Moving west of downtown to the oldest part of Cairo, we spot the Queen Anne house with the onion dome turret (second photo), which I photographed back in 2014. Nothing to the east of it is still standing.
See that vacant lot above in the left foreground of that ranch house? That was a huge church a decade or so ago.
Beyond a doubt, our walk down 8th Street was the most sobering part of our trip to Cairo. It was only early June, and while admittedly it was a wet spring, the remaining houses were shrouded in such thick undergrowth I felt like I was in the tropical rainforests of Guatemala looking for Mayan ruins.
Yes, there are houses in all of these photos.
I always feel like I see this generic industrial building below with its rusty gate all over America; what is up these?
Looking back to the east you can see the Gem Theater and the eastern levee that holds back the Ohio River during floods. This is a skinny spit of land; I’m taking this photo almost all the way to the Mississippi River dyke.
We walked down Cedar Street, which is the westernmost street that curves along the edge of town and then turned east down 6th Street.
Maybe this house below is occupied? I’m not sure.
Then we get back closer to Washington Avenue with its busy cut-through traffic.
I work at a supply company that occupies one of those generic industrial buildings you mentioned. We are in industrial/plumbing supply. The answer to your question is that steel buildings and metal fences are cheap and secure, two things a business owner is very concerned with. The reason they look junky is presumably because they are a B2B businesses so they don’t need to look nice for an end-consumer.
Ah, thanks for the insight!