Vincent_G

Thanks for these two posts on Jersey City. I have always been confused by the geography of that place, though. The waterfront is not the part of town that would traditionally have been thought of as downtown, is it?

Thanks, MayDay. I'm glad to get your take on Indianapolis. Even though I have never lived there, I have spent a lot of time there over the past 20 years and find it interesting. The area around the convention center has grown from a convention-oriented complex into a district of its own. It makes plainly apparent the centrality of this industry to Indianapolis. I would agree on your mixed feelings about the convention district and the rest of downtown, but I do like that the downtown is surprisingly compact for a city that, overall, is sprawling. It is obvious that the downtown has been getting a lot of attention for a long time, and I think the scale of Monument Circle, despite the grandeur of its centerpiece, is very appealing to most people. I agree that the urban appeal of Indy drops off outside downtown but would not agree that it disappears completely. There are many interesting corridors and neighborhoods before you get to the Columbus-style ring city along 465, where a building like the downtown Hyatt would not seem so out of place.

Maybe they're not tied together all that well, but I think there are many interesting places in Indianapolis outside of the Mile Square. Four examples, some of which overlap, are Broad Ripple, the art museum's 100 Acres (and the art museum itself), the Monon Trail, and the Indianapolis Art Center. I would also say that, although it is certainly not entirely pedestrian friendly, Indianapolis is an interesting city to walk around in.

I love the old Knapp's building. I was worried that it had been torn down.

Overall, very depressing, though it's better than Dayton just altogether disappearing.

Thanks for the pictures of that beautiful day last week. I rode the Red Line in from Windermere that morning and noticed how great everything looked under the snow cover. I guess the difference was that the snow was so much heavier than usual.

Thanks, Jaybird. I appreciate a Buffalo post by someone who is really familiar with the place.

Thanks! You can't beat the Electric Tower!

Jeffery, from my perspective as a native Syracusan, I think the topic you raise is very interesting. In Cities of the Heartland: The Rise and Fall of the Industrial Midwest, Jon C. Teaford explains that the opening of the Erie Canal in the 1820s across upstate New York was what began to shift growth from the cities of the Mississippi River system to the cities of the Great Lakes, which partly explains why Cincinnati and St. Louis had a head start over the cities on the lakes. The Erie Canal was also one of the factors in New York's rise to preeminence on the East Coast, because it suddenly had the best access to the interior. The canal was the reason that the upstate cities grew to the sizes that they did and why so many of the villages in the canal corridor have "port" in their names. Rochester is unusual among the Great Lakes cities, though, in that it grew up on the falls of the Genesee River and then the canal, rather than because of its position on one of the lakes, and thus does not have the typical rectangular format of a lakeside city.

Wow. That's really sad.

Very nice. I love Clark Avenue.

Wow! Beautiful.

Beautiful but sad.

I'm worried about what might happen to the Leer Tower.

I like Akron, and, as someone mentioned, it is remarkably not rundown for an Ohio city. There is a lot of evidence of dismantlement in and around downtown, though, and, although Akron is very lucky to have the university so close to and integrated into its downtown, the university has a typical (for a large institution) bulldozing attitude regarding its surrounding neighborhoods. The city has enough going for it to put together an interesting overall vibe and yet it doesn't quite have one. I often travel the 39 miles to Akron for specific reasons--to see a show usually--and never feel as if I am in an uninteresting place. The city has many attractive elements--I could list a dozen without even thinking about it--but it has not managed to assemble the elements into an overall magnetism.

Very nice. I love that little crocus.

So beautiful.

But the new Amtrak station will be at St Paul Union Depot in 2012, followed by the Red Rock Corridor and Rush Line Commuter trains. Metropolitan Council (the regional planning folks in charge of the metro) has a clear plan that involves both cities quite equally. They just began with the Hiawatha Line because it was guaranteed to be a success and got the people familiar with Light Rail. Then they added the Northsar Line because it was the shortest and easiest line for them to construct, and it connected directly to the Hiawatha Line. Now that people are familiar with both types of rail transit, they're going to start cranking away on the rest of their regional plan that definitely includes St Paul. Check out www.metrocouncil.org Thanks. I am glad to hear that Amtrak will be relocating to Union Depot in St. Paul. That is a good and valid question. Weather is certainly no excuse. On the other hand, I would like to come to Cleveland's defense and point out that, unlike the Twin Cities, Cleveland has had rail transit, in one form or another, continuously for more than one hundred years.

I like the Riverside Towers. I know that Minneapolis and St. Paul are not really twins, but it seems strange that Metro Transit is so heavily focused on Minneapolis. St. Paul seems to be treated like just another suburb. I know the Central Corridor will go through St. Paul, but even that will be oriented to the Minneapolis hub.

Thanks, Bob. Your posts always make me homesick for my years in Fort Wayne. I remember going to see Rear Window at the Embassy in early 1990, after I had just moved to town.

One interesting piece of information I recently ran across regarding the SA&K Building, shown in image no. 39, is that the lower four floors were built in 1869, with the top three being added in 1894. The building is now known as City Hall Commons and is used for city offices.

Beautiful.

Quebec City and New Orleans are by no means interchangeable. There are some similarities. Both are old by North American standards, and each has its own kind of city walls. Both have significantly influenced the history of this hemisphere, and, sure, each wears a French influence on its sleeve. You should really visit both if you have the chance. As I have said, despite its imperfections, I love New Orleans as a place, but it is not only the place, but also the long, long and truly unique story of the place that make it fascinating.

Yes, I didn't mean to suggest the city is intact, but some of its neighborhoods are.

I love New Orleans, despite all its baggage. It's different from other places, and I think it it's beautiful in a way that makes you realize that cities are ephemeral. Some of the old wooden buildings look as if they are made out of colored sugar and paste and that the water would could just wash them away when it gets ready to. This post makes the point that much--not all, but much--of what has been built in New Orleans since 1950 looks awful or at least insensitive to the surroundings. By comparison, the city looks more intact in Ink's Faubourg Marigny post.