1 Photographed earlier in November, this is a wide image of Charles Curry’s law office in the Legal Arts Building in downtown Youngstown, Ohio. I stood at the doorway wondering what had happened. Papers were scattered about without care. Drawers were opened and ransacked. Family photos were laid haphazardly on the desk and tacked on the walls.

 

And there were two open – and empty bottles of alcohol on the desk.

 

I found out later that Mr. Curry was suspended from practice on December 2, 2005 for non-compliance with Ohio’s Gov. Bar R. VI for failure to file a Certificate of Registration and failure to pay applicable fees. But the Legal Arts Building had been closed since 2004 – so there is much wonder if the office was vacated prior to the disbarment or if something else had occurred.

 

 

Original post: http://www.abandonedonline.net/2012/11/27/the-law-office-of-charles-curry

 

(I plan on providing continuous updates - perhaps daily or weekly as time and travel allows.)

Every photo has a story indeed.

That's truly bizarre!!

2 What could have been: downtown Youngstown, Ohio

 

"Downtown plan gets good, but cautious, reviews."

 

That headline from the January 12, 1986 Youngstown, Ohio Vindicator denoted the reception towards this redevelopment plan in a city that was fast declining in both jobs and population. Some notable features of the plan included:

• A hotel, housing, cultural facility and museum complex along Federal and Commerce streets where the present-day Development Department and Mahoning County Children Services are currently located.
  
• A convocation center on what is now parking lots.
  
• An industrial museum located at the present-day Youngstown Historical Center of Industry and Labor.
  
• A parking garage and housing development between Commerce and Wood streets.
  
• Station Place, which is now Erie Terminal Place.
  
• The conversion of the Paramount Theater into a retail and office complex. It would have featured a pass-through for pedestrians, and a bridge linking to the hotel and housing complex across Hazel Street.
  

 

Ah, back in the days when everyone was looking for the "magic bullet" that would fix Youngstown's problems.  Very ambitious, though!

Wow...interesting find!

 

I guess McKelvey's was already closed (as it is clearly planned for demolition there). For some reason, I thought they had lasted longer.

So had Higbee's. They had plans to tear down the parking deck to the east of Erie Terminal (Higbee's deck) for green space.

3 Space Needle/Hilton/Convention Center Proposal

 

More on this coming shortly. This is from 1980.

 

4 The Unbuilt Square Tunnel

 

Youngstown, Ohio's central square lies at the intersection of Federal Street, Wick Avenue and Market Street and began to be developed after the Civil War when a monument was placed in the center of the intersection. By 1900, the city's prominent banks, hotels and businesses ringed the square.

 

By the 1930s, the half-circle consisted of haphazard parking and crude way-finding, which was streamlined in 1955. But traffic continued to congest at what was arguably Youngstown's busiest intersection. In 1969, Mayor A.B. Flask and city engineer J. Phillip Richley proposed a $1.8 million development that would include a pedestrian mall for Federal Street and a tunnel for Wick Avenue under the square. The monument would be moved to the end of Federal Street, replaced with a fountain surrounded by black terrazzo.

 

 

Construction was set to begin shortly after but was scaled back. Not surprisingly, the tunnel under the pedestrian mall was scrapped.

3 Space Needle/Hilton/Convention Center Proposal

 

More on this coming shortly. This is from 1980.

 

 

Really? A space needle? So that people could have a better view of the rusting steel mills, or their implosion in the coming years? It blows me away how cities forget what made them grow -- creating a supportive climate of entrepreneurship and innovation. Fortunately, Youngstown is getting that now. But it and other cities were looking for quick fixes and politicians can be so easily seduced by those.

 

Really? A space needle? So that people could have a better view of the rusting steel mills, or their implosion in the coming years?

 

I'm a little curious about that myself... what were they thinking? I'm looking forward to reading more about this further in the update.

 

That plan for Central Square is very interesting. It's a shame this was scrapped, especially considering the number of annual events that take place downtown.