Twelve thousand souls. Its prosaic Wikipedia entry notes, in the first paragraph, “It is surrounded by agricultural country.”

Or, it’s in agricultural country, not separate from it at all, but intrinsically bound to it.

That's what I said last week. This is part two.

I feel so bad for the building on the left.

On one hand, it might be happy to have survived, and have its turret top still intact. So many of those were lost. It also stands as a rebuke to other corner buildings that don’t have rentable turrets. But it seems like an abandoned monument of a culture that existed before another culture came along and built the building across the street.

“Let my friend Kevin do your building. He’s pretty good at this. He really has a feel for the soul of a building.”

The number of poor decisions made over this building’s lifetime is remarkable.

Eyes, nose, surprise mouth

“Joe, that second story you ordered arrived today. Let’s take a look . . . oh, I’m sorry, it looks like they sent the wrong size.

The VIP building is avoided by anyone with a sense of order, because it DOESN’T LINE UP AUUUUGHHHH

BUCHANAN

Interesting how the adjacent building seems to use the same stone, but has a different cornice line. Well, I’m sure whatever comes next won’t be too alarming for the anal-rententives bothered by the VIP, and -

AUUUUUGHGGHHG

The cornice is off just enough to make you wonder if it was impossible, or if it bothered anyone involved,

Variety store once, now store no more

Sign’s about the right length for F. W. Woolworth.

Amazing quantity of frosting up there:

WOODWARD

“Fine, fine, your mother can live with us in my new office block apartments, but I want to make it clear her quarters are completely separate from our home.”

I get an uncomfortable sensation in my chest when I think about those windows. Whether they were always like that. Whether they were always thin with a board in the middle. Why.

Why why why

“Dammit, Fitzwilliams, you knew I advertised my building as the tallest in town, and then you went and did this. Everyone knows tallest means the most floors. All right, technically, you’re just as tall but you know what I mean.”

There It Is AGAIN

Were all the thin windows like this, and I’ve been unaware all the years?

One’s blind, the other’s mute

The poor BARBER building got mummified.

You really get a sense of the quantity of the old stock, don’t you? It’s remarkable how much there is. Sandblasting, some new windows - downtown would look incredible again.

From the “tornado picked it up, carried it twenty mile, dropped it down on another building” school of design

Look at those capitals:

That’s no order I know. Or anyone else.

Halfway through the job of whacking off the cornice, someone realized how crappy the building looked:

What’s entombed behind the screen on the left, who knows. What the big blank space was on the Hale building, who knows.

Actually, we do.