My little town is hardly urban, but it has some lovely blocks of older buildings that have survived for a couple of centuries.
One of my favorites is a block on Main Street, where I went tonight to pick up a small pizza from Salvano’s restaurant and take it home.
Most nights, I have a protein drink for dinner, but two or three nights a week, we have pizza takeout or go out to the Bog for a hamburger.
Like most small upstate New York towns, we have a Chinese restaurant that’s been on Main street for years.
I never see the owners or the cooks except for one, who walks a big dog in the mornings. We rarely go there; I guess I’m spoiled by my years in New York City.
But I love the building and have been waiting for some time to take a night photo of it; the restaurant has a lot of character. The rain and night brought the restaurant out and into focus tonight.
I take so many photos of the rural part of my life; I’m going to try to capture more buildings; there are some beautiful ones here.
Such a cool photo! Thank you.
Great photo. Truly great.
Jon…
In my childhood days in NYC, I had no notion of the state’s population distribution. I thought all of NY state was like NYC; not just one dot at its southern tip.
Over time I came to appreciate both the city’s and state’s relevant place in the country’s colorful history. Today in NYC, we can see streets and stations with strange-sounding Dutch names, while forgetting that the Dutch ruled what became NYC until 1664.
Throughout the country, we can find architectural reminders or informers of our past. In St. Louis, I crossed the Eads Bridge many times, not knowing how it was built, or that it was a model that designer John Roebling studied before beginning the Brooklyn Bridge in 1869.
Several years ago, we walked through the ruins of the Tumacácori mission near Tubac, Arizona. It was originally built in 1691, and restored over the years. We were amazed how low doorways were, reminding us how much shorter people were then.
Fortunately, buildings farther from the larger cities have survived longer, where developers aren’t so eager to tear them down for newer projects. In many of Arizona’s (and Texas’s) smaller cities, older downtown areas are still vibrant. Some even attract tourists.