Wow, things sure have been changing along Utah Street in Benton Park! The corner storefront above, which had been baby blue for a long time, has been rehabbed. Amazingly, the ghost sign was preserved when the presumably latex paint was removed. Great job! And this little duplex, when I wasn’t paying attention, was rehabbed a…
Tag: Second Empire
Fairfield Avenue, Newport, Kentucky
We’ve looked at Newport, Kentucky, across the river from Cincinnati before, but this time we’re going to look at Fairfield Avenue, starting at Ward Avenue and heading east. As I’ve said before, one of the great tragedies of St. Louis and its relationship to the Metro East is that civic and business leaders have not…
Vine Street Over to Race Street, Over the Rhine, Cincinnati
“Lord, on this day of thanksgiving, we thank you for our loved ones, family and friends. We also thank you, oh Lord, that Chris has almost run out of photos from his trip back in August.” Heading down the hill from Clifton, passing through some other neighborhoods, I reached what I call “upper” Vine Street…
Glenway Avenue, East Price Hill, Cincinnati
Wow, East Price Hill is up a really steep hill! And again, just like over at Mount Auburn, a funicular railroad gave residents the ability to settle this neighborhood in the Nineteenth Century. I started at the intersection of Warsaw, Glenway and Seton avenues where they merge with Quebec Road. East Price Hill has been…
Auburn Avenue, Mount Auburn, Cincinnati
Mount Auburn? That sounds interesting, I thought to myself, and then discovered that there was a historic site related to future president William Howard Taft. After taking a terrible photo of his boyhood home, I photographed many of the houses along Auburn Avenue, which follows the crest of the hill. The siting of Mount Auburn…
Downtown, Part One, Cleveland
Downtown Cleveland is tucked into a triangular wedge northeast of the the Flats, in perhaps what is the closest physical relationship of an American city’s core to its industrial heart. Much of the western part of downtown is preserved, but it should be noted there are still entire large city blocks that are parking lots….
Vistula Historic District, Toledo
Down by the approaches to the Veterans’ Glass City Skyway Bridge is the Vistula Historic District, which retains some amazing architecture. The majority of my photos are from along East Superior Street. Platted in 1833, Vistula was originally one of two towns, the other being Port Lawrence, that combined together in 1837 to form the…
Collingwood Boulevard and Ashland Avenue, Old West End, Toledo
South of the cathedral on Collingwood are a whole bevy of interesting houses, and a nice change of pace from Detroit’s architecture in a neighborhood known as the Old West End. This first mansion is the Edward Ford House, and like so many gigantic manses, was repurposed as an institutional building, becoming the Red Cross…
Former City Hall and the Wayne County Building, Detroit
Keen observers might have wondered what that Second Empire building in the foreground of that historic photo of the Penobscot Building was. That tower and Mansard roof belonged to the former city hall of Detroit, ignominiously demolished against the wishes of a majority of citizens in 1961. Designed by James Anderson, it opened in 1871….
Corktown and Environs, Detroit
I was driving around in the Hubbard Farms and Mexicantown neighborhoods, and I snapped these photos. I also spotted the Michigan Central Terminal off in the distance; we’ll come back to it in a bit. But then I finally found what I was looking for, which is the Corktown neighborhood, which claims to be the…