American Cities Are Ugly

[KamikazePilot]

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[Cakebatter]

Spent two days in Aarhus, Denmark and was really feeling it. Great mixture of old and new, and very walkable.


Instead of infrastructure upgrades, we went to war in Iraq and Afghanistan.

 

[DonB90]

The Old Cincinnati Library Before Being Demolished, 1874-1955 - Rare Historical Photos

Built in 1874 on the site reserved for an opera house, the Old Cincinnati Library was a thing of wonder. These pictures show how it looked like.

rarehistoricalphotos.com

Built in 1874 on the site reserved for an opera house, the Old Cincinnati Library was a thing of wonder. With five levels of cast iron shelving, a fabulous foyer, checkerboard marble floors, and an atrium lit by a skylight ceiling, the place was breathtaking. Unfortunately, that magnificent maze of books is now lost forever.Patrons entered on Vine Street beneath the busts of William Shakespeare, John Milton, and Benjamin Franklin. A vestibule led to the cathedral-like main hall, four stories tall, topped with a massive skylight roof.Five levels of bookshelves jammed the walls. Shafts of sunlight cut through the windows to provide ample illumination."The hollow square within the columns is lighted by an arched clear roof of prismatic glass set in iron, the light of which is broken and softened by a paneled ceiling of richly colored glass.

In January of 1955, a new contemporary library opened at 800 Vine Street. The old building was sold to Leyman Corp for about $100,000 today, and by June that year, the magnificent library was razed.


The site is now a parking garage.

 

[bnew]

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My favorite shot from last night. The way the housing envelopes the Midtown Greenway — is there anything else quite like this in the U.S.?


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My favorite shot from last night. The way the housing envelopes the Midtown Greenway — is there anything else quite like this in the U.S.?

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I’ll add- a lot of NAM cities have wonderful trails. Not many with housing directly abutting or with retail activating the space, however. Milwaukee & Pittsburgh have wonderful trails and retail proximity to name a few, though.


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