Saturday, September 21, 2013

Flint Photos: Downtown Flint in the Fifties



7 comments:

  1. Bet the photographer never had any idea how awesome this image would be when he or she took it .

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  2. Smith Bridgman's didn't have the front façade yet.

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  3. This Flint is so gone...haunting to see. That's the Durant in the far distance, right?

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    1. Yes, that's the Durant, last building on the right. It's north of the Sill Building, also on the right.

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  4. Somehow, every time we discuss or have a picture with the Sill Building, I always think that that should be the name of a building in the movies or on TV shows where the actors crawl out one window, shuffle along a wide sill or ledge, look down at the traffic and honking cars below, and crawl into another window on the same floor. Somehow, those windows always manage to be open or unlocked.

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  5. In all fairness, once again, many downtowns are gone. Regentrification of shopping areas in other cities is at best very spotty and incomplete. Face it, they can't compete with major malls, safer areas, and free parking. And who is going to return to a downtown area where they enforce expired meters in a couple of minutes, no matter how charming the downtown is? Face it, downtowns like that are an expired business model.

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  6. My grandfathers abstract business was in the Sill building from the 20's-50's or 60's.

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Thanks for commenting. I moderate comments, so it may take a while for your comment to appear. You might enjoy my book about Flint called "Teardown: Memoir of a Vanishing City," a Michigan Notable Book for 2014 and a finalist for the 33rd Annual Northern California Book Award for Creative NonFiction. Filmmaker Michael Moore described Teardown as "a brilliant chronicle of the Mad Maxization of a once-great American city." More information about Teardown is available at www.teardownbook.com.