The last town heading downstream on the Des Moines River is Farmington, named after the one in Connecticut. Founded in 1839, around the same town as the other settlements in this area, there are some interesting buildings in town. The most notable is the L. Burg Block, constructed in rough stone in 1878 in the…
Tag: Banks
Late Summer Odds and Ends
I have some leftover photos from the summer that I needed to clear out. Above, this house has collapsed on West Florissant Avenue just north of Grand Boulevard in the College Hill neighborhood, unfortunately. The house below is in Hyde Park, and I originally looked at it back in August of 2018. The infamous gas…
Downtown Baden, July 2024
Responding to a reader critique, I headed back up to Baden recently, and in particular looked at the downtown area along North Broadway. The house above with its attached lot had not changed much. Many of the buildings north of there were still boarded up. This church was still looking good. The building below was…
Urban Renewal and Historic Preservation, Mason City
I mentioned yesterday when discussing the City National Bank and Park Inn that South Federal Street was a pedestrian mall, but that is not even telling half of the story! In one of the more bizarre urban renewal machinations I have ever seen, the pedestrian mall then turns into an actual shopping mall, known as…
The Park Inn and City National Bank, Mason City, Iowa
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,…
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…