The Deleted Scenes - Long Hall
Every week in my “What Do You Think You’re Looking At?” series, I feature a building with an interesting history or previous life. Today’s building is in Springfield, Ohio, and I saw it in this tweet. But don’t click on that yet. It resembles a church, but the number of windows (and the “City Building” in stone above the central doorway) say it’s an old civic building. Currently a museum, the building was originally, as you might expect, City Hall—plus a few other less expected uses!
Now you might think I’m featuring this building simply because it combined a city hall with a market and opera house. And that would have been enough to feature it. But this is really why: It’s enormous! What looks from the front like the entire building is really just a façade and small interior portion. According to the museum’s website, “The 56,000 square foot building stands 50 wide by 462 feet deep.” Now you can click on the Twitter link. But I’ll tell you, basically, what else is in there. First, a Google Maps 3D image: Here’s a more unfortunate zoomed-out one, showing how much of the old city has been demolished for parking lots over the decades. It looks like less than half of this old downtown is still standing. Visually swap those parking lots for craters or charred shells, and you’d have no trouble thinking you were looking at a warzone. But this grand building did survive, fully intact. In a reply to the original tweet, someone else noted another similar building in Frederick, Maryland, which partially survived: The left image is the Knoxville building, which extends back much further than the preview image, and the top right is the surviving portion of the Frederick building. Apparently these sorts of long, multi-use civic/commercial buildings were staples of a vanished age of American urbanism. I’m glad we at least have a few left. Related Reading: What Do You Think You’re Looking At? #24 Thank you for reading! Please consider upgrading to a paid subscription to help support this newsletter. You’ll get a weekly subscribers-only post, plus full access to the archive: over 600 posts and growing. And you’ll help ensure more material like this! You're currently a free subscriber to The Deleted Scenes. For the full experience, upgrade your subscription. |
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