Posted April 24, 200916 yr On the way to Indianapolis I stopped in Marion and took some pictures. According to the 2006 census, Marion had 30,830 people. This is James Dean's birthplace. Love this building! What's the deal with this building?
April 24, 200916 yr Ahh, Marion. Klan capital of the Great Lakes States, I believe. It was once a hotbed of blatant activity, now more or less underground. Every now and then some bit of memorabilia surfaces that shows faces or names names of an earlier generation of participants, and a lot of people who are hiding skeletons in their family closets try to get it silenced and/or done away with. One incident a lot of people would like to forget is the 1930 lynching on the courthouse square of two young black men charged with killing a white man and raping his girlfriend. The courthouse originally was a nicely-balanced, imposing Beaux Arts structure with an appropriate dome, but the dome was lost to fire many years ago, I believe. There was recent talk of restoring the courthouse and giving it a new dome, but Marion really hasn't seen runaway prosperity since the gas fields played out before 1920. The placement of a large GM stamping plant there, along with other industries in the 1950s, fueled a surge in economic activity, but the photos speak for themselves regarding the state of the city. In the past fifty years a lot of Marion's economy has been tied to the automotive industry, and I don't suppose the city is flush with cash right now. I'm sure there are people in Marion who would take exception to what I say, and I'll admit my opinion carries some bias. Marion does have some good stuff, but it doesn't impress much from the road. Where Highway 37 runs around the town, you can find the some of the ugliest sprawl in Indiana - not only low-quality merchandising to begin with, but a lot of it either closed and abandoned, or on the way. A bright, sunny, blue sky/white clouds day reduces Marion's miserableness index by about 10 percent, max. What's the deal with this building? Church. I can't pin down why my intuition says "Baptist," but it does. Now apparently abandoned.
April 24, 200916 yr Sad. "You don't just walk into a bar and mix it up by calling a girl fat" - buildingcincinnati speaking about new forumers
April 27, 200916 yr At least there's ample parking, especially with more pesky buildings out of the way.
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