week:

When the VFYW contest started, I spent way too many Saturdays (and sometimes Sundays) searching, and had to cut myself off. I decided to look every week and satisfy my obsession by guessing and waiting for the answer each Tuesday – I’d pursue a location only if I knew what it was. A short while ago, I was embarrassed when an intersection very close to where I live in Los Angeles was featured and I guessed the Mediterranean. Since we have similar climates, my guess was understandable – but still cringe-inducing. My excuse: it was taken from a tall building I drive past but have never been in, which looks over second-story tennis courts. (I grew up in New York City, where elevated vistas are the norm. In many parts of Los Angeles they are breathtaking exceptions.) Last week I was sure we were in one of the small towns dotting the Northern Californian coast, but was too busy meeting a deadline to go traveling.

When I saw today’s contest image, I recognized Mendocino, CA immediately. I could smell the ocean and feel the chill of fog – I have visited close relations who live in the area, for decades. Intrigued the Dish has offered up two West Coast locales in as many weeks, I dusted off my VFYW skills and went Googling. The search was a bit more challenging than expected mainly because the fuzziness of the close-up satellite view made identifying a round roof opposite a garden difficult. I stumbled on the shot below in Google Images. It almost has the same POV, but the photographer misidentified the street as Lansing. A real estate listing led to the corner of Kasten and Main Streets (the white building on the far left nearest to the water) and I walked up from there to Albion.

My answer: The VFYW photo looks onto a stretch of Albion Street, just east of the intersection of Albion and Kasten Streets. It was taken from the second floor of the Odd Fellows Hall – 10480 Kasten Street. According to the Mendocino Beacon, it is “historic…(1878) and also known as the William Zimmer Gallery (1960’s-2000). Now privately owned and loaned to community art groups for special shows and events.” The photo below shows the back end of the hall, or the end furthest away from and facing the water.

I have guessed correctly in the past and was always excited to see near-misses published in the Dish. I hope I win, but if I don’t at least I’ve had the pleasure of engaging in the hunt and visiting one of my favorite parts of the West Coast – without losing all of Saturday.

Exact details from the submitter:

The image was taken from the Odd Fellow’s Hall on the corner of Kasten and Ukiah St in Mendocino CA. I was on the second floor over looking Ukiah Street, towards Albion and further out, Main. The garden in the center belongs to the MacCallum House, a very nice upscale bed and breakfast place. The water tower is a signature of the village. There are many around, as water is scarce, even though the town sits on the ocean. Some of the towers were converted to living spaces, I don’t believe that there is any working. This tower is the home to Suzi Marquess Long Gallery at 611 Albion Street Watertower, Mendocino.

The Odd Fellow’s Hall use to be the Zimmer Gallery, but now it’s more a public art space.  I’ve enclosed an image from the Library of Congress database that I marked up as to which window I was standing in when I took this photo:

Mendocino was founded by New Englanders who built homes in the style of fishing villages from that area in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Many of the fine Gothic style homes have been converted into bed and breakfasts. The city boasts some great restaurants, shopping, galleries and just plain sightseeing. You can go out the headlands (literally across the street) and watch for whales during the annual migration. The town boasts of having one of the oldest houses of worship for Chinese in the US, as well one of the oldest continuously-used Protestant churches in California.

Mendocino has also been used extensively as a backdrop for movies, starting with “East of Eden” with James Dean. More recently, it was used as the home of Jessica Fletcher for the “Murder She Wrote” series and for the Mel Gibson movie “Forever Young”. However, my favorite movie was “The Russians are Coming” with Alan Arkin – 1965.

(Archive)

You have until noon on Tuesday to guess it. City and/or state first, then country. Please put the location in the subject heading, along with any description within the email. If no one guesses the exact location, proximity counts.  Be sure to email entries to VFYWcontest@gmail.com. Winner gets a free The View From Your Window book. Have at it.

A reader writes:

Looks like Maine, but really could be almost anywhere along the New England coast. So I'll take a stab in the dark and say Kennebunkport – Bush was in the news this week, right?

Another writes:

Well, from the architecture and the construction of the bridge, it appears to be Northern California, one of my favorite places on the planet.  I'm entirely devoid of Google-Earthly skills, so this is a complete guess, but it sure looks like Bodega Bay, where Hitchcock shot the gas station fire in The Birds, looking north from the ocean side.

Another:

Oh, if I didn't have to crank out a bunch of work this week to make up for Memorial Day coming up, I could spend more than two minutes looking at the photo.  That being said, I lived in Seattle for about 10 years and it looks a lot like the Puget Sound/the San Juan Islands.  Maybe Friday Harbor? Wherever it is, it's making me homesick.

Another:

It actually could be any location along the Oregon or northern California coasts – that bridge just reeks of Highway 101, as well as the blue building in the background. But I don't have all day to obsess over Google Maps, so I'll just throw my dart at Coos Bay, Oregon as a placeholder, mainly because it doesn't look like Florence or Yachats. Maybe Lincoln City. Probably not Astoria.

Another:

For the first time, I knew instantly where the view was: looking north toward the Highway 1 bridge over the Noyo River toward Fort Bragg, California. Just north of the town of Mendocino, this former logging town is home to the Skunk Train, MacKerricher State Park, and lots of pick-up trucks.

Another gets cute:

Cialis, a quaint seaside village:

For once, a VFYW that wasn't hard. I'm sometimes stimulated to search the net for an entry, but this time it just came. I hope you're able to open the photo showing that special spot from which the photo is taken. If not, let me know – I could always copy it from my hard drive onto a floppy disc.

Aaand another:

The geography and architecture are both 100% Oregon Coast, and the closest bridge resemblence I can find is the Yaquina Bay Bridge.  I am going to guess Newport, OR, somewhere along SW 26th street.

Close. Another nails it:

This one was easy for an Oregonian! I guess I'm aiming for the fastest response prize, since I won the book two weeks ago. This is a view north from the deck of the Admiral's Suite, top floor at the Channel House B&B in Depoe Bay, Oregon. The bridge is a distinctive icon for people who know the Oregon Coast. The photo on their website shows the bathtub that is also seen in the VFYW image.

Another gets to that link through a different path:

Looking for "semicircular bridge" got me the phrase "arch span bridge". Googling "arch span bridge" got me to the Depoe Bay Bridge. Google-imaging the bay got me to Ellingsworth Street. Which I thought was pretty good, but my boyfriend pointed out that, with a little more sleuthing, we could probably zero in on exactly where the photo was taken. And ten minutes of clicking around later, we found this, which appears to be the room from which that photo was taken.

Another gets more detailed:

The bridge is a dead giveaway for anyone who has been to Oregon, as it bears the clean lines and arches that are the signature of engineer Conde McCullough, who designed a score of bridges for US Route 101, along the coast. A bit of image searching for his bridges, looking for one with the arch purely underneath the roadway, and running through a town, reveals this to be in Depoe Bay. Some Street View and hotel searching reveals the View to be from the Channel House Inn, 35 Ellingson Street, Depoe Bay, Oregon, 97341. Looking at the photos from the Inn's website, we find two suites that each have a hot tub on the balcony with a spout in the same configuration as in the View. These are the #1, the Admiral's Suite, on the top floor:

and #3, the Whale Watch suite, on the second floor.

Given the height of the View, looking across the roadway to the building on the other side, I would opt for the higher suite (#1, the Admiral's Suite). Photos by someone who stayed in this suite match up nicely to the View, even to the detail of the widths of the shingles. Here is a nice photo from outside, the red rectangle showing the openings that can be seen in the View of the balcony of the Admiral's Suite at the Channel House Inn:

Another:

This week's photo was obviously taken somewhere in the Pacific Northwest. At first I figured it would be located further south, maybe near Coos Bay, but after starting my map search at the south end of the state and working my way north, examining each coastal settlement with a smallish inlet and bridge close to the sea (Curry County, Coos County, Douglas County, Lane County…) I hit paydirt with the open-spandrel arch bridge at Depoe Bay. And though I was happy to not have been forced to run the same exercise going south (California is a lot longer N-S than Oregon!), I also kicked myself a little given my having driven over this span numerous times in the 20 years I've lived in Oregon. Here's another view of the same bridge taken from a similar (if somewhat lower) vantage point:

Another:

After spending more time that I'd like to admit scouring pictures and maps of the California coast, looking for that distinctive bridge that would seem right at home in Big Sur, we found the Channel House Inn in Depoe Bay, OR. An assist should go to Alaska's long days and interminable twilight, as we didn't realize just how late we were staying up, fixating on a photo.

The Channel House is at 35 Ellingson St, just off the channel to what the Depoe Bay Chamber of Commerce says is the "world's smallest navigable harbor." After perusing Tripadvisor reviews and some photos on the hotel website, we have come to the conclusion that the view is from the Admiral's Suite, located on the top corner of the north wing. (see photo). Or it could be the Whalewatch suite, beneath the Admiral's. But we're going to go with the Admiral's, and hope that the VFYW submitter was "CyberTrucker" or "BikerbabeofBend" who stayed in the Admiral's suite and also submitted some Tripadvisor photos. Here's our chosen window, looking back across the channel:

This may have been the easiest contest yet, consisting of more than 250 entries, the vast majority of them correctly answering Depoe Bay. But only a handful of readers have correctly guessed previous windows without winning, and their entries are seen above. Among them, the reader who has entered more contests than any other – about two dozen – is the winner this week: his initials are T.F. 

Another reader:

Filmgoers should also recognize the spot. Depoe Bay is the site of the fishing expedition in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.

More fun facts:

If local trivia counts for extra points, the Spouting Horn is just to the north, a geologic oddity on the rocky shoreline that, because of it's funnel-like shape, can shoot huge spumes of water up in the air during the storms that come rolling in every winter. Further local trivia: Depoe Bay used to be the (probably tertiary or beyond) summer home of Angelina Jolie!

Another local:

Just behind the pillar is a whale watching center where, if you are lucky, you can spot the spray from passing pods of Gray Whales.

Another:

My wife grew up south of there, and it is equidistant between where I hunt ducks to the south and pursue the rare chum salmon on the Kilchis River that flows into Tillamook Bay (home off the famous cheese) about 45 miles to the north. On the east side of the road lay about 20 tourist shops and Gracie's Sea Hag restaurant, which isn't the worst place for fish and chips and a pint after a rainy Oregon morning standing in a river.

Bonus footage of the bay we found while unsuccessfully searching for that scene from Cuckoo's Nest:

(Archive)

You have until noon on Tuesday to guess it. City and/or state first, then country. Please put the location in the subject heading, along with any description within the email. If no one guesses the exact location, proximity counts.  Be sure to email entries to VFYWcontest@gmail.com. Winner gets a free The View From Your Window book. Have at it.

[Winning entry updated below after a technical glitch]

A reader writes:

Haven't got a clue, but I do know that its sufficiently dreary that I'd be gobbling Prozac by the handful if I had to live there.

Another:

Helsinki, Finland? Combination of abundant but empty parking space, the dull newer building on the right, some pastel-colored '30s buildings on the background and no oversized cars .(+ nicely trimmed trees neatly in a row).

Another:

I grew up in Toronto. There are many beautiful areas – the downtown core, the waterfront, even the neighbourhoods of single-family homes that were quickly built after World War II. But the boom in the Seventies means that there a whole lot of ASS UGLY ARCHITECTURE, especially in more suburban parts of the city. Combine that with the sky being grey for roughly nine months of the year, and the city can get incredibly dreary.

Another:

Thank goodness for sick days; they finally give this overworked architect time to enter his favorite contest! Of course it's America – the honeycomb freeway retaining wall says that. The hemmed-in transformers by the highway screams Northeast Corridor (as does the traditionally dense apartments building on the left) while the near empty expanse of parking suggests that this is either student parking or a long-term commuter lot. Combined with the bland brick high-rise on the right with the TV tower in the background, and it's within 250 miles of NYC for sure. Since being sick frees one from the drudgery of work, I'll also free myself from the drudgery of Google and Bing maps and just take a stab at Hartford, CT.

Another:

Top of mind guess again (no Google): Feels like we are near a North American airport – overlooking a Park-n-ride with newly constructed freeway beyond, with some shuttle vans visible on the highway, and tell-tale green directional road signs visible.  I think I’ve seen that highway retaining wall pattern before, but it’s probably a ubiquitous style and I’m just now noticing.  They just built some new highway connectors into the Seattle Airport in Tukwila, so I’m going with that (even though the trees don’t quite look big enough and there are no conifers).  I fly through SeaTac enough that if the View is from Seattle and I don’t guess it, I will owe my daughter an ice cream.

(And thanks for publishing our View from Costa Rica last week.  Always a thrill.)

Another:

Today's VFYW contest photo has to be in Atlanta!

When I saw it, I immediately thought of the various routes I used to take home each day when I worked in downtown and lived in Poncey-Highland. A little bit of time on Google Maps leads me to believe the photo was taken from the Citizen's Trust Bank building on the corner of Piedmont Ave. and John Wesley Dobbs Ave. looking east over the parking lot towards the Downtown Connector (Interstates 75 & 85). Hope I'm right!

You are. A map from a reader:

Another writes:

I immediately noticed the boat-shaped roof of the MLK birthplace reception center peeking out from the trees in the distance.  That is the downtown connector / 75/85 in the foreground cutting straight through Sweet Auburn, home of the Ebenezer Baptist Church.  From a quick look at Google Maps it appears this was taken from 95 Piedmont Ave, on the concrete campus of Georgia State University.  Among other things, Planned Parenthood is located in this building.

Another notes:

The grey triangle in the middle right of the picture is the roof top of Ebeneezer Baptist Church, Martin Luther King Jr's church, where the pastor on Sunday will be discussing gay marriage.

This week's winner:

This view includes "Sweet" Auburn, once the heart of black commerce in Atlanta and was home to Martin Luther King's Ebenezer Baptist Church, now under the care of the national park service and recently restored to its early 1960s condition. King sermons play on a continuously and one can sit in a pew and imagine what it was like to be at the epicenter of the civil rights struggle in the early '60s. His home is just up the street, as is a civil rights museum and the King Center, which once housed his collective papers but is now simply a large memorial after the family auctioned them off.

The area fell into decline after desegregation provided more shopping  and housing options and the massive 75/85 "connector" cut the neighborhood off from downtown. However, it has revived in recent years with some excellent restaurants and gentrify whites and blacks moving in. My family and I had coffee at Contesa in the white and black building in the top left corner of the VFYW before heading west to take this picture:

The city is in the middle of building a streetcar on Auburn and Edgewood Ave. (a couplet) so that tourist can better access the area from downtown and Centennial Olympic park, former site of the 1996 Olympic Village and future site of said King Papers. They are to be located in a new civil rights museum next toe the World of Coke Museum on land donated by Coke. It is in someways an apt metaphor for Atlanta, the city "too busy to hate."  In the '60s local business leaders pushed for peaceful integration of city schools for fear of becoming like Alabama and driving away northern capital and now saved Kings legacy for the city, largely to boost tourism.

Details from the photographer:

I was so excited when I checked the blog this afternoon to see you picked my Atlanta picture as this week's contest. Turns out Tuesday is my birthday, so reading the guesses will be a great present! Your readers are so amazing at this game. I attached a picture showing the window in case it is close:

This is from google street view on Jesse Hill Jr Dr look at the back of the building at 75 Piedmont Ave.  The window in question is on the 7th floor in between the elevator shafts. I have circled it in red. (I am guessing a lot of readers will guess the 8th floor since that is where Planned Parenthood have their offices in Atlanta.)

This building is now a mix of medical offices and services for Georgia State University, but it was built to be the Citizens Trust Bank headquarters. Citizens Trust, started in 1921, was one of the first and most successful African-American owned and operated banks. They helped Blacks buy houses in White neighborhoods and financed some of the first middle class Black neighborhoods in Atlanta. Coincidentally they loaned the money to Ebenezer Baptist Church to build their new church, which can be seen in the distance of this picture.

(Archive)

You have until noon on Tuesday to guess it. City and/or state first, then country. Please put the location in the subject heading, along with any description within the email. If no one guesses the exact location, proximity counts.  Be sure to email entries to VFYWcontest@gmail.com. Winner gets a free The View From Your Window book. Have at it.