The public housing down by the river, which I first spotted way back in December of 2008, are finally being demolished. I had discovered they were built when Peoria demolished the red light district where Richard Pryor had grown up. The new buildings going up are nice, and they even feature the latest navy blue…
Tag: Modernism
Maplewood Avenue, Mount Auburn, Cincinnati
Somehow accidentally wandering down the hill from the summit of Mount Auburn, I stumbled upon Maplewood Avenue, which contains one of the most amazing collections of Queen Anne Style I’ve ever seen. I would like to know the story behind the Swiss chalet, but after that begin the Queen Anne, some with a simple palette,…
Reading Road, Avondale and the Riots, Cincinnati
I’ve looked at Fourteenth Street NW before in Washington, DC, and probably elsewhere, so I was interested in what had become of Reading Road in the Avondale neighborhood of Cincinnati. High up in the hills, there were two riots, one in 1967 and then less than a year later in 1968. The first one revolved…
Roman Catholic Cathedral of St. Columba, Youngstown
While the parish of St. Columba, an Irish saint, dates back to 1847, you don’t have to be a historian to realize this is not the original structure of the Cathedral of St. Columba. In fact, if I counted right, the current cathedral is actually the fourth church. Stridently Modernist, it was completed in 1958;…
West of Downtown, Part Two, Cleveland
Just west of the Flats is the Ohio City neighborhood, which of course takes its name from the fact that it was once an independent town in competition with Cleveland across the Cuyahoga River valley. The West Side Market was opened in 1912, and designed by W. Dominick Benes and Benjamin Hubbell; I have to…
Other Fall Updates, Fires, Demolitions, Etc.
It finally happened, the Mullanphy Emigrant Home, which I last looked at back in June of this year, caught on fire and burned to the ground on the night of September 14th. There is certainly no grand conspiracy, but simply the fact that overnight lows reached 50 degrees, and a squatter’s fire probably spread out…
Down by the River, Detroit
Let’s walk from the Campus Martius, named after the famous field in ancient Rome where soldiers trained (it later filled up with temples such as the Pantheon), and part of the original Woodward plan of Detroit and walk down the street of the same name towards the Detroit River. It’s here that I spot some…
The Grande Ballroom and Grand River Avenue, Detroit
One place I wanted to visit in Detroit was the Grande Ballroom on Grand River Avenue, northwest of downtown. While the building has been abandoned for decades, it once played a pivotal role in the development of rock and roll, particularly as it was where the band MC5 played early in their career. Other very…
River Rouge
I’ll be blunt: I was deeply concerned by my visit to the famous River Rouge area, a short drive just south of Detroit. First, a bit of clarification is in order; there is the actual town of River Rouge, which is located along the banks of the Detroit River, and includes the mouth of the…
Former Packard Plant, Detroit
A visit to the former Packard automobile plant is de rigueur for any architectural historian or any lover of abandoned buildings. While Packard closed in 1956, the complex was never truly abandoned, as far as I could find, until 1999. As so often has happened, a manufacturing plant with an august history was relegated to…