We found ourselves in Macon, in Northeast Missouri recently, and I wanted to check up on the downtown area. It had been sixteen years since my first and last visit to downtown Macon, and I only posted a few pictures: some pealing lead paint, and a Beaux-Arts and a Modernist bank. I dug these photos out of the vault which I never posted the first time (tomorrow I’ll post the photos from my most recent trip, sixteen years later).

Perhaps what I found so interesting about my first visit is just how intact the street wall was along the main east-west thoroughfare of Vine Street, which terminates in a T-junction at South Rollins Street just north of a major railroad line.

There was a mix of occupied and abandoned buildings. Remember that gray Italianate building on the right below!

The remnants of decades of new coverings show below: we see deep, rich red Vitrolite, and then some sort of other covering on top that is now falling off.

And slipcovers, those vinyl and steel coverings that hide historical facades, are everywhere. This cool Italianate storefront below made it out without being covered and just its windows being covered. It very well could have been manufactured in St. Louis.

Back behind were weed-choked gravel lots.

And lots of abandoned, but beautiful cast iron fronts.

Every town had its opera house or theater.