Jeff

This town has some nice sksycrapers..that deco one is good, but that tall brick "sliver building" is pretty unusual as it is so thin. What was the deal with Jackson to get these tall buildings? Good questions...and I share them. I bet a good place to start for an answer is the old WPA guide to Michigan, which, if is like the Ohio guide, will have a history of the city and its 1930/40 population as well as discussion of its economy/industry.

The shovelnose aticulated streamliners are the first diesel streamliners, the Burlington Zephyrs, running usually between Chicago and Denver and Chicago and the Twin Cities. The Milwualkee Road, which is the railroad I grew up with, had its custom-built Hiawatha streamliner, which was the Burlingtons competition on the Chicago-Twin Cities route during the 1930s (in steam). Also competing for the Twin Citys traffic was "Chicagos Railroad", the Northwestern with its "400" streamliner ...all these regularly clocked 110 MPH. ...the "Twin Cities 400" and the Union Pacific/Northwestern "City of Denver" with an early version of a diesel, from the WWII era, early dieselization. Also, at the end of the '30s. this electric streamliner started to run between Chicago & Milwaulkee. The design was based on the Burlington Zephyrs. It came into Chicago via the Loop. It is said it was like taking the L to Milwaulkee, except with a parlor and dining car. ..this train ran as late as 1964 (between Chicago and Milwaulkee).

A zepplin docking station in Cleveland?

I think we all underestimate the fear people have of downtowns or "the city". I ran across this thread about someone wanting to go to Canal Street Tavern in Dayton, over at the political board ":Democratic Underground", asking for advice: Being Cautious in Dayton ...its interesting to observe the undercurrent of fear or wariness the posters at that thread have. And this is supposed to be a left-liberal site. I was shocked to find this with my parents, too, talking about downtown Louisville. They had went to a sister citys event in some skyscraper downtown and said they didnt feel comfortable or safe walking back to the car. This was a pretty suprsing statement coming from them.

Some good pix here. Thanks! The issue with Columbus is that, due to this fee program by Irwin Miller, the city has a lot of public and insitutional buildings of high quality, and that is what sets it apart. Not so much the town itself, which is fairly nondescript. There are some recognized masterpieces there, too, like that first Saarinen church, some of the Cummins facilities, the library, and so forth. A lot of the firms & architects that worked in Columbus where pupils of Saarinen, or where influenced by him. The Saarinen church had a very subtle design. The "sunken garden" next to it was supposed to be a reflecting pool, and the concept is that the sunlight playing on the ripples in the pool would reflect through the windows into the sanctuary, giving a sort of shimmery light within the church. The Cummins HQ downtown, built around the old mill, and their factory south of town, built into a forest, with a parking lot on the roof, and a wooded glass-enclosed courtyard in the middle, are some great modern buildings that really elevate the experience of the office and shop floor for the workers.

In the article, Forest Park sounds a lot like Park Forest....yet from what I recall it seemed to be pretty nondescript suburbia...nothing as generous as Greenhills with the open space, or planned as well. Speaking of Greenhills....ironic that here at Urban Ohio, with this surfeit of planning and architecture students, no photo threads on one of only three New Deal greenbelt communities....yet its right next door.

Because it makes more sense from a marketing standpoint to target numerically larger demographic groups with high disposable incomes. Gays are small community percentage wise, and really are not that well-off (contrary to stereotype), so wouldn't be as good a target market. Besides, it would be politically controversial to target market to an unpopular minority. Anywhoo, I think it makes a lot of sense to target to an empty-nester older market, particularly since these people may have had some famliarity with urban living when they where younger...sort of a"Come back home to the City" type of pitch.

This is sort of a dead issue at the state level here in Ohio, as the constitutional amendment cant be repealed by the lege, or the governor. Blackwell could put Strickland on the spot with a "what if" question, asking if he would have opposed the ban back when it was being voted on. I dont know if Strickland took a position on the state referendum or not. His no vote on the Federal ban should turn off some values voters, though (whether or not this really is that salient of an issue anymore is a good question, though).

Very nice shots...good eye for detail, there, Dffly. That interior is fabulous, esp since it seems pretty intact, too.

...welcome to Dayton. @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ I checked our local PBS affiliate schedule and it doesnt appear to be on as a broadcast, so I guess I will need to get the DVD. Sounds like something pretty relevant for my part of Ohio, too.

Dont forget Augusta and that ferry and the mobile homes on stilts. A railroad passes throught it, and it has Amtrak service (The Cardinal?), but town was more a river port and connection via trail and turnpike to the Bluegrass interior. If one was travelling by steamboat it would have made sense to disembark at Maysville and then take a stage south to Lexington, as that would have been the direct route, before the arrival of the railroad. There was a famous controversy (to US political history buffs) around the "Maysville Turnpike veto", where the Jacksonian Democrats where fighting the Whigs over federal funding of "internal improvements"....one of them being an improved turnpike from the Ohio at Maysville inland to Lexington. Maysville was back in the day a big burley tobacco market, and the tobacco warehouses are still there, I think. Ripley, across the river but further west, was too. The burley variety was developed, I think, in southern Ohio. Inland from Maysville and Augusta are two very interesting little county seat towns..Brookville and Mount Olivet. They are set on top of ridges and follow the ridgelines, sort of an American version of the European hill town (I am probably over romanticising these places, but they are neat if one likes the rural and rustic picturesque).

One of the best river towns on the 8-Ball Highway. I love Maysville! This town is just great...check out those antebellum rows, and the high victorian redbrick splendor! Come back in the late fall and winter, to see how the town climbs the hills on narrow streets (one does see a bit of this on the later pix). It took so long to reach the top of the bluffs that a second town developed up there, Washington, which has a collection of of old log houses (the original county seat of Mason County). Maysville, back when it was called "Limestone", was a port-of-entry town to Lexington and Bluegrass during the frontier era.

Looking at the pix in the thread header Im reminded of that area south of the Chicago Loop..toward McCormick Place and Prairie Avenue, before it was gentrified. This neighborhood really does have a "Chicago" feel to me (maybe its the snow and the big brick factorys). Also, this is pretty close in, it seems, based on the pix showing Cleveland State in the distance. I guess this would be some of the older housing stock in the city, huh?

bump...apparently they added another venue and more bands.

That was my experience with Toledo, too. I was expecting something more akin to Dayton, but the place was even more dead ....when I was there (which was over 10 years ago). I think C-Dawg had posted some info on the nightlife downtown elsewhere on this board, too, If I recall right.

Thats interesting. I always wondered how they measured the results or outcomes of all this. Ouch! (but a pretty good series of articles. I've read in some economic history how patent generation, combined with entrepeneurialism, really led to takeoff in urban economys...particulary Dayton in the 19th and early 20th century)

AK needs to somehow decertify the union and proceed with a nonunion workforce. They already are operating nonunion, they just need to make it official.

Moving here from California, which really does have that "have a nice day" pleasantness to it (as long as you are outside of the San Francisco area, which has some of the rudest people ever), coming to Ohio was a bit of shock as it wasnt so much rudeness as just glumness, grouchyness, or the "I dont give a shit" attitude that I encountered in the Dayton area with the local help. I am probably used to it by now, though.

Damn, Vega, not bad at all! ...remnds me of Demuth a bit or Feiniger.

The Riverfront Plaza and Belvedere. I knew it in an earlier version, as it appears to have been recently remodeled. There is a long history behind it. The first plan was to do a “City Beautiful” type of park, sort of a Grant Park approach, along the river. This was in the 1930s. Then in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s Reynolds Aluminum was going to put their corporate HQ there, with a big marina and apartments as well as offices. This was nixed by the COE due to navigation issues. Reynolds then relocated to Richmond, VA. Finally in the late ‘60s this Riverfront plan was finalized, designed by a Greek planner named Doxiades. I think it was opened in 1972. The buildings around it...the two high rises (Galt House and..at that time.. Louisville Trust), the low rise (American Life), and the tall black tower across Main Street (at that time First National Bank), where all built at the same time, so it was this coordinated urban ensemble. The loss here is that the oldest skyscraper in Louisville was torn down in the process (at 4th and Main), as well as two blocks of old cast iron storefronts along Main. During the 1970s Riverfront Plaza was a popular festival site, sort of like what is happening on Newport By the Levee, with ethnic festivals, bluegrass concerts, outdoor concerts by the orchestra, and so forth. It was the centerpiece of downtown until they built the Galleria. This and the wharf down on the river was about the only public access to the river downtown as the riverfront down there was all bulk terminals, scrapyards, Port of Louisville warehouses, railroad stuff. Really grungy and chaotic. The Belvedere as I remember it had this plaza with a reflecting pool with a decorative wavey/watery terrazzo design. The step up to the river (to clear the interstate) happened via a set of fountains and waterfall and this walkway made of “concrete lilly pads” (or you could take the ramp). This was a popular feature…and the fountain at the top could go pretty high, and was lit at night. So the fountains and waterfalls and the surrounding buildings worked together to create this modernist urban square. They would also drain the reflecting pool during festivals and use it for seating for a stage (this was where the orchestra peformed). In the winter the pool was an ice skating rink. To the west, beyond an arcaded walkway was a green space. There used to be these curvey walkways and little trees there (how they got these trees to grow is beyond me as this is on top of a parking garage). This was the “quite” informal area, though they sometimes had stages and a “beer garden” there during the festivals. At the west end was an admin building and police station, which had a great stained glass wall. Walking north, through or past the fountains & waterfalls, one arrived on the Belvedere, which had a nice view over the river and bridges and down to the wharf. There is a connection now, but that is new and wasn’t there when I lived in Louisville. Looking down toward the river are these bulkheads to protect the Belvedere and I-64 supports from runaway barges. These where planted with some sort of hardy shrub or ground cover (honeysuckle?) so they wouldn’t look so stark. Lots of people call them the “giant planters”,but that’s not their purpose. The Clark statue was originally located in the green space area, but was relocated when they remodeled the place. Heres’ a quick diagram or plan of how I remember this place (but I didn’t show the paths in the green space area). And a section diagram on how the design had to overcome the floodwall and rise over the interstate (and a railroad, too, at that time). I think it was a pretty clever solution to a tough site. And some pix. The one on the right is the original concept, while on the left are what its like today (apparently they still use it for festivals). The vacant area to the south of the green space was supposed to be apartments or offices and such…there where different plans…but they ended up putting that awful Kentucky Center for the Arts concert hall there, which killed the space. I think the Riverfront Plaza and Belvedere have been superseded by the big new Riverfront Park running to the east of the wharf. I guess we can expect some Louisville pix from you soon, now that you have arrived across the river! ;-)

That is sort of what the priority board system does in Dayton.

Liz Bloom. I have actually met Liz Bloom, and her husband, at a party in Dayton thrown by a homosexual aquiantance of mine. She lived across the street from him the the Five Oaks neighborhood, when she was planning director in Dayton and working on their "20/20" plan. I am a bit leery of planning and its results (though I like the colorfull maps and graphics planning produces). Cincinnati does have a long tradtiion of leadership in city planning as I think an early landmark comprehensive plan was developed for the city in the 1920s, I think.

I'm not really sure if Colgate is in Clarksville or Jeff, but yeah..the place is a landmark. The bridge you walked across (occasionally people commit suicide by jumping from it) is the 2nd Street Bridge, or Municiple Bridge, or the Clark Bridge. I think most folks call it the 2nd Street Bridge. It has those art deco pylons with the carved fasces at the approaches.

Nothing could be more different from whats across the river than Southern Indiana and Northern Kentucky. That hotel area where the high rise is at and the Kingfish (which is pretty sad if anyone remembers the original faux riverboat Kingfishes..this is a local chain in Louisville)...well that is all pretty recent. As late as the 1980s that stretch of the river, west of downtown Jeff and the Big Four Bridge, was really rustic and wooded, with some river rat houses, but very underdeveloped. Clarksville really doesnt start until the other side of the levee, and the town looks to be mostly 1920s at the oldest...there is no true riverfront in Clarksville. Truley Gertrude Steins saying about Oakland applys in spades to Clarksville...there is no there there...the place is mostly suburban developement. (though there is this really neat natural history museum or interpretive center at the Falls of the Ohio..an interstate state park jointly run by Indiana and Kentucky (the falls are in KY, while the mainland part of the park is in Indiana). Jeff itself is pleasant as it has a fairly nice riverfront, where they use a floodwall rather than levee, so parts of the town are on the 'wrong side" of the floodwall, sort of the like The Point in Covington (but not as old or dense). The Indiana side was a big steamboat building center, mainly Jeff and New Albany, and there is still that big JeffBoat shipyard east of downtown, where they build barges and towboats, and a barge line is HQed in Jeff, too..American Barge Lines. JeffBoats predecessor was Howard Shipyards, and the Howard Mansion still exists, as a "Steamboat Musuem" The inside has all sorts of gingerbread made by Howards shipbuilder/carpenters. Jeff's other claim to fame is the original town plat, which was by Thomas Jefferson hisself. The plan was a checkerboard, if you can visualize a red& black checkerboard as a plat, but with all the red squares as parklan or open space. So this would have been one of the more unusual town plans since Savannah, but it was never followed, with the open squares being replatted for town lots. For the Southern Indiana town of some size one has to go over to New Albany, which is sort of off to one side, below the falls, sort of across the river from the Portland neighborhood in Louisville. Also that big bridge that is going to be turned into a pedestrian walkway (the Big Four)...there was a proposal from the early 70s to hang prefab housing units on it, sort of like those old bridges in Europe that people live on (like the Ponte Vecchio in Florence). A truely outside the box idea, which even made it into a bood, Unbuilt America. Other quirky things in Jeff...the old state prison turned into a Colgate/Palmolive soap factory (with the big clock)...the old quartermaster depot with its brick quadrangle, turned into a big flea market.

...yes I enjoyed very much! Thank You! ... It looks like they pretty deep into those lots to do demolitions, too. I would think these would be good infill opportunities should OTR ever become a popular area to live again. As it is those blank walls and empty lots give some of those pix a vaguely "South Bronx in the 70s" look. I liked the backrounder on the planning history for Liberty....that 1940s master plan looks like it had something in mind for Vine Street, too. The theses has a bar chart showing total building coverage of Over The Rhine (I guess with CAD it is possible to do this type of anayses) in SF for the various periods. According to the chart the 1991 coverage was equivialant to that in 1855, with 1891 being the peak year at around 6,000,000 SF. 1855 and 1891 are around 4,000,000 SF.