BigDipper 80

Great photos! Cleveland is incredibly lucky to have an asset like Playhouse Square. Such beautiful theaters.

It's great to hear all of the reinvestment that Quicken/Gilbert are pumping into downtown. One of my close friends used to work in one of Quicken's buildings on Campus Martius, and he always tells me how dramatically things have been changing down there recently. there really are some incredible buildings, and it's great that Gilbert cares enough about his city to buy out half of downtown. I really hope something fills in that empty lot on Woodward. There was a nice outdoors-apparel shop across the street that was quite nice, and I would have liked to window shop more if I had had the chance.

See Part One here:http://www.urbanohio.com/forum2/index.php/topic,29127.0.html A few more photos out and around downtown Detroit. There are so many architectural gems, and I definitely want to come back when I have more time to thoroughly explore and photograph the place. Another mostly empty skyscraper. The area around the Stott Building needs a lot of work, as you'll see. Does this park have a name? I think every building around it was empty. Such a nice building, and graffitied to death. Grand Circus must have been really impressive back in the day. More graffiti in beautiful buildings. I hate to see all of it going to waste. Are there plans for the big empty plot in the bottom left? Looks like there are steel beams sticking up out of the garage. This stretch of Woodward is actually very nice. I love long unbroken stretches of mid-size buildings. Looking north towards Grand Circus I believe. Well except the cold, apparently, seeing as no one was out and about. I actually like the Book Tower. It's so weird and topheavy but it's really unique. It's a nice church, but I feel like having tall buildings on all sides of the park would have been more impressive. The same thing always bothered me about Old Stone Church in Cleveland, too. I need to get in here the next time I come back. I'd love to see the auditorium and lobby. Speaking of Detroit theatres, I'd also like to find the theater-garage that everyone has a bunch of photos of. The only view I got of the skyline as we headed toward New Center. Hopefully I'll get some better shots if/when I return. I love the skyline from this angle. New Center, along with Midtown is on my list of places to explore next time. There's so much that I just didn't have time to see. The Fisher Building says goodbye! Thanks for looking!

The craziest thing was that this was the same day as the St. Patrick's Day marathon. There were a few stragglers in green running garb, but by and large downtown was empty. I was shocked at the lack of people hanging out after the run.

I'm not terribly familiar with the city's geography, but are there neighborhoods outside of Downtown that aren't just blocks and blocks of tract housing built for factory workers? I've been under the impression that most of Detroit's outlying neighborhoods were lacking in the "built environment" department, and that "quality" local business districts like you'll find in other older cities are hard to come by. I'm sure they have them, but how would they compare to, say, Gordon Square in Cleveland or Ludlow Avenue in Cincinnati?

Detroit intrigues and baffles me unlike any other American city. Its woes are well-documented and I'm far from an expert (and as of last week I have only been there once), but getting to actually visit the Motor City is just... powerful. Her downtown still has a veneer of grandeur, but it's incredibly sad to see how much has just been left to rot. But I'm not here to speak bad about the city as countless others have. I really do wish the city the best as it navigates through bankruptcy and hopefully emerges stronger because of it. I only had a couple of hours to explore downtown, unfortunately, but I definitely want to get back soon to see even more. On to the pictures! I've walked less than a block from my car and already my jaw is on the floor. The sheer quality of downtown's building stock is unbelievable. I don't know any other city outside of perhaps LA that has such high-quality and high-quantity Art Deco. With names like Campus Martius, it's clear that Detroit was striving to be America's industrial empire. I adore the Cadillac Tower. The Wayne County Building, which is surprisingly (unsurprisingly?) empty. I can't believe that such incredible spaces are just completely empty. But then again, OTR was left for dead too... The RenCen looks good on its own, but I think that from most angles it ruins the skyline of the city. I'm not impressed with Dtown's skyline from this angle at all. But from most other angles, it's spectacular. Especially looking south, or east from Midtown. I don't know why, but I hadn't expected Windsor to have such a sizable collection of skyscrapers. I highly doubt that fixing up Hart Plaza is high on Detroit's list, but it clearly hasn't been touched in decades. Which pretty much sums up everything owned by the city- every cop car we saw had peeling paint and a really old "Detroit Police" logo on them. But like I said, cosmetic concerns are not exactly priority here. I wanna say that the guy who had designed the World Trade Center did this building, but I'm not sure. The Spirit of Detroit I'm about to go a bit crazy with pictures of the Guardian Building. This might be my favorite interior. Even more than the Arcade. The elevator bank. Stuff like this can't and won't be built any more. And it's a crying shame. Why people settle for suburban crap is beyond me. Spectacular. Looks like a Tiffany window, but I could be wrong. I've been told this is all Rookwood tile. The gate that separates the lobby from the main (former) banking hall. I actually gasped when I saw this room. Completely spectacular. From what I understand, most of Detroit's neighborhoods are pretty architecturally unremarkable. But if you only looked at Downtown, you'd never even guess. The sheer level of details is unbelievable. There's still a Part 2 in the works, to come in the next couple of days. Stay tuned for some more incredible architecture and random musings and observations from my visit. Please feel free to chime in! I'd love to hear your thoughts/experiences with the city.

I've always wondered why the decision was made to direct Vine's through traffic onto Jefferson. Were there any other reasons for the realignment or was it designed mainly to contain UC and bring a major street a few blocks closer to campus? At any rate, I hate the MLK/Vine/Jefferson intersection.

Absolutely incredible! Some absolute gems in there. I would never have known that those were photos of Superior if that wasn't the title of the thread! I'm just amazed at how wide that street is! Four streetcar tracks! I don't know enough about Cleveland's street plan - was there a reason for making so many of downtown's roads being as expansive as they are, or was that fairly typical for cities during the time period?

^^My first thought was "no way", but that quickly gave way to "well, it is Japan we're talking about" and a quick Youtube search put that to bed. It looks even weirder than its already-odd premise lets on to. I'd probably try it out though!

I took this trip nearly a year and a half ago, but I figured that I might as well show off some of the thousands of photos I took while I was in Japan. It was around 5 in the morning when we took the train from Haneda to Shinagawa Station. The flight from Cincinnati to Tokyo is LONG. So this was on the train... Even the Japanese want crappy American food from time to time. Near Shinagawa station. 日本かわいいな〜 Tokyo is home of the Epic Commute. I was staying about 45 minutes outside of the "core" by train, and even that far out the trains were standing room only each morning. Anyway, August is Festival Season in Japan, and this was a random festival in the town I was in. Yoshinoya (and beef bowls in general) are delicious. I could see this type of restaurant doing very well near a college campus in the States. Never an empty train platform in Tokyo. Harajuku Station. The architecture in Japan is... weird. Very concrete-y. Most of it is ugly. But Japan is more about the people and the culture than it is about the architecture, especially the postwar stuff. Lots of pedestrian streets. Walked this arcade every day. It's perfectly normal to have a 250-foot tall roller coaster next to your baseball stadium in the middle of the city. Second tallest thing that mankind can currently go to the top of. Tokyo Station is buried between those skyscrapers somewhere. No idea who that kid is. I just wanted a picture of the Hachiko statue but he insisted on being in the photo, so I obliged. Japan. 3,000 people cross through here every time the light changes. Rush Hour at Shinjuku Station, the world's busiest rail station. Japan loves Pikachu and the rest. I still find it incredible how efficient the rail system is there. The commuter rail lines (like this one) run as frequently as most subway systems. Bento on the bullet train to Kyoto. Somehow they figured out how to make water into shapes as it falls. Kyoto Station is massive. The convenience stores over there blow the pants off anything here. This is a pancake filled with butter and syrup, and it came with a little packet that would warm up the pancake when you took it out of the wrapper. If you read the Plain Dealer's Travel section with any regularity, you might recognize this picture from last April. Beautiful. Tokyo Station is the only train station that actually looks as such. The rest are essentially giant mazes buried under even bigger department stores. Think Penn Station but with about 300,000 more people at any given moment. It's that tall thing again. Okonomiyaki is pretty great. Sorry, Quan Hapa, yours isn't as good as the actual Japanese one. Density. As seen from the top of Toyko Metropolitan Government Center. A street in the town I was staying in. I use the term "town" lightly, as this particular town is home to 180,000 people. Everything is so easy to walk to in Japan, it's incredible. Although even the newer suburbs like this one are built without any grid system so the streets wind around haphazardly, but it makes walking places much more interesting. The Chiba Monorail, and my first suspended monorail ride. Japan was the only country to figure out monorails. I took this bad boy back to Haneda on my last day. Nicest airport ever. Clean, functional, modern. Plus it has an observation deck. Los Angeles, I think. St. Louis, I think. Correct me if I'm wrong. That's about it. I've got tons and tons more if there is any interest in seeing a little bit more by anyone.

Sounds familiar... It's unfortunate that such things have to happen to these projects. Thanks for sharing, T_C_K.

Is the University Circle rink still made out of that plastic "fake ice"? We went there back in 2011 and it was the worst rink I ever tried to skate on. We waddled around on it for a few minutes and just called it quits and went to Mama Santa's instead.

It was delicious, as always! I'm a big fan of B Spot. One of the area's best burgers. Honestly, the Prospect/Ontario intersection wasn't terribly architecturally interesting to begin with, so it isn't a huge aesthetic loss in my opinion. I completely understand why people are opposed to it though - we'll see if it has a negative impact on the streetscape. Let's hope not.

Thanksgiving allowed me to venture up from Cincinnati to the Great White North to visit with the family over the long weekend. I hadn't been downtown in nearly a year, so I managed to drag a few friends along to get caught up in the holiday festivities at and around Public Square. This was the first time I had seen the completed Convention Center, and I have to admit, I rather like it. Very unobtrusive, and the Mall looks great now. That's some nonstandard English right there... Your money is safe with them. Cleveland has some magnificent interior spaces. I'm still not used to it being FirstEnergy Stadium. Superior basking in the warm glow of a slowly setting sun. The line for the free carriage rides was insane. Wrapped down Superior and around the corner at E. 3rd. The perks of being an oil monopolist. I really wish I had a better camera than my point-and-shoot. Everything looks grainy at full size and less than perfect lighting. I think my one of my favorite things about E. 4th/ Euclid is the great signage. Such a lost art these days, and it really makes the corridor feel "urban" and alive. LOVE the new 5th Street Arcade sign. It was good to see so many people wandering the arcades on Small Business Saturday. I miss the big airships that used to hang over the atrium. Hey there, beautiful. I love the architecture along West Prospect, but it really isn't terribly pedestrian-friendly. Very monolithic and beige. The new Horseshoe skywalk. I want to go into this building some time. Hell, I want to go into a lot of Downtown's buildings some time. This could have been a nice shot down Prospect, but someone decided to build a skywalk over the intersection. At least Horseshoe put some window displays up. They were rather nice. First time in Old Stone Church. Lovely space. It's been a long time since I've seen Tower City this busy. Makes me miss the Warner Bros. store and the Train Store. The Terminal Tower is a leg lamp this year. Happy Fourth of... er... Merry Christmas! I really wish this one would have turned out, but it's dangerous to spend too much time in a crosswalk. Goodnight Cleveland! Off to B Spot for dinner.

What a beautiful city!

Great photos! I love Aqua- it's one of my favorite "new" skyscrapers. It's been way too long since I've been to Chicago, and this makes me want to get back even more!

USA: GCRTA (Cleveland) COTA (Columbus) Metro (Cincinnati) Amtrak Canada: Translink (Vancouver) Japan: JR East (Tokyo, above-ground rail lines, incl. Tokyo Monorail) JR Central (Kyoto, above-ground rail lines, incl. Shinkansen) Kyoto Bus (can't remember the company name) Tokyo Metro (Tokyo, subway) Toei Metro (Tokyo, subway) Yurikamome (Tokyo, people-mover) Chiba Monorail (Chiba, suspended monorail) Tokyo's mass transit is amazingly extensive and is by far the most efficient transit system I've ridden on my otherwise very short list.

I haven't posted any photos in a while, so I figured I'd share a few that I've taken over the past few months: Not downtown, obviously, but I couldn't help but throw in a few Kings Island photos: Playing around with Panorama: I shared this one before, but I touched it up a bit, and it's one of my favorites anyway. Thanks for looking!

I have had a lot of time over the past few months to explore downtown Cincinnati and a handful of its surrounding neighborhoods. I'm always surprised at how well this city photographs. Let's start downtown, shall we? I'm going to try and group photos by their geographic location as opposed to the date taken, so don't be too surprised by the bipolar skies. A little crooked. Alas. Still to come: Aerial views from the top of the Carew, Union Terminal, and Over-the-Rhine. Also, a quick question: I have noticed that photo threads that are broken up into multiple parts are sometimes given separate threads instead of uploading the next batch of photos to the original thread. Is this typical/recommended, or is it more up to the preference of the OP?

Great photos! I love the shots of Terminal Tower with the Goodyear blimp.

Fixed! :-P Thanks for the comments everyone! I'm glad you've liked the photos.

Hey all, This is my first time posting to Urban Ohio, though I've been reading the boards for a few months. I'm from Cleveland but currently attending the University of Cincinnati, and I love both cities dearly (like everyone else here!). I recently got a new camera, a Canon ELPH 300HS point-and-shoot. Nothing too fancy, but I've been playing around with it a bit recently to see what it can do. It does a good job for a point-and-shoot, I'd say. Anyway, on to some photos: What a lovely city. When viewed from above, Over the Rhine really looks like an old-world European city. The Roebling Bridge, looking lovely as usual: I was not expecting a fireworks show, but it was the night of the Reds home opener, and I was treated to a nice surprise. At any rate, it let me play around with my shutter speeds, something that my other ancient point-and-shoot was incapable of. Unfortunately, a lot of the shots came out a bit blurry, because I had accidentally turned off the two-second delay that allowed the camera to steady itself after I pushed the shutter. Thanks for taking a look! I hope some of them came out decently!