Robert Pence

Beautiful steel work.

Looks like a pleasant, liveable place, especially in the warm seasons when everything is leafed out.

I really like these. The camera's limitations and the dreariness of the day work together in many of them to convey a sense of rust-belt grittiness that one probably would not get from razor-sharp, perfectly exposed photos. In the fifties and sixties and possibly later, Tower was Sears, Roebuck & Company's store brand for optics, photo equipment, and drafting instruments and related gear. Some of their store-brand products were quite excellent, some less so.

Very nicely done!

You may not be able to comprehend the extreme nature of the stench. Because I recycle and don't consume a lot, it may take two or three weeks to accumulate a bag full of trash. In that amount of time, the ammonia fumes build up to where they burn my eyes when I open the lid. If I were a big guy, I'd likely grab the offender and stuff his head into the trash cart to help him gain a little empathy.

I live on a primary dog-walking route to a city park, and have to deal with dog crap every time I mow the lawn. I've considered buying a supply of poop baggies that I can hand out to the clueless owners who will let their dogs poop in my yard while I'm outside watching, and then walk on without picking it up. Almost as bad, in my book, are the ones who bag the poop and then deposit it in the nearest resident's trash cart. Because I don't have alley access, that trash cart usually is mine, sitting on the patio just behind the corner of my house. It can get really nasty, especially in summer. A "No Pet Waste, Please" sign gets ignored, and it takes a scrubbing with bleach to get rid of the stench. To top it off, some stupid a**holes can't distinguish between trash carts and recycling carts (different colors), and put their dog-poop baggies in my recycling cart. When that happens, sometimes the guys with the truck don't pick up my recycling behind. Maybe when I see it I need to be "crazy old man" and chase them and throw the baggy at them. I can't run fast any more, but my aim still is pretty good.

A very respectable-looking downtown befitting a state capital.

Is the 75mm lens on the Rolleiflex you mentioned earlier? The twin-lens Rolleis were/are magnificent cameras.

Excellent site with good photos and lots of info. Thanks for the link.

Routing more freight through Fort Wayne might offer some interesting options, although likely Norfolk Southern already takes advantage of those. At East Wayne Yard in New Haven there's direct connection with Norfolk Southern's former Wabash main (Detroit - Kansas City), and on the west side of town there's a connection with the line that goes to Cincinnati (Queensgate) via Muncie. There's also interchange with the former PRR main; if I remember correctly and if it hasn't changed, that line (Crestline OH - Tolleston IN) (NW Indiana near Chicago) now is owned by CSX, leased to Rail America, and operated by Rail America's wholly-owned subsidiary, CFE (Chicago, Fort Wayne & Eastern). I think NS already has trackage rights over CFE. Most of the street crossings in Fort Wayne are grade-separated, but I can think of five streets/roads with significant traffic volume that could bring a head-butting contest between the city and the railroad over who pays for congestion mitigation (probably grade separation). I think in most of those cases the railroad was there first, and the city probably would lose.

Not to take the thread off topic, but that reminded me of my experience. There were other outifts, too, that sold repackaged expired movie film. In the early '80s I bought some color film from Seattle Film Works; they offered both negatives and transparencies, plus a new roll of film returned with each processing order. They loaded Kodak 35mm movie film into 35mm cassettes. No telling how old that stuff was when they sold it, but it sure faded terribly before not too many years had passed. I have Kodachrome and Ektachrome that I shot many years before, that have held up much better than that stuff.

... and two cyclists riding against traffic, despite the fact that there's an opposite-direction lane on the other side of the street. I see that frequently and I want so badly to stop them and explain things to them, but the guys I see doing it usually are roughneck types who could and probably would pound my a**. Edit; Add the observation that these two are wearing dark clothing at night and riding with minimal or no lights. Maybe Darwin will right the situation.

Not the way it's practiced by many of the "professionals" in both print and broadcast media nowadays.

I fixed numerous broken links in my photo set on page 1 (Reply #23).

Your photos are high quality, and they capture well a different era. It's particularly evident in the amount of activity and number of people in the last one. In the late sixties and early seventies as my lifelong love for bicycles and bicycling intensified, I found myself going outside Fort Wayne to look for good bikes. Bicycles here were mostly an adjunct to toy stores, where old ladies would sell you a bike if you wanted one, but they really didn't know anything about them and the selection was mostly limited to kids' bikes with cantilever frames, balloon tires, and Ashtabula cranks. The nearest real bike shops were in Lima (Charlie the Bicycle Man) and Dayton (Steve's). Steve's was out on Salem and was perhaps the best source in the region for quality components and custom frames from builders like Eisentraut, and I remember that in the mid- to late-seventies it was a going business in a decent neighborhood. After an absence of perhaps just a year or two, I returned to find the store with plywood over most of the windows and bars on the door. He was still in business but on a reduced scale and with more emphasis on screen-printed team apparel than on bikes. I don't know what drove that neighborhood off a cliff, but it certainly happened quickly.

Thanks, James, you're in the right place to post your photos. Following up on ink's suggestion in another post about combining multiple photos into one post, I sent you a personal message with info explaining how to do that while keeping the narrative with the photos. I hope that's helpful.

Not a good idea to run toward something that everyone else is running away from! You could have been fried by downed wires, and the danger would have been even greater if the ground/pavement had been wet, either from rain for from leaking fluids from a vehicle.

Welcome to the forums. From your narrative, I'd guess you've documented a substantial amount of downtown Dayton's history over recent decades; I encourage you to share some more photos, and perhaps that will jolt some other forumers out of their torpor and garner some interaction.

As a kid in school during the McCarthy era, as a whippersnapper in AFROTC in college, and later as an enlisted man in the USAF, I heard teachers and other speakers rail about why homosexuals couldn't be trusted in positions of national security because they couldn't control their sexual urges and were easily lured into compromising situations. This latest incident is just one more in the litany of recent possible security breaches involving sexual impropriety, and in every case I can think of in recent years the incidents have involved heterosexual misconduct. I think we have proof enough that heterosexuals cannot be trusted with national security. Perhaps they should be banned entirely from military service and law enforcement. Maybe from teaching, too, because they can indoctrinate children with their misleading bias.

Inspiring and hopeful narrative. Through difficult decades Youngstown has managed to preserve much of its excellent civic and urban bone structure, and it's good to see that the area's economy may see significant growth.

Festive!

Welcome to the forums; I look forward to seeing more of your photos. You have an eye for interesting scenes and good compositions.

I haven't been to Cincinnati since the new tower was completed, but it will take a lot to displace Carew Tower as my favorite. It has a full-sized, open-air rooftop observation deck, and at street level the period decor would be hard to surpass. It's opulent and fabulous almost beyond words; only photos can come close to conveying the real-life impression. Nice work!

Looks like a fun and worthy heritage celebration. I hope it continues and grows in popularity.

Please allow me to add two from 1988: