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Post by nikonbob on Mar 31, 2008 12:43:30 GMT -5
The local YMCA building sure has seen better days. I should add taken with a Nikon S2 and 35/2.5. Bob
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Mar 31, 2008 13:58:32 GMT -5
The building still has a lot of character.
Wayne
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Post by nikonbob on Mar 31, 2008 17:13:32 GMT -5
Wayne I guess you could call it character. Nikon S2 and 135/3.5.
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Post by Just Plain Curt on Apr 1, 2008 5:59:53 GMT -5
Yes, not only does it have a lot of character, according to an article in our local paper it's full of characters too. The local John Howard society is using it as a sort of halfway house for men. Ex-cons, alcoholics, drug rehabs, basically anyone who needs a hand up during a new start.
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mickeyobe
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Post by mickeyobe on Apr 1, 2008 10:37:33 GMT -5
I wonder if the rehabs would be as handy with a paintbrush as with a needle. Their "house" could certainly use a hand up.
Mickey
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PeterW
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Post by PeterW on Apr 1, 2008 12:16:37 GMT -5
Sorry if I'm treading on anyone's toes but I can't agree that this building has any character. Well, perhaps that's not quite correct because there are good characteristics and bad characteristics. To me, this one's loaded with bad characteristics of a clashing mish-mash of architectural styles.
It looks like a functional docklands warehouse from the 19th century but with a peculiar mix of rectangular windows plus a few with soldier arches and a couple of fake keystones thrown in for good measure. It's got a mock-Georgian entrance door and a mock Georgian or Regency top coping with hideous scrolls from goodness knows what period. Even before the large windows were boarded and reduced in size I doubt it looked much better.
It reminds me of some of the warehouses and mills built by the nouveu-riche industrialists in the north of England in the 19th century under the impression that their buildings were imposing and somehow 'grand' instead of just a vulgar expression of money without taste. Even the style of lettering of Y.M.C.A. is pretty awful.
I'm all in favour of preserving some of the best examples of architecture from previous eras, and I don't know when this was built, but to me it's a mess.
Sorry, I've crawled back into my shell now.
PeterW
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Post by Deleted on Apr 1, 2008 16:14:08 GMT -5
Peter.
You have to remember that over here your relatively young cousins don't have as many "old" buildings to choose from when we talk about preservation. The oldest building in the region where I live was built in about 1861--and that's a log cabin preserved in a city park. Any building built before 1900 is considered a real cultural treasure--no matter what the architectural design.
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Post by nikonbob on Apr 1, 2008 17:38:12 GMT -5
PeterW
Come out of your shell, you are correct about the architecture of this building. I think this was built at the start of the last century and they tried to make it grand without really knowing how. Young kids and young nations try to imitate the old but somehow lose the plot along the way. Personally I think it is a decrepit eyesore now but that is the way we were then.
Bob
Bob
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PeterW
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Post by PeterW on Apr 1, 2008 18:55:56 GMT -5
Sorry Wayne, and others who live in the middle, or thereabouts, of the US. On reflection my judgement was too harsh. I was forgetting how relatively recently the US, apart from the east and west seaboards and some of the southern states, was developed. Obviously 19th and early 20th century architects in these vast areas of the country had no local traditions to guide them and must have drawn their inspiration from pictures of buildings in the older-settled states or in Europe. Here in the UK 19th century houses are commonplace, and there are plenty going back to the 18th century, and before in the case of many old farmhouses and coaching inns, and many churches and cathedrals go back 800 to 1000 years.
My own house, along with most of the others in the road, was built in 1881-82 when Ashford was expanding as a railway town and a market town. We're about a mile and a half from the old 19th century railway works where they used to build locomotives, and my road and the one next to it were then right on the edge of the town.
The town of Ashford goes back to about 890 AD. It is listed in the Domesday Book, compiled in 1086, under its original Saxon name of Essetesford. According to this listing it had a church, two mills and a value of 150 shillings. In those days a shilling, or schilling, was taken as the value of a cow. In the 20th century the town expanded to swallow quite a few local villages which are now just parts of Ashford.
Bob: There were plenty of eyesores built by 19th century get-rich-quick developers in industrial cities in the UK. Some were hardly fit for habitation even by standards of the time. Many of the worst were demolished in the slum-clearance programs of the 1930s and the inhabitants rehoused in large housing estates in the suburbs despite the depression. In the main, Victorian England, before the rise of the so-called middle classes, consisted of the very rich and the very poor.
PeterW
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Post by nikonbob on Apr 1, 2008 20:35:20 GMT -5
PeterW
Looks to me like we are headed back to a new Victorian era two class system with what is being done today to the so called middle classes. Interesting times ahead so stay tuned as the program continues.
Bob
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Post by Michael Fraley on Apr 2, 2008 23:34:34 GMT -5
I will never forget -- a shilling was originally the value of a cow. Thank you, Peter! I'm reading some Middle English stories and enjoying words like 'swink' - to strive or strain, as in 'sweat and swink'. Another one is 'thwang' - to whip. The mother tongue is pretty funny...
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PeterW
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Post by PeterW on Apr 3, 2008 6:50:16 GMT -5
Hi Michael, You're prodding one of my sleeping hobby-horses, the development of the English language. I haven't done much reading about it for a long time, but it's a fascinating - and very complex - subject, and I'm not going to be drawn into it here Going back to shillings, a shilling was generally taken to be the value of a cow in areas where cattle were the main livestock, but I believe in some parts of England where sheep were the main livestock it could instead be the value of a sheep. What the value of a cow was in these areas I don't know. Depended on how many people wanted one I suppose. PeterW
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Post by Randy on Apr 3, 2008 7:56:03 GMT -5
That YMCA building is typical of the kind of run down look our downtown and many neighboring towns have. Ashtabula Ohio has many old buildings like this that make me cringe. The part of Conneaut that I live in is where the first settlers came when this area was still owned by the Connecticut Western Reserve. Some of the buildings here date back to the early 1800s...old brick buildings made with local clay. Many of the old brick buildings were built for the Lake Erie fish industry. Also this was one of the first Great Lakes Ports for international shipping. My house was built in 1862 by a ships captain named Blye and it used to have a Widows Walk.
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Post by Just Plain Curt on Apr 3, 2008 11:43:21 GMT -5
After just returning from walking our dog and reading the plaque at a park nearby I'm reasonably sure we only got the first trans Canada railway through here in 1827. Before that we were pretty much a fur trade fort and scattered settlement from the late 1700's. I know even the only highway that connects Canada, the Trans Canada highway had a barge running across a river instead of a bridge about 65 miles East of here until 1959 when the last bridge was finally finished. In the grand scheme of things, we really don't have a whole lot of history at least architecturally in our area unless you count fur trade forts and then I believe there were around 12 since the war of 1812 era. If it weren't for the European love of the beaver hat, we probably wouldn't even have a city here.
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Reiska
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Post by Reiska on Apr 13, 2008 6:52:31 GMT -5
This is not a dockland warehouse from the 19th century but an old engineering works in our neighbour town Pori. It might have some Russian influence but is very typical anyway. Peter is right, there is some recemblance to that YMCA (NMKY) house. The shape of the windows in that YMCA building doesn't necessary have originally been rectangular. But it is right, it has seen better days and perhaps even more creditable use. Of course helping people to get a new grip to a decent life is creditable too. Using a cow as a money unit reveals the disparity of the wealth. Here the unit was a squirrel skin ;D
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