Everybody loved the first “Cars & Architecture” installment, so here is another great collection of photos that show period cars and fascinating architecture in beautiful, full-color, artistic shots! As a commenter previously mentioned, quite a few of these come from the Charles W. Cushman collection, which is quite extensive with many outstanding photos. You can search for more Cushman photos online. So here we go, this time traveling across the country from west to east, and then beyond . . .
Bair Mansion, Arcata CA.
Solvang, CA.
2610 Jackson Street, San Francisco CA.
Franklin & Jackson Streets, San Francisco, CA.
Big Sur, CA.
239 S. Main Street, Los Angeles, CA.
151 S. Main Street, Los Angeles, CA.
Los Angeles.
Mount Evans Crest House, CO.
Silverton, CO.
Jail House, Linden AL.
4938 Drexel Boulevard, Chicago IL.
Al Capone’s headquarters, 2222 S. Dearborn Street, Chicago IL.
Chicago?
30th & Ellis, Chicago IL.
In case you were getting tired of looking at buildings . . .
1325 N. Dearborn Street, Chicago IL.
3117 S. Wabash, Chicago IL.
29th & Wabash, Chicago IL.
Maxwell Street, Chicago IL. Every city should have a shopping district like this (my opinion).
I’m quite familiar with just about all of those on the West Coast. Amazing to see those wood Victorians in SF looking so down on their heels, in bad need of painting.
I wonder how many (if any) survived? The costs of painting (and heating) them were probably enormous. Wonderfully over-the-top design. The architectural equivalence of 1950’s cars?
I’m not sure any featured in this series have survived, but there are definitely a few around town. I remember looking at an apartment almost 20 years ago in a big, rambling Victorian (I wish I remembered what neighborhood) that had been divided into several studios and 1 bedrooms. The apartment I looked at was an interior studio which, because of the intricacies of how the old house had been built, had no heat. Presumably, you simply got by with heat shed off the neighboring apartments. At least it had a window… to a light shaft…
Great photos. One thing that I noticed was how clean the streets were in ‘the good old days’. To paraphrase Shakespeare, ‘first we kill all the litterbugs”.
There wasn’t all kinds of to go and street food and coffee etc. sold in cups and containers with plastic forks etc. in the olden days. And no one was buying bottled water.
Nice selection. I’ve explored the Charles Cushman collection before. His work has a characteristic look. Unfortunately the grubby but wonderful Victorians at 2610 Jackson and Franklin between Jackson and Washington have been replaced by more modern styled homes.
I was getting tired of looking at buildings so thanks for the lovely interruption.
Geez, Al Capone’s headquarters look about as foreboding and sinister as you can get. You wouldn’t be caught dead entering that building (pun intended)!
The old deteriorating Victorian mansions in the heart of modern midcentury big cities is one of my favorite things to see in photographs, true foreboding relics of the gilded age that made these cities big cities. I think the plot of Herbie Rides Again was thwarting a property tycoon from demolishing places like this in favor of skyscrapers, if only that weren’t fiction.
I’m intrigued by the lower east side shot in New York, I’m quite aware of the plague of abandoned cars and generally severely decayed state of that city around this time, but that looks like a straight up unofficial scrapyard right next to apartments like a jungle gym! Did the city just bulldoze all those cars and whatever surrounding garbage into that spot? Poor Camaro
Yes, it was really that bad. My wife and I grew up in the north Bronx, taking public transportation to high school in the 70’s and 80’s. New York City, as well as many other large cities, was in bad financial shape in those days. Abandoned cars littered the streets, parks were in disrepair (except for Central Park, of course), garbage was uncollected on street corners and public buses and trains were worn out rolling wrecks. Things have changed for the better, it’s taken a long time.
It actually looks more like the south Bronx where entire blocks of housing was being abandoned and torched very often by the landlords for the insurance money. Easier to do that than continue to maintain buildings in shitty neighborhoods where you couldn’t make enough in rents to cover the mortgage let alone collect any rent at all. NYC was struggling to provide police and fire service as well.
Yup. As a kid in the mid to the late sixties I rode with my dad through the South Bronx on the way to Connecticut from Manhattan. Lot after empty lot of torn down buildings, boarded up buildings…..and cars on blocks,,,windows busted out. If you ever saw the Paul Newman movie Ft Apache…………….that made it look better than it was! The poor folks who lived up there.What a hell hole.
Paolo
Posted May 20, 2021 at 11:18 PM
I saw Fort Apache when it came out. There is that shot near the end when the dope dealers dump the prostitutes body that they had rolled up in the rug. The way I remember it is after they dump the rug on a heap of trash the camera pulls back and the shot goes wider and wider and wider as it reveals more and more and more trash and rubble and debris and destruction filling the lens. The whole audience in the theater gasped out loud. It just smacks you in the face because at that moment you are longer suspending disbelief to watch a movie. The movie twists around to reveal that it actually real life and is watching you.
(My friends, who were watching the movie, and knew I was from NY, all turned to me and asked “Is it really that bad?”)
The South Bronx was starring in the movie playing itself. The camera work and “Art Direction” is remarkable because it was done in the “Olden Days” before CGI. The Art Department didn’t to dress that particular set very much.
Stars need to play opposite other strong talents to bring out their best performance. Paul Newman matched up with the Bronx. I won’t say that his star wattage made the Bronx look good or even any better. His talent was to get people to actually take a good look at the hideous, soul devouring Bronx even if it was just a 125 minutes look.
-Nate
Posted May 21, 2021 at 11:36 AM
Yep ; it was that bad and not only NYC .
IIRC the hooker in the rug was Pam Grier…
All up and down the East Coast “Urban Renewal” shredded tens of thousands of beautiful Victorian homes, apartments and commercial buildings, it was very sad to be there .
The pollution was incredible .
-Nate
Paolo
Posted May 21, 2021 at 12:47 PM
Urban Renewal. So much destruction in those two words. I was born in 1957. Just as I was beginning to see and understand the world around me I was also made very aware of forces that were hurrying to obliterate the existing established world, first leaving vast expanses of empty silent cleared space.
This emptiness was sometimes brief as new construction replaced the old world with modern ideas about about architecture and urban planning. These were almost universally top-down and centralized decisions. They were implemented brutally using lots of concrete.
Many times the emptiness was prolonged. This in effect was like an open wound as communities that had been cleaved and carved struggled to adjust to the loses of homes, businesses and the old connections and ways because many people were displaced and never returned.
I realized that this old world, inhabited by my grandparents and a generation of older people was disappearing so fast that it would be gone before I got a chance to see it. Even as a very young child I knew I was in a race against time yet could not seem to make my concern and sense of urgency understood by my parents and other people.
It was weird and distressing to see things like an ornate and grand house slowly succumb, bit by bit as its property was carved away by new road widening or realignment as country roads became regional arterials. Some old places got repurposed as something other than a home for a while but usually continued pressure to replace old with new combined with rezoning residential to commercial would do them in.
I’ve never lost that feeling of seeing the world disappear even as I run towards it. So long as that feeling isn’t interfering with my ability to function all is good. If it interferes then it becomes the problem of being “stuck in the past.”
Shoppers’ World… went there the first time in 1958, age 5-6.
It was an Oh Wow moment for me at that age, particularly at Christmas.
I don’t think I have been to a Mall for fifteen years. Do not miss.
Maxwell Street’s outdoor markets are gone, I think the University of Chicago redeveloped it through eminent domain. Redevelop as in kick everyone out and bulldoze it. Universities have to expand after all.
You might be familiar with Maxwell Street from the “Blues Brothers” movie.
That was my first thought. John Lee Hooker playing “Boom Boom”. Lots of open stalls, plenty of food, Jake and Elwood in the soul food restaurant. “Four fried chickens and a Coke”. “Dry white toast”. Good times.
I always wondered where that was, being one of my favorite movies since childhood set and made close to home I found a bunch of the filming locations throughout the city and beyond, I knew that scene was on Maxwell street by the university but the area is unrecognizable. What a shame.
Yes, the three front left are Austin LL taxis (LL = low loader), introduced in 1934. The bus in the distance is a post-war RT with a smooth front roof so the picture must be no earlier than 1948.
Great collection. I love old photos of architecture and autos and trucks. I can recall some of the lower Manhattan photos which are near to the East River.
The “Chicago?” photo is indeed Chicago – the Roloson houses on the south side, designed by a young architect just striking out on his own – one F. L Wright.
I’m quite familiar with just about all of those on the West Coast. Amazing to see those wood Victorians in SF looking so down on their heels, in bad need of painting.
Love old photos; thanks for sharing these.
I wonder how many (if any) survived? The costs of painting (and heating) them were probably enormous. Wonderfully over-the-top design. The architectural equivalence of 1950’s cars?
I’m not sure any featured in this series have survived, but there are definitely a few around town. I remember looking at an apartment almost 20 years ago in a big, rambling Victorian (I wish I remembered what neighborhood) that had been divided into several studios and 1 bedrooms. The apartment I looked at was an interior studio which, because of the intricacies of how the old house had been built, had no heat. Presumably, you simply got by with heat shed off the neighboring apartments. At least it had a window… to a light shaft…
Some have survived 1322 N. Dearborn is looking very better than ever.
https://www.google.com/maps/place/1325+N+Dearborn+St,+Chicago,+IL+60610/@41.9065243,-87.6300538,3a,75y,83.47h,90t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sK7u57oufUZISwUF5v5cylw!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fpanoid%3DK7u57oufUZISwUF5v5cylw%26cb_client%3Dsearch.gws-prod.gps%26w%3D360%26h%3D120%26yaw%3D83.470345%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i16384!8i8192!4m5!3m4!1s0x880fd3453fdb8db7:0x3f65a1418dcb60aa!8m2!3d41.9065259!4d-87.6297208
I meant the featured houses in San Francisco. Some in the other cities are still there.
I was going to say the old Fulton Fish Market
These pix have a wider variety of brands and years than usual in street pix. Solvang has 8 cars and 8 brands.
Great photos. One thing that I noticed was how clean the streets were in ‘the good old days’. To paraphrase Shakespeare, ‘first we kill all the litterbugs”.
There wasn’t all kinds of to go and street food and coffee etc. sold in cups and containers with plastic forks etc. in the olden days. And no one was buying bottled water.
Sure, but the air was somewhere between filthy and toxic.
Nice selection. I’ve explored the Charles Cushman collection before. His work has a characteristic look. Unfortunately the grubby but wonderful Victorians at 2610 Jackson and Franklin between Jackson and Washington have been replaced by more modern styled homes.
I was getting tired of looking at buildings so thanks for the lovely interruption.
I loved the last batch and love this one too. I could really get lost in these.
Geez, Al Capone’s headquarters look about as foreboding and sinister as you can get. You wouldn’t be caught dead entering that building (pun intended)!
Its not the entering part you needed to worry about 🙂
The old deteriorating Victorian mansions in the heart of modern midcentury big cities is one of my favorite things to see in photographs, true foreboding relics of the gilded age that made these cities big cities. I think the plot of Herbie Rides Again was thwarting a property tycoon from demolishing places like this in favor of skyscrapers, if only that weren’t fiction.
I’m intrigued by the lower east side shot in New York, I’m quite aware of the plague of abandoned cars and generally severely decayed state of that city around this time, but that looks like a straight up unofficial scrapyard right next to apartments like a jungle gym! Did the city just bulldoze all those cars and whatever surrounding garbage into that spot? Poor Camaro
Yes, me too. Anyone have an explanation? Were the good old days in NYC that bad?
Yes, it was really that bad. My wife and I grew up in the north Bronx, taking public transportation to high school in the 70’s and 80’s. New York City, as well as many other large cities, was in bad financial shape in those days. Abandoned cars littered the streets, parks were in disrepair (except for Central Park, of course), garbage was uncollected on street corners and public buses and trains were worn out rolling wrecks. Things have changed for the better, it’s taken a long time.
It actually looks more like the south Bronx where entire blocks of housing was being abandoned and torched very often by the landlords for the insurance money. Easier to do that than continue to maintain buildings in shitty neighborhoods where you couldn’t make enough in rents to cover the mortgage let alone collect any rent at all. NYC was struggling to provide police and fire service as well.
Yup. As a kid in the mid to the late sixties I rode with my dad through the South Bronx on the way to Connecticut from Manhattan. Lot after empty lot of torn down buildings, boarded up buildings…..and cars on blocks,,,windows busted out. If you ever saw the Paul Newman movie Ft Apache…………….that made it look better than it was! The poor folks who lived up there.What a hell hole.
I saw Fort Apache when it came out. There is that shot near the end when the dope dealers dump the prostitutes body that they had rolled up in the rug. The way I remember it is after they dump the rug on a heap of trash the camera pulls back and the shot goes wider and wider and wider as it reveals more and more and more trash and rubble and debris and destruction filling the lens. The whole audience in the theater gasped out loud. It just smacks you in the face because at that moment you are longer suspending disbelief to watch a movie. The movie twists around to reveal that it actually real life and is watching you.
(My friends, who were watching the movie, and knew I was from NY, all turned to me and asked “Is it really that bad?”)
The South Bronx was starring in the movie playing itself. The camera work and “Art Direction” is remarkable because it was done in the “Olden Days” before CGI. The Art Department didn’t to dress that particular set very much.
Stars need to play opposite other strong talents to bring out their best performance. Paul Newman matched up with the Bronx. I won’t say that his star wattage made the Bronx look good or even any better. His talent was to get people to actually take a good look at the hideous, soul devouring Bronx even if it was just a 125 minutes look.
Yep ; it was that bad and not only NYC .
IIRC the hooker in the rug was Pam Grier…
All up and down the East Coast “Urban Renewal” shredded tens of thousands of beautiful Victorian homes, apartments and commercial buildings, it was very sad to be there .
The pollution was incredible .
-Nate
Urban Renewal. So much destruction in those two words. I was born in 1957. Just as I was beginning to see and understand the world around me I was also made very aware of forces that were hurrying to obliterate the existing established world, first leaving vast expanses of empty silent cleared space.
This emptiness was sometimes brief as new construction replaced the old world with modern ideas about about architecture and urban planning. These were almost universally top-down and centralized decisions. They were implemented brutally using lots of concrete.
Many times the emptiness was prolonged. This in effect was like an open wound as communities that had been cleaved and carved struggled to adjust to the loses of homes, businesses and the old connections and ways because many people were displaced and never returned.
I realized that this old world, inhabited by my grandparents and a generation of older people was disappearing so fast that it would be gone before I got a chance to see it. Even as a very young child I knew I was in a race against time yet could not seem to make my concern and sense of urgency understood by my parents and other people.
It was weird and distressing to see things like an ornate and grand house slowly succumb, bit by bit as its property was carved away by new road widening or realignment as country roads became regional arterials. Some old places got repurposed as something other than a home for a while but usually continued pressure to replace old with new combined with rezoning residential to commercial would do them in.
I’ve never lost that feeling of seeing the world disappear even as I run towards it. So long as that feeling isn’t interfering with my ability to function all is good. If it interferes then it becomes the problem of being “stuck in the past.”
In 1982, we rode from my great aunt’s funeral in Forest Hills Queens to Greenwood cemetery in Brooklyn. Block after block of boarded up buildings.
Nice selection!
What was happening at Shoppers World?
Grand Opening — and Shoppers World grand openings were a really big deal.
This is one page of a 12-page ad from the Grand Opening from that particular store in Chicago:
Shoppers’ World… went there the first time in 1958, age 5-6.
It was an Oh Wow moment for me at that age, particularly at Christmas.
I don’t think I have been to a Mall for fifteen years. Do not miss.
Thanks for including.
Maxwell Street’s outdoor markets are gone, I think the University of Chicago redeveloped it through eminent domain. Redevelop as in kick everyone out and bulldoze it. Universities have to expand after all.
You might be familiar with Maxwell Street from the “Blues Brothers” movie.
That was my first thought. John Lee Hooker playing “Boom Boom”. Lots of open stalls, plenty of food, Jake and Elwood in the soul food restaurant. “Four fried chickens and a Coke”. “Dry white toast”. Good times.
“And This Is Free” is a great movie about the Maxwell Street Market, made around 1964:
https://mediaburn.org/video/and-this-is-free/
Thanks, I knew this film existed but didn’t know the title. I’ll watch it later.
I always wondered where that was, being one of my favorite movies since childhood set and made close to home I found a bunch of the filming locations throughout the city and beyond, I knew that scene was on Maxwell street by the university but the area is unrecognizable. What a shame.
It was the University of Illinois at Chicago which redeveloped it.
Another great batch of photos! The one in London could be a painting. I assume those are taxis…
I think thats Piccadilly Circus, famous for its neon signs.
It’s taken from Piccadilly Circus, looking up Shaftesbury Avenue. This is today’s equivalent: https://goo.gl/maps/D1E3eb8ABN4nWnho6
Yes, the three front left are Austin LL taxis (LL = low loader), introduced in 1934. The bus in the distance is a post-war RT with a smooth front roof so the picture must be no earlier than 1948.
Great collection. I love old photos of architecture and autos and trucks. I can recall some of the lower Manhattan photos which are near to the East River.
These are wonderful old images from prints and transparencies! Thanks for posting!
The “Chicago?” row house buildings are early Frank Lloyd Wright designs. One was up for sale at $685,000.
The “Chicago?” photo is indeed Chicago – the Roloson houses on the south side, designed by a young architect just striking out on his own – one F. L Wright.