Our second look at Palestine TX.

That’s stark:

Poor little sign, adrift in an expanse of brick.

As for the building, you might ask: 50s construction? Facade rehab? Well, look at the context:

This seems to suggest it was more like the one on the right, once.

"Avon," once.

All the signage gone. Whoever there’s now doesn’t need signs. What’s the point. Just costs money.

Signs of past prosperity and forward-looking merchants: the old facades were modernized, with space for big logos and store names.

When the spirit leaves a city, you get these blank canvases.

Entirely unsullied!

Awnings to shield against the pitiless Texas sun.

Mostly sullied.

That 50s thin brick: they just didn’t care if it fit the building's spirit. They'd laugh at you if you suggested a building had such a thing.

If Hopper had grown up in Texas:

Whatever was lost didn’t seem to have a second story.

Or it did, and then it was razed and replaced with a two-story building, which was later razed. Hence the bricked up windows.

The Sparrow and the Peacock:

DILLES?

		It seems as if the design kept the name from being read at street level.

“Just work around it somehow. You’re the artist. Figure it out.”

The supply of buildings like this, in this condition, seems inexhaustible.

But of course someday they'll all be gone.

Ah! An old hotel, I’m sure.

The small windows were for bathrooms. Of that I’m mostly certain.

“Well, we’ve run out of money, but surely we can raise enough to finish the steeple in the next few years. Ought to have it up by ’29.”

I couldn’t begin to guess at the brand.

Not that it matters, but in the interests of history, it does.

Open as a live performance venue now:

Cinematreasures: “Texas opened in 1928, burned in 1929, was rebuilt in the late 1930s, burned again in 1939 and again reopened.”

Old pictures here.

Finally:

Of all the pictures in this entry, this one haunts me the most.