Last week, while browsing in the Local History section of the Lorain Public Library, I found another one of those books full of proposals for the redevelopment of Downtown Lorain that never took place (similar to this one, which I blogged about back
here). This one was produced by the
New Lorain Association in November 1977.
Like the 1978 book with the same theme, this one has many photographs of Lorain sprinkled in with the text. A few of them, reproduced from the book, are below.
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Kline's Department Store, which was closed by the time of the book |
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Note the Eagles Aerie 343 was still at 575 Broadway back then |
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Hot Waters |
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Looking West on Sixth Street from Broadway; note the now-gone houses next to the Lorain Public Library
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http://www.kenosha.org/departments/development/index.html
ReplyDeletethese are the folks that "we" visited and had come to Lorain to show us how they came back from industrial devastation. They surveyed downtown Lorain and commented that they wished they had this waterfront back home for an even better project. This was six years ago and I have watched downtown sliding backwards with nothing coming together to bring it back. Everybody knows "we just can't do it" and there it sits!
Looking at this reminds me of those books from the late 50's-early 60's that showed all the wonderful things we'd do in outer space, orbiting stations, moonbases, all that great stuff, but somehow....it just never came about.
ReplyDeleteA whole lotta people, rather than actually doing something to revitalize Lorain, just stuck it in Oak Hills, and they're waiting for that phone call.
Dan-thanks for the photos.
BTW, that was me, -Alan.
ReplyDelete