We received a mysterious postcard at my office. Nothing sinister, but no indication of where it came from. It’s a picture of a church in the middle of a city:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/26303202@N08/2460186281/
Does anyone recognize this church?
Well, I can rule out Minnesota. Downtown streets are 30mph. This page on wiki shows rules out
Florida
Georgia
Illinois
Kansas
Massachusetts
Minnesota
New Hampshire
New York
North Carolina
South Carolina
The church shows leaf losing vines, so it isn’t somewhere from the warmer climes.
The pine on the left, I’m pretty certain, is a Larch.
* Larix laricina Tamarack Larch or American Larch. Plains of northern North America.
* Larix lyallii Subalpine Larch. Mountains of northwest USA and southwest Canada, at very high altitude.
* Larix occidentalis Western Larch. Mountains of northwest USA and southwest Canada, at lower altitudes.
So we can rule out the East coast.
The other foliage around makes me think midwest, but I have no facts to base that on. I’ve just been to enough towns in the midwest to get that feel.
This is probably nothing, but I immediately thought, “Helena, Montana” the instant I saw the picture. I’ve been through Helena and remember seeing a church similar to that. That was just one night passing through, 13 years ago, however, so I really doubt the reliability of my memory.
I’m pretty sure it’s a Methodist church, from zooming way in on the plaque on the wall. It has the logo of the church on it.
Are there any really tall condo towers like that in Helena?
Folks at the office were thinking west coast - Seattle, Portland?
It looks very familiar to me, and I’m moderately sure the reason is historic notability.
A couple of points:
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The key to identifying it is going to be the ogive-shaped plaque to the right of the door. The top emblem there is the United Methodist cross-and-flame logo. The text below it is just short of legible resolution in the maximum magnification I have available. Someone with Photoshop of one of its competitors might consider downloading the large size image and trying to zoom in on that plaque.
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The SUV in left foreground has a front license plate which is black numbers on a white background. While there’s no guarantee that’s a local vehicle vis-a-vis the church location, it is probably a good guess.
No fair, your link isn’t that hi-res! If you can see that, what colors are the license plate?
I scanned it in at 600 dpi and can say that, unfortunately, neither the plaque nor the license plate offer any clues. I downsized it to a 300 dpi .png file to put it on Flickr. I can’t even say for sure which state the license plate is from. The original is a 3x5 on Kodak photo paper, and fairly grainy.
I’m actually pretty sure that’s a Loblolly pine
Nevermind 
about the church–but I still say that’s a loblolly
Well, yeah. But where were you an hour ago? 
(Omphaloskeptic has it solved)
That’s a winner! Man, in less than two hours. Thanks, guys. So how’d you know?
I love how they photoshopped blue skies over the buildings in the background on their web page.
Here is a side view with the horizontally striped building in the background.
On edit…sorry Omphaloskeptic you had it covered completely!
If so, it’s quite far outside the normal area for this species. Here’s a map (PDF).
I found it with a Google Image search for church downtown historic methodist, so both your “Methodist” hint and Polycarp’s “historic” hint helped.
I bow down to your google fu skills.
Seconded. And no gradient, either, just a big ol’ slab o’ blue.
Wait, what? Are you talking about the main picture on the right? I’m fairly certain that’s not a Photoshop job. Speaking as a photographer, the sky is consistent with the lighting in the photo, and there is a slightly gradient from top of the sky to the bottom. There shouldn’t be a really obvious gradient in a photo like that.
Or am I looking at a different photo than you guys?
The one at the top left of this page.
And for the record, I doubt it was Photoshop, too. Looks more like Paint to me. 
Oh, that’s not the one I was looking at.
Yeah, that one ain’t right.