more old buildings

so, i was looking for an old picture of hose house #15 on the corner of washington and grand (->) to prove it was there, and i did find a few, but man did i find some really awesome stuff while i was at it. i found a few websites where they have old pictures of evansville but there are two i like best. Willard Library's historic photo collection rocks, providing not only good pictures but informative captions. Old Evansville isn't as informative, but i like that you can click through them without going back to the index.

so, anyway, what, might you ask, did i find? i found the third carnegie library for one thing. i think this story starts with a time during the 8034B years when a certain bibliophile had a book about evansville that mentioned carnegie donating funds for three libraries, including a 'colored' library. only, we couldn't figure out where it was, and the evpl history says he donated for east and west branches, but makes no mention of this third carnegie library. later we found another mention of it somewhere, but still couldn't figure out where it was. well, here it is. it was opened in 1914 and was located at 515 cherry street, which is now smack in the middle of welborn hospital's campus. i don't know when it was torn down, but there's another picture of it in 1964, when it was being used as the local boy scout headquarters. it strikes me as a little plain compared to east or west, but i guess that stands to reason, considering it was for african-americans.

chris and i figured out where the old marine hospital was. the land is still undeveloped (although chris said he noticed recently it's been cleared so it may not stay that was), but the buildings have been torn down. i might believe that the wood framed ones fell down since they didn't look all that stable in the pictures from 1979, but considering the 1984 photo of the main brick building looked more structurally sound than old hose house #10 does now, it had to be torn down, sometime before 2000, because that was the earliest aerial pictures we could get. and we're talking about an OLD marine hospital because it was already vacant when st. mary's started there in 1872. so, we may sound like big nerds, but it was so cool finding the location of something that old from vague descriptions and comparing new aerial photos to old post card pictures. and i love that my brother can get that excited about something so geeky, too. just like the carnegie library thing had been bugging him since i first told him there had once been three.

also, rather neat. so, there's this apartment building that i think looks cool that was on my bus route to college. it's had a fresh coat of white paint since this was taken, and it looks better in person. anyway, i like the unusual corner bits and such. so, i asked my dad about it because he lived a few blocks from there as a kid, and he said it had always been an apartment building. well, as it happens he was a little mistaken. it may have been an apartment building in the 50's but it hasn't always been one.

i was looking through the willard pictures when i saw that this picture of gilbert hospital (never heard of it before) said it was on the corner of harriet and michigan streets. and i was like, "well, that's not there anymore. wait a minute...yes it is. holy shit!" although, now i don't like it as much, because it was so much cooler with a third story; much more awesome weird corner bits detail.

speaking of old pictures sometimes being disappointing. so, i really like looking at them, but it makes me sad that so many cool building have been torn down. there are a few exceptions because the st. george hotel was nice, but i like the mcCurdy better. and while i have nothing against evan's hall, i'm happy to have traded it for the old central library. but sometimes i wonder why we have to replace everything instead of renovating it, and how badly do we need one more parking lot.

and thanks to the evpl having ebook copies of all the little pamphlets about historic neighborhoods, particularly the one my mother doesn't have, i now know that my brother's good friend just bought the james r. duncan house. and he thought it was cool too, as soon as we explained that living in a historic house wasn't the same as living in the historic preservation district, so he didn't have to clear it with anyone before he did home improvements.

and because i can, here's another firehouse picture. it's the firehouse on saint joe in 1984, four years before they stopped using it as a firehouse. well, that's all for now, and if you go looking through the pictures, there's one in 'streets' of the badger's neighborhood in the early 1900s, but you'd probably never know if the address wasn't a tipoff.

what's new with me

well, the cold from hell has returned. i gave it to my mom, and then my dad. and dad was so kind as to give it back to us. i know you aren't supposed to be able to get the same cold twice, but maybe it mutated, or maybe he got his cold from someone else and it only seemed like he got it from mom and i, but the bottom line is i am miserably ill again. i went 5 years without calling in to work, then 6 months, and now i've called in 5 times in the last month. i hate it; absolutely hate it. today i went to work, but at one point i had to sit down to keep from falling down. a sane person might have asked about going home, but it was time to start recovering the store and that's when they really needed me a lot more than they had earlier in the night, so i would have felt like a total ass if i'd wussed out on them.

in other news, my house is full of little dogs. my brother had to work 20 days straight because the girl who covered his nights off quit/got fired. technically, she gave the boss the hours she would be available to work, which did not include the hours she was supposed to work, so he assumed she was saying he had to move her to days or she was quitting, so when she showed up for work after that, he gave her the boot. well, a week into his three weeks of no days off, the pontiac gave out again. he thought he had a bad brake although now that it's fixed we know that it was a combination of his having one wheel smaller than the others (because finding the size he has for his car is impossible) and the severe need to rotate his tires, and replace one. so he's been having to crash here and drive mom's car to work.

so, a week in to that he realized that having his friend/ex-roommate/semi-neighbor come by and feed the dogs and let them out wasn't working because he could only come by once a day and they needed to go out more often. so, they came to stay with us, too. as of this afternoon his car is fixed and he is back home, but he left the boys with us until he can clean up. he says he'll get monk monday morning on his way home from work and plans to leave frankie here until friday for an extended visit. if i remember to get some film, i'll try to get some pictures of the little fuzz butt, and some of bitsy too while i'm at it.

holy crap i am posting a lot recently

if you've ever heard me, or anyone else for that matter, use the phrase "penguins ain't natural" and wondered where the hell that came from, go watch this clip from the state, a sketch comedy show that mtv made a long time ago and showed in the middle of the night when i was in middle school or so. youtube doesn't seem to have the one about eating muppets, though, which was another favorite of mine.

i have to win the lottery...

because that is the only way i'm going to have the money to buy and fix up a firehouse, and i want one BAD.

i mean, who could resist something so awesomely cool? last night out of curiosity i was poking around and realized that the one that had been for sale (<- that one) isn't anymore. but the assessor's website doesn't show it changing hands. that could mean it was really recent and it hasn't been updated yet, or that it's been taken off the market without having sold.

so then i ended up screwing around on the assessor's website for hours finding and coveting all the cool old firehouses in evansville that i know about. not that any of them are for sale or anything, though.

there's the one on st. joe that i really like because i love that neighborhood, and it really is the nicest neighborhood you can get an old firehouse in as far as i know. and according to the assessor it's in the best shape of any of them, too. but when it sold recently it was uber-expensive, and the inside pictures showed it to be massively gaudy. of course, i'd have to gut it anyway because it wasn't set up as a house.

the one that was for sale on columbia is cool, and much cheaper, although also noteably smaller. and that massively trashy liquor store across the street doesn't make me jump for joy either, but i think it would still be cool.

the other one on columbia is really similar to the st joe one, and i thought i liked it less because of the main difference, the gable roof. but the more i see it the more i love the stuff up under the overhang (sorry i don't know the word for it). sure it screws up my roof garden plan, but it comes with a much bigger lot than st joe does, so that takes care of that right there. sure the nasty brown asphalt shingles would have to go, in favor of that great artificial slate roofing they make out recycled tires, but when the place has crumbling brick and the windows are all boarded up, what's a new set of roof shingles? the main issue with it would be all the cost to repair it. any of them would need work to be a house, but this thing needs work to be anything but falling down. but it looks so damned awesome.

the least appealing is the one on washington and grand. first, it's in a bad neighborhood. sure none of them are great neighborhoods, but that one is straight ghetto. also, there's the addition issue. if you get curious and want to go look at it, you have to check it out from grand because the washington side is obscured by an abysmal addition. sure that could be ripped off, but in old historic pictures you can tell that there used to be a fabulous round piece with lots of windows there, which was most likely torn off and would have to be replaced. at least i would have to replace it because i couldn't not, knowing how fabulous it had once been with that there.

plus, this morning i was telling my dad what i'd been doing all night while he was getting ready for work and he clued me in to another old firehouse in evansville. once i looked it up i realized i'd seen it bunches of times, but had never put two and two together and realized it was a firehouse. it's pretty cool, although it's got some crappy additions, but they're stuck on the back and side where you could pull them off pretty easy and they don't seem to have replaced the coolest feature of the old structure. in fact, the coolest feature has to be that bell tower. i mean, damn, is that thing awesome or what? but while i like it, i just don't think i like it as much as the columbia ones or st joe.

of course, while i was looking at commercial properties for sale trying to find that firehouse, i did find a couple of non-firehouse building i wouldn't mind having. sure this was originally a house and converting it back wouldn't be like converting a firehouse, but it still rocks. this one definately wasn't ever a house, in fact it was apparently once the republican headquarters (might be fun to laugh about that if i lived there). it's a little big though, i might have to split it up and share. plus there's a place for sale on the walkway, and one just off on 3rd.

okay, the massively long post about buildings i can't afford to buy is now complete. if you've gotten this far, thank you for your time and i hope you enjoyed it.

keeping tabs on my obsession

so, i've bought some more stuff on the big hottopic sale, which by the way has escalated with even lower prices. the other day i got an awesome new pair of converse chucks. they're a really fabulous purple/burgundy/wine color. at the same time i picked up a red vs. blue shirt, but i didn't get my good charlotte shirt because it was out of stock in my size (which sucks because i'm pretty sure the lettering is exactly the same color as my chucks and they would have gone so well together). today, at the same time they lowered the prices again they got my gir hoodie back in stock. so barring my getting an email from them saying somebody beat me to it by a few seconds, i'm going to be very happy in few day when it gets here, and for only $14.06 including tax and shipping.