Frank Lloyd Wright’s last surviving hotel, the Park Inn and its adjoining former City National Bank building, have been immaculately restored in Mason City, Iowa, and I had the opportunity to see and stay overnight at this amazing landmark in early July. Located at the southwest corner of West State Street and South Federal Street,…
Tag: Banks
Commercial Avenue and Environs, Revisited, Cairo
Well, there certainly has been a lot of changes along Commercial Avenue, the main street of Cairo, since the last time I was here. First of all, we’re down to two buildings on the east side of the street, when there were four the first time I visited. I suspect there will be none soon….
Macon, Sixteen Years Later
Fast forward to February, and I was back in Macon for the first time in sixteen years, and this is what I saw. There were some fresh coats of paint, here and there. The former bank building has a new business in it, which I learned was originally the Macon Building and Loan Association, later…
From the Vault: Macon, Sixteen Years Ago
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…
Downtown, Alton
We’re going to swing back through Alton for a few days. Like Hannibal, Quincy or even Cairo, and a bunch of other towns, I can’t help but imagine that except for a few twists of fate, Alton could have been the center of a metropolitan area of two million people, or at least maybe a…
Demolition and East Alton
Learning that the Citizens’ National Bank was going to be demolished, and hoping maybe I could coax some important architectural elements from the crews working there, I headed up to East Alton on a recent Saturday. East Alton is an interesting town, with parts from the Nineteenth Century but also with clear signs of a…
The Penobscot Block, Detroit
Time to move to downtown Detroit, and start with one of the most interesting square blocks in the United States, the Penobscot Block. Like all good things, it was the result of the accretion of decades of history and multiple building campaigns by disparate developers. This first building of the ensemble is the 1905 Penobscot…
LaSalle Street Revisited and the Art-Deco, Chicago
I looked at LaSalle Street briefly back in June of 2008, taking photos of the Rookery, Chicago Board of Trade and another bank. In July of 2008 I featured a skyscraper that had been “chopped off” and replaced with a more modern tower. But let’s look at the Rookery first, which like the Wainwright Building…
Central Park, Galesburg, Illinois
Look at the above postcard from the late Nineteenth Century, with a view down Main Street, which we looked at yesterday. An intact, intimate urban space with even a streetcar going by. It’s not like that anymore. As we walk down Main Street in Galesburg, crossing over Cherry Street, we see the parking lots and…
Gravois Avenue From Bates Street to Gertrude Avenue, Bevo
Gravois Avenue in Bevo has one of the best preserved commercial strips in the city, and I took a stroll along it a couple weekends ago. Further up Gravois, southwest and northeast of Grand Boulevard, the avenue is scarred by parking lots for car dealerships, while in Bevo there are only a couple, thank the…