This Post is for Rand Elliott
Ignore the parade, Rand, it's the buildings I know you're interested in.
I’d like to thank my good friend Doug Loudenback who discovered this photo and posted it on his excellent history blog, www.dougdawg.blogspot.com.
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Comments
Because of my nostalgic tendencies, I can’t help but getting a little pissed off every time I see one of these old photos from downtown. All the wonderful old buildings that are gone and now…replaced with, parking lots, empty lots, etc. Perhaps the silver lining is all those missing teeth provide room for creativity and innovation with new designs from Rand and others…
see the sidewalks? they used to make ‘em big, because they were NEEDED. they were used by an extinct species called “pedestrians.” now we have something much better: “traffic arterials”.
4th and broadway. see the opubco building? many a grand sidewalk has been chopped away to make room for auto lanes, like the one in front of my office.
Thinking on my earlier comment a bit more. A city like, Paris, for example, has done a wonderful job of preserving all its Hausmann style buildings and grid that was created in the 1800s. However, it is now at a point where the city is very much caught up in its own entropy. There is so much blank canvas in our CBD that many cities don’t have. The new Devon tower comes to mind. It’s quite possibly one of the best remedies to the mistakes in the earlier urban rewnewal efforts that we’ve seen.
I totally agree with David about Broadway – how amazing it would be for street life in downtown if Broadway today looked more like it did then.
The street seems to only have two lanes, not four. Could that be?