It turns out this is a repeat: sorry! But when I first started doing these, it was short and desultory. Now it's interminable and tasks your patience like nothing else, but at least it's easily skimmable.

Twenty-five hundred souls, a little less than 50 years ago. More than the city had when these structures were built.

City Hall:

An old Carnegie Library. Lucky is the town that had one; lucky is the town that still does.

"Why don’t you name it after my mother, dear? I think ‘Elveenie’ would be a grand name for a perfume.”

“Well, I’ve already got the ads written up, but I have another product that might be good.”

“You’re a dear.” (smooch on cheek)

Did . . . did they just unearth this town?

Usually I don’t like restored signs, but for some reason it seems to work here.

1871: lots of money in this one for such a young state.

I’ve never seen that sort of arcade on an old retail building. The glass isn't original, but you get the sense of the Italianate arcade.

“Sir, I’d like to rent that top floor, if I might. I expect the third floor price will be less than the second, considering the extra effort my clients will have to make to get up there.”

“There isn’t a third floor.”

“Alright, I shall go down the street, then. Good day to you sir.”

“I’m telling you, Mr. Carver, that was a once-in-a-lifetime flood. They’ve built a dike. It’s not going to happen again.”

“I don’t give a good got-damned, you whelp. You’re the architect and you’ll do as I say.”

That’s a mean wedge of Buckaroo Revival, right there.

The building next door (on the left) was an addition, I think; perhaps the brick was different, but the plan’s the same.

Charming holdover, but I have to ask . . .

. . . where is that door on the right going to?

Upstairs?

If we had a category for Obligatory Ugly Post-War Bank, this might be it:

Don’t know if it was a bank, but I wouldn’t be surprised. It says it served a sober function. The line of Kasota stone is idiotic, though, and the windows on the second floor seem off. So much forehead!

Another poor fellow stranded with the floodwaters of regrettable renovation up to his hips.

Those Moorish arches, I’d wager, were once all glass.

The local newspaper has one customer, and they were so grateful they made him a sign:

Did the sign once say something else?

It’s been through a lot.

It looks as if it’s getting better. Say, it’s been a while since I snapped these; wonder if the Google car has been back. . . .

No.

Does anyone at Sheldon’s appliances think they would have got less business if they’d restored the entire building, instead of chopping it in half and rendering the top part orphaned?

Believe it or not, this was the movie theater. The State.

Do you know how we can tell? Well, old pictures, of course.

But also this.

The Lion’s heads often had steel ropes emerging from their mouths, holding up the signs.

I’m jumping around downtown here, because I went back and took some more. In the early days I would confine myself to 8 or 10, but now we know that rule’s long dead.

Two old friends:

They went up two years apart.

There’s nothing else this could possibly be. Note: accounting is on the second floor, staffed entirely by elves.

Here in a small town in the middle of the continent in the early days of the 20th century, a model of a late-Medieval palazzo. Why? Because some things persist.

Like I say these days, it seems like a lot of town for 2,000 people.

THERE IS NO SECOND FLOOR ONLY FIRST AND THIRD

Just a space for the bodies. STORAGE! I MEANT STORAGE

Another post-war stone job that probably meant "bar."

The building on the right looks like the robot at the dentist, saying AHHHH

The adjacent building has the same bar-stone rehab: odd.

The trains, I presume, don't stop any more. Whatever comes by keeps on going.