Posted October 9, 201113 yr The best BURB of the BURGH. This building... is gone This building was recently demolished for greenspace The once-dirty Jefferson County Courthouse... ....is looking great
October 9, 201113 yr Wow @ the new color schemed for the bridge and courthouse renovation! "You don't just walk into a bar and mix it up by calling a girl fat" - buildingcincinnati speaking about new forumers
October 10, 201113 yr Great photos, Ink! Steubenville, Marietta, East Liverpool are all in a part of the State that had a hard-scrabble economy decades before the present recession arrived. I'm not surprised to see more demolition losses. I visited that part of the State over a decade ago and it seemed the process of "downsizing" or, euphemistically,"right sizing" the various communities along the Ohio River was well underway back then. The economically depressed areas on both sides of the River need a major economic boost of some kind before any growth or slowing down of old home and building demolitions can be expected. For those who like to see the gritty side of old industrial towns, this is THE area to visit. Despite chronic economic weakness, the area still has lots of natural beauty and the locals are generally friendly; sometimes, they'll share some interesting and colorful stories. (but understandably, prefer not to talk much about the local economy)
October 10, 201113 yr Sprucing up the courthouse made the top-storey travesty less conspicuous. I'm guessing where that was added once was a Mansard roof with a central tower. That cable-stayed bridge was the first of its type that I saw, when it was fairly new. I had stayed overnight in Steubenville in route to Lancaster, PA, and saw the bridge with its cables glistening in morning sun. Quite a sight!
October 10, 201113 yr Thanks! Those are nice, solid houses which I bet you could buy for a bargain. But I suspect that city is about to get an economic boost from the Utica oil/gas play, so if you're going to buy one, buy it soon. "In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage." -- John Steinbeck
October 18, 201113 yr What's the story with the blue bridge? Is it new, or is it the old one with a new look?
October 18, 201113 yr Always get a kick out of those baby skyscrapers. They give Steubenville a bit more "presence" than it looks like it would have by just looking at a map. So...I guess the steel mill is now owned by "Severstal"? (noticed the billboard in one of the pix).
October 19, 201113 yr Did anyone catch the Steubenville segment about America's New Boomtowns on ABC TV's Evening News earlier this week? (Oct. 17 or 18th, 2011) It suggested that Steubenville and nearby cities on both sides of the Ohio are poised to become new boomtowns due the natural gas shale drilling activity going on in the region. Of course, the biggest winners are the gas companies themselves and most are from out of State. After them, the landowners who negotiate drilling leases (usually for a 3 year period) and receive a bonus check. Here in Ft. Worth, TX which is in the middle of the Barnett Shale gas drilling activity, lease bonus checks have reached up to $33,500 per acre but that was at the peak of nat. gas prices ($14+ per 1k cubic feet) in the summer of 2008. New leases are now in the $5k an acre range (with nat. gas at around $4 per 1k cubic feet) with between 24-26% royalty interest per property owner in a pool of properties. (which is often a 40 acre leased drilling site) But for the average homeowner with an acre or less of leased land, the royalties per acre would likely be in the low thousands per year or probably less with declining amounts every year afterward-hardly a windfall or meeting the definition of a Boom. But the ABC article said the increased drilling activity would lead to new local jobs. While technically that is true. drilling crews only stay in a given area for a few years at most. Once the gas is tapped and piped into the system the number of maintenance jobs associated with the gas industry at that point is very small. In conclusion, I'd like to see the long struggling towns of Eastern Ohio (East Liverpool, Marietta, Steubenville) return to prosperity but unlike the Steel industry, Glass, or Ceramics production which lasted for generations, this natural gas energy "Boom" is likely to come and go within a decade if not for a much shorter duration. Still, any infusion of investment into this region should help but this "Boom" will only have a lasting beneficial effect on large lease holders with mineral rights. Should natural gas prices steeply climb for some reason (unlikely) then everything I just wrote should be ignored but supplies are coming online right now from the Barnett Shale in Texas and Oklahoma and the Marcellus Shale in Western PA and Southwestern NY so with a supply abundance, nat. gas prices should be fairly stable for a long time. I'd be curious to see in a couple of years if any of the ABC news predictions for the predicted Boom in Steubenville came true or not.
October 20, 201113 yr ^ I saw that, and read the comments on ABC.crap.org. People were just tearing that story apart. The only good thing about it was the photo of Steubenville they showed. I complained about another story that they posted the other day, which comment they deleted. It was about an Enquirer story, which they called a "tabloid". Now, I don't think the Enquirer is the best paper in the world, but the ABC site had two of their four "stories" below as a two-headed cat and something about Nancy Grace's tit slip on Dancing With the Stars. Yeah, hard news, you stupid motherfuckers. Deleted. Anyway, I'm completely bitching about something that's irrelevant to this topic. Sorry.
June 1, 201411 yr When I was in Steubenville in April, I noticed the cladding on the Laughlin Building adjacent to the Grand Theater has been removed to reveal the original terra cotta. Before, building on far left Last month
June 1, 201411 yr Hard as I try, I cannot wrap my mind around the kind of mentality that believed covering up a beautiful delicately designed façade like that with corrugated tin panels was an "improvement"? It's as though "ugly" was accepted as the new beautiful esthetic. Homer Laughlin was a major ceramics maker in the East Liverpool area. They made Jewel Tea, Fiesta Ware, and many other well known ceramic product lines. I'm wondering if this building had any connection with the Homer Laughlin firm? Some of the highest quality ceramic and glass products ever made in the United States came from this region. Nearly all of the makers have gone out of business but their products are still highly prized by collectors nationwide. The Pottery Museum in East Liverpool nicely narrates the industry's story. Nice to see this fine old terra cotta clad building displayed again. I wish they had taken a light colored mortar to fill up the rather unattractive holes where the metal frames for the tin panels were mounted.
July 22, 201410 yr Always enjoy your photos Ink. I've been through Stuebenville a few times and I like the town. There is something about these cities that grew rapidly but never really became large. They have a few tall buildings but the new construction seems to have stopped before WWII. Like so much of America it's a shame to see that so much of Downtown is vacant and as I recall quite a bit has been torn down.
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