Pictures of the same scenes taken at different times.

 

The Grand Trunk Depot in Lansing, Michigan

2008

Former Passenger Rail Depot by Brandon Bartoszek, on Flickr

 

2015

Restored Grand Trunk Depot by Brandon Bartoszek, on Flickr

 

Downtown East Lansing, Michigan

2011 & 2014

Ann Street Plaza 2011-2014 by Brandon Bartoszek, on Flickr

 

Wardell Hotel in Detroit, Michigan

1926 & 2014

Wardell Hotel Then & Now by Brandon Bartoszek, on Flickr

Nice. I love these types of comparisons. Sometimes it's difficult to see changes when you're living within them daily. Then you come across things like this and realize how much progress has been made essentially everywhere towards making better places for people.

Great idea for a thread

"Now and Then when I see her face she takes me away to that special place..."

 

Love Then & Nows!

I love this thread. So much fun! This is one of those rare instances in which a building in Painesville was not demolished (and subsequently 1) turned into a parking lot; or 2) replaced by something 10X more hideous). No, here the structure remains, but has been abandoned for years (and presumably for sale) and left to deteriorate, exposed to the elements--

 

 

 

for the record, this building--which even I am too young to remember :|--preceded the one shown above. (though my older sister insisted it was there when I was born)

 

for the record, this building--which even I am too young to remember :|--preceded the one shown above. (though my older sister insisted it was there when I was born)

 

Wow, that old building has a lot to see. An old Vernor's ad, a greyhound station, and what appears to be a Vitrolite storefront for the Citizens S&L Company!

 

I know what you mean about seeing buildings demolished to be replaced by lesser buildings or nothing at all. Here is one more I did that makes me sad. Morrill Hall at Michigan State University was built in 1900 and demolished in 2013. It was replaced with "Morrill Plaza"

Here is the same view in 2011 and 2014.

Without Honor by Brandon Bartoszek, on Flickr

^disgraceful. an insult to Morrill, whoever that was!

 

okay, here's an example of a corner with 3 different incarnations, North State and Phelps Sts, P'ville--

 

1) photo taken in the 1870's, this house was replaced with...

 

2) this one (a Queen Anne?), which became a funeral home in the 1960's, and later demolished...

 

3) and replaced with the new library about 10 years ago

 

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

To the right in the first 2 pics above you can seen a portion of St. James Episcopal Church, built in 1866 and on the National Register. This first pic here dates from the 1870's (same as the first one above); and how it looks today--

 

 

I don't really maintain my blog anymore, but for a few weeks I was doing some "then and now" posts using old street improvement photos in Cincinnati and Google Streetview. I had some photos I took of many of the same exact spots, but felt the streetview was better as you can move and look around in more detail.

^disgraceful. an insult to Morrill, whoever that was!

 

 

Justin Smith Morrill was a US senator who sponsored the Morrill Act, which established Land Grant colleges. Michigan State (at the time the Michigan Agricultural College) was the first Land Grant college. Morrill Hall was originally the first female dormitory at the college. Even though the building was brick the framing was timber which were rotting away. Supposedly it wasn't "economically feasible" to save the building.

 

I don't really maintain my blog anymore, but for a few weeks I was doing some "then and now" posts using old street improvement photos in Cincinnati and Google Streetview. I had some photos I took of many of the same exact spots, but felt the streetview was better as you can move and look around in more detail.

 

Nice link! What did we do before Streetview?

This one is a bit different. Dr. Meinhardi built a doctors office & apothecary around 1903 in Whitehall, Michigan. At some point the building was moved from the street to the rear of a house and pretty much forgotten about. I had never heard of it or seen the building until one day in 2011 I happened to be driving through Whitehall and saw this:

Whitehall Building Relocation by Brandon Bartoszek, on Flickr

 

It was moved to a public park for preservation. I did not see it again until last week. Here it is now:

Meinhardi Drugstore Restored by Brandon Bartoszek, on Flickr

So strange.

Cool adaptive reuse in Cincinnati's Over-the-Rhine neighborhood...

 

7/16/2013:

 

7/28/2015:

Those turned out great. Definitely one of the cooler projects that has happened recently. That whole section of OTR is the most dramatic change. The intersection of Vine and 14th, Vine down to 13th and up to 15th, Mercer Street, and Walnut Street from 13th to 15th. So many new buildings, rehabbed buildings, filled in gaps, etc. Definitely the most dramatic change so far.

here's another one from the old, old archives of my past--

 

Thayer's in Painesville was a classic old-fashioned drug store that was around for a hundred years. Now it's a casual diner that still retains many original fixtures--

 

 

 

 

Yet another architectural atrocity from Painesville. The first photo shows the back of a perfectly beautiful home in the 1890's (not sure of the style); fast forward a century+ and it is now the Spear-Mulqueeny Funeral Home (longtime morticians in town who purchased the building in the early 1970's). Although the entrance is not visible in the first picture, one can safely assume it was not the boxy, severe look of the current incarnation :-P (I guess the best that can be said is at least it wasn't demolished :|)

 

 

 

GAR Castle as it orinally looked:

GAR Building Then by Brandon Bartoszek, on Flickr

 

2008:

Boarded-Up Castle by Brandon Bartoszek, on Flickr

 

Now:

Restored GAR Castle by Brandon Bartoszek, on Flickr

So curved windows... how much of a hassle are they to deal with today?

I'm not sure there are actually any curved windows there. Sure the facade is curved but I think they are just regular windows in there.

I feel like all I do is then and now photos for housing in Columbus. 

Some of the worst...

The Frisbie Mansion was built in 1888 and was once located at 750 E. Broad Street.  The photo is how it looked in 1892.  In April 1961, it was torn down, most likely for a planned shopping center that never came to fruition.  The lot stayed vacant until the current office building was constructed in 1987.  East Broad used to be full of mansions, some as elaborate as this one, but most much less so.  The 1960s were such terrible times for historic buildings.  If only we had a time machine...

 

The Frank Powell mansion, at 969 E. Broad Street, was built in 1889.  The photo shows it in 1892.  It survived until December, 1965.  With this one, it wasn't so much development interests, but rather dumb last wishes. After Frank's son William died in October 1965, the bank took possession.  William had no heirs, and apparently there must've been some financial issues related to the house itself.  Rumor has it that it was in William's will for the house to be demolished after his death, but I've never been able to confirm that.  The fact that it was torn down less than 2 months after his death suggests there is something to it, though.  The lot remains vacant to the present day. 

Edited January 8, 20196 yr by jonoh81

Clinton Firestone's mansion was built in 1887 at 580 E. Broad Street.  After Clinton died in 1914, it was used as the offices of Columbus Mutual Life Insurance until 1942, and then Buckeye Union Casualty until 1960.  For whatever reason, it was demolished in February 1962.  The site has been used as a parking lot ever since, which was probably the reason it was demolished in the first place. 

Cleveland Avenue is not known for its fine houses, but it once had many graceful mansions dating back as early as the mid-19th Century.  This example, at 54 Cleveland Avenue, was the home of William Thompson and was built between 1890-1898.  It was demolished in 1958 for... what else... surface parking, just a year after the photo was taken.  It wasn't until the early 1990s that it became part of the CCAD campus. 

 

The Hosters were a fairly prominent family in Columbus around the turn of the 20th Century.  Louis Hoster's house at 555 E. Rich Street was built around 1885.  The photo is from 1901, at a time when much of the eastern half of Downtown was a residential neighborhood.  Once again, the 1960s were unkind.  It was demolished in 1966 to build a fairly standard, ugly '60s office building, but I guess that's better than a parking lot. 

Anyway, enough of the bad... how about some good, both in preservation and restoration.

 

The John Sater house, built in 1895 at 114 Buttles Avenue in Victorian Village. The old photo is from 1897. 

 

Edited January 8, 20196 yr by jonoh81

The Hughes house at 53 W. 2nd Avenue, built in 1890.  The old photo is from 1892.

The Elizabeth Steel house at 185 E. Beck Street in German Village. Built in 1870, you could tell that German Village had once been in rough shape as a neighborhood.  The old photo is from 1978.  Although the neighborhood had been revitalizing since the 1960s, it hadn't yet reached every building.  Today it's a fine example of restoration.

 

 

400 Chittenden Avenue, built in the early 1900s, was all boarded up and its roof was collapsing in in the mid-1980s when the older photo was taken.  Today it is, while perhaps not the finest example of restoration, at least livable.

 

Edited January 8, 20196 yr by jonoh81

Last one is 1022 Oak Street, in Olde Towne East.  Built in 1895, this home was a wreck by the time the 1985 photo was taken.  Homes in such condition are often just torn down without giving it another thought, but this one not only survived, but was reborn through a major renovation. It goes to show that there is really no such thing as a house too far gone to save.  It just takes someone who cares enough to do it right.   

Great (and tragic) stuff!

bruce springsteen in soho 1972

and current view of the same street corner

spring st and wooster st 

 

 

^ if you like stuff like kind of thing check out popspotsnyc --

the central park page is below, but you will want to poke around on it as there is much more:

 

http://popspotsnyc.com/central_park/

random pic, but these are always fun to see

 

I thought this might be the appropriate thread for this... my company is based in Grand Rapids, Michigan so I spend quite a bit of time there.  The downtown area has a nice collection of rather dense historic architecture but I never knew that SO MUCH was destroyed by Urban Renewal.  We tend to lament in Cleveland about all that we've lost but this is truly shocking.  Take a look at the slideshow:  

 

https://www.mlive.com/news/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2014/05/urban_renewal_slides.html

 

 

^oh no wow that shot is so depressing. and the new stuff looks so terribly unpedestrian friendly. i had no idea that gr had all that either, but also not surprized. i just can't bear to click thru the link for anything more like that. i have seen they are doing good urbanity again there these days, so there is hope for the future and i would like to leave it like that lol.

this caught my eye because it popped up on one angle of streetview like a blast from the past. its downtown manhattan on fulton st at cliff st, near the seaport. it was an old automated parking garage like the one that was in cleveland in the central market/gateway area. it had little shops like a small grocery, bodega, news stand etc..

 

 

 

 

now it a generic apt bldg with a dunkin donuts and a taco bell cantina. emblematic of how it is everywhere with redevelopment these days i think.

 

 

a terrible loss today

 

the high altar in notre dame in paris

 

 

 

and tonight

 

 

You like to think a fire like this can't happen today. But it did. I was there in 2008 and it seemed so, you know, permanent.

Then & Now from the Short North - Google Street View Edition:

 

2009-2019:

 

 

2011-2019:

 

 

2007-2019:

 

 

2009-2019:

 

 

2011-2019:

 

 

2009-2019:

 

 

2009-2019:

 

 

2009-2019:

 

 

2009-2019:

 

 

2007-2019:

 

Edited October 18, 20195 yr by cbussoccer

excellent and thanks --

 

i used to live on high/warren above what looks to be lox bagel shop nowadays.....time marches on, but still.....so many changes along high street wow.

Morrill Plaza most likely refers to Justin Smith Morrill, author of the Morrill Land-Grant Acts which are responsible for creating many of our country's universities.

@cbussoccer thanks for posting, almost forgot what the old Short North looked like, love it so much more now!

views of midtown manhattan from weehawken, nj

2011 and may 2020

 

 

a few ny then and nows -- 

 

more:

https://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/new-york-city-then-now/

 

 

1936

 

 

2016 -- looks like they tore out the historic buildings!

 

 

497 dean st in brooklyn -- 1942 and 2016

 

 

east river park 1989-2019

 

 

 

1931 -- rock center 1st tree

 

 

2020

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

usa

 

 

cuba

 

 

russia

 

 

uae

dubai 2000-2020

 

Downtown Painesville in 1897 and now. Taken at roughly the same angle, these pictures are somewhat deceptive, since they show the few buildings on Main St. that remain intact from that era. I don't know what's with the dogs, but I think those fashions are still in vogue there.😂