Time Warp Towns

[Mr Vim]

I'm shocked no one has commented on these photos of Juneau, It doesn't get much better than this folks.

So *bump*

 

[rue]

I had no idea you had architecture like that in Alaska. Amazing pictures

 

[Gene]

That red/teal facade is amazing, as are the rest for that matter. I too had no idea Juneau had so many amazing buildings!

 

[Mr Vim]

Juneau is a gem for it, I need to take photos of the inside of the Baranoff hotel, it's the cream colored large building. Everything down to the light fixtures is Art Deco. I'm fighting a cold right now, but I will post more soon.

*Juneau is also one of the reasons I dress vintage, I tell folk I'm tying to blend in with my surroundings.

 

[Chasseur]

Mr. Vim,

Great photos of Juneau! Brings back some memories, I've been back there since 1989 or so...

 

[sandyg]

Any town in Michigan's upper peninsula.

 

[p51]

When i drove from Sacramento to Jamestown, CA to see the RR roundhouse there, I passed through several of these types of towns. You only had to remove a few signs and new cars and it'd look like the 30s-50s easily.
I also remember several small towns along I-55 between Bloomington, Illinois and Chicago, they were all trapped in the past.
Skagway Alaska really is a time warp town!
I live north of Centralia, WA and that really has the look! http://www.cityofcentralia.com/

 

[DanielJones]

Another that comes to mind is Virginia City, Nevada.

Cheers!

Dan

 

[AtomicEraTom]

Looks like heaven on earth.

 

[Gene]

Looks like heaven on earth.

No kidding, I want to live there!

 

[tonyb]

I half expect to see Hoss and Little Joe come ridin' over the ridge.

 

[Blackjack]

GREAT photos of Juneau! Looks like a wonderful place to visit.

 

[tonyb]

I associate time warp towns with neglect. Anymore, it's about the best form of historic preservation and certainly the most cost-effective.

In NY's Hudson Valley, where I lived for quite awhile, the town of Hudson and the city of Troy are known for retaining much of their older character. But it only happened because they were too plagued with crime and decay to be worth redeveloping. That's changing, especially in Hudson, but it's a slow process. Few places have lost as much of their usefulness as the old cities of upstate.

A somewhat happier story is Asheville, NC, which never became a megalopolis because it went so badly into debt during the depression that no new business or improvement happened for close to 30 years. Now it's quite pleasant, and surrounded by natural beauty.

It's good to be reminded of this, Fletch.

Often the primary reason those lovely old structures and districts remain standing is because there was no "higher and better" use for them, what with development going to the newer districts out by the Interstates, etc. Indeed, it could be reasonably argued that in some cases the big-box retailers actually helped save those older places, be that outcome ever so inadvertent. (We're talking the structures themselves, not the businesses occupying them, of course.)

In the city of Seattle, all but one of the officially recognized "landmark" districts were once quite down at the heel. The buildings remain because the development money went to the outlying districts, where there was raw land and plenty of space for parking, etc.

Those "urban renewal" projects were largely misguided efforts to replicate the suburban model in older urban districts. Most of those undertakings were essentially the definition of "inorganic." Neither fish nor fowl, you know.

The life of a local character named Sam Israel (not the hedge-fund hustler by the same name) makes for an enlightening and entertaining tale of "preservation by neglect." Much of what remains of the Seattle I knew when I moved out this way 43 years ago can be attributed to it once belonging to Low-Rent Sam.

http://www.historylink.org/index.cfm?DisplayPage=output.cfm&file_id=9307

 

[Kahuna]

Another town that comes to mind is Locke, California. It is the only town in America built and inhabited by Chinese immigrants. It has a small amount of tourism, which barely keeps the town afloat, but mostly it just quietly sinks into disrepair. We went there mid-week once and it was nearly empty and, except for the few contemporary cars scattered about, could easily pass for a scene in the 1930s.