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.