On Bunker Hill has unearthed a trove of newly found photos of the once opulent, formerly run down, then gone area of downtown. In addition to being so detailed and vivid so as to look like they were taken only 10 years ago instead of 50, the snapshots have the distinction of having been taken by a former vaudeville star and originally in 3D.
On Bunker Hill writes of the area:
Bunker Hill is a ghost, and though you may today walk streets named Grand and Hope and imagine that you stand where once were grand Victorian homes turned flophouses, you are in fact one hundred feet beneath the old roads, which the city shaved away to make a wider footprint for the high rise tenants that replaced them.
Look up, ten stories up, and if you’re a dreamer you can almost see the big houses bobbing there between the towers, old men and women toddling out onto the porches and down the avenues, exchanging gossip, feeding the cats, collapsing under some junkie’s fists, boarding Sinai or Olivet for the ride down to Grand Central Market, pruning the roses. . .
See the rest of them here.
I enjoy seeing and reading your photos and posts of Pasadena and environs. Perhaps someone should do the same for the Monroeville area. Your Crazybridge work is phenomenal-I hadn’t realized until a couple years ago (when you were nominated for an Emmy) that a lot of what I watched on History and such was largely a product of your talent. Been meaning to write, but..a little slow. Great work, Chris.
Great to hear from you!! And thanks!
I did some then-and-now photos of Monroeville for a project in high school, and a similar documentary on Route 22 for my senior thesis in college.
A book that Marilyn Chandler published in 1988 called Monroeville: Hamlet to Highways has a lot of then-and-now pictures. It’s long out of print, but there are a few other recent books out there like this one. (I don’t know how good it is, as I haven’t read it).
I actually have the book you refer to in your link. It has a lot of narrative and several historical photos but not much in the way of “then and now” comparison photos. And, except for the cover, all the photos are black and white. It’s nice to see colorful images on blogs like yours.