Down By The River and the South Side, Peoria, August 2023

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…

Vine Street Over to Race Street, Over the Rhine, Cincinnati

“Lord, on this day of thanksgiving, we thank you for our loved ones, family and friends. We also thank you, oh Lord, that Chris has almost run out of photos from his trip back in August.” Heading down the hill from Clifton, passing through some other neighborhoods, I reached what I call “upper” Vine Street…

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…

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…

East of Downtown, Cleveland

Cleveland is much like St. Louis in that it is much longer than it is wide. In this case, however, the city stretches along a lake, and is longer east-west. St. Clair and Superior avenues in many ways are like the equivalents of North Broadway back in St. Louis, as well, passing through industrial zones…

The Terminal Tower, Cleveland

I want you to just take a look at the historic photograph above for a few minutes and just absorb what you’re seeing. In the background, Irish Bend and the Flats spread out in the distance, the engine house of the industrial heart of the city at its height can be seen, while in the…

The Flats, Cleveland

From what I understand, pretty much all of the lower Cuyahoga Valley, including Whiskey Island, is know as the Flats, which is the lowlands along the twisting course of the waterway that soon found itself clogged with boats coming to and from the many factories and distilleries crowding its banks. As you might imagine, it…

Melrose Avenue and Rosalind Place, Olde Towne, Toledo

I headed east of the cathedral next, driving down Melrose Avenue into the Olde Towne neighborhood, which was filled with more modest homes. Many were abandoned and there were also several vacant lots where houses had been demolished. As might be expected with a port on the Lake Erie providing access to the Northwoods as…

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…