Some new photos from Fort Wayne

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

It's always pleasant and interesting to look at your photos from Indiana. Great that these buildings are preserved, where I live to many are demolished (I guess it is cheeper to demolish and build a new one than to preserve).

Just curious, when you say a small town how many hinabutants mirror less do you mean?

Thanks for keeping the good work coming

robert

Plymouth has about 10,000 inhabitants. The places I've called "small towns" vary quite a bit in size. Some have only a few hundred inhabitants, while others have 20,000. There's no 'official definition' of a small town, but in my opinion once you get to 20,000 its a small city, rather than a small town.


Fort Wayne is considered a midsized city; we have about 270,000 people here, and are the second largest city in Indiana.

 

[robert blu]

Plymouth has about 10,000 inhabitants. The places I've called "small towns" vary quite a bit in size. Some have only a few hundred inhabitants, while others have 20,000. There's no 'official definition' of a small town, but in my opinion once you get to 20,000 its a small city, rather than a small town.


Fort Wayne is considered a midsized city; we have about 270,000 people here, and are the second largest city in Indiana.

Thanks for your answer Chris, I'm simply curious to look around me and compare the similar size towns in Italy! I'm much visually attracted by small villages and towns.

robert

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

This abandoned gas station is located at the intersection of Main Street and French Street in the small town of Tyner, Indiana. This is the first of two photographs that I made of it.

The brick building has several old Coca-Cola signs on it, and two old gas pumps stand in front of it along French Street. This building had also once served as the town's post office in the past.

Tyner is a tiny town, little more than a crossroads and a couple of side streets in rural Marshall County.

 

[ChipMcD]

I didn't know you were from Indiana. I've never been to Vincennes, a little far from home for me. A lot of the small towns in northern Indiana still have beautiful old buildings, but Plymouth is really extraordinary. So is Kendallville. Fort Wayne has demolished virtually every building from the late 19th Century downtown and replaced them with ugly steel and concrete monstrosities.

Chris,

I'm not from IN, but visited Vincennes and Columbus last summer on a cross country trip (retirement bucket list item) that mostly avoided Interstates, and I enjoyed both towns. If I get back to your state, I will definitely include the Ft Wayne area, based on your work.

I'm from the Philadelphia area now, and am a poster child easterner, but on that trip I found that most of the condescending bicoastal "wisdom" about "flyover country" was pure BS. That did not surprise me at all, because I came originally from a rural, agrarian area on Maryland's eastern shore. I very much enjoyed Indiana, Iowa, and Nebraska on my trip and would like to make targeted return trips to photograph specific areas in each of those states in greater detail.

Keep up the great work documenting your part of the world so artistically.

Chip

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

Here is the second photograph that I made of the abandoned gas station in Tyner, Indiana. The door and windows on this side are bricked up with cement blocks, but it still has a Coca-Cola sign like the ones on the front of the building.

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

The Gun Town is a firearms dealer located near Grovertown on US-30 in rural Starke County, Indiana. The building looks like a set of storefronts from a town in the Old West.

The banner on the front of the building says: "We sell ARs...because we're not Dick's.

The banner refers to Dick's Sporting Goods, a large chain store that sells guns in its hunting department. A few months before I made this photograph of The Gun Town, Dick's announced that they were going to stop selling the AR-15 rifle, which is the semi-automatic civilian version of the M-16 assault rifle. Dick's stopped selling the AR-15 because it has been used in several mass shootings in recent years.

The double entendre slogan on The Gun Town's banner has been adopted by small gun shops all over the United States to announce that they won't bow to pressure from gun control advocates to stop selling assault rifles like the AR-15.

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

This narrow building is the Simons Building. It is located on Michigan Street (State Road 17), between Garro Street and LaPorte Street, in the small town of Plymouth, Indiana.

Though it is a small building sandwiched between larger structures, I found the Simons Building's combination of a plain storefront on the first floor, bay window on the second, and Romanesque windows on the top floor to be an interesting and beautiful design.

Michigan Street is the "Main Street" in the small town of Plymouth, Indiana.

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

This mobile home is located in a trailer park on the west side of Starke Street, just south of US-30, in the small town of Hamlet, Indiana.

The front window is covered by an American flag and a Penske Racing flag.

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

Two children's bicycles on the front porch of a beautiful old house on the corner of US-33 (Main Street) and South Carlin Court on the southern edge of the small town of Churubusco, Indiana.



I photographed this place last summer.

 

[robert blu]

The Simons Building is a real beauty!
robert

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

The Simons Building is a real beauty!
robert

It is gorgeous! The building is actually for sale for $300,000. It has a beautiful two floor apartment on the two top floors. If I weren't poor I'd buy it; would be a neat place to have a studio and to live.

 

[KeithH]

It is gorgeous! ....

It certainly is, the Chamber of Commerce building next door looks pretty cool too.

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

It certainly is, the Chamber of Commerce building next door looks pretty cool too.

It is! Plymouth was a neat town. I had never been there before, but passed by it at the beginning of this year while driving to photograph a friend's wedding in another town about an hour west of Plymouth. I stopped in several towns along the way, since I don't usually make it to that part of Indiana as it is a long drive from home.

Plymouth's old "Main Street" buildings are in remarkable condition, and the town still supports a prosperous local business community.

There are a few other towns like that in northern Indiana that I have photographed; like Kendallville, Goshen, Mishawaka, and Huntington. Most of the ones with well-preserved Main Streets are larger than Plymouth, though. Mishawaka, Goshen, and Huntington really are small cities.

Most small towns are in bad shape here, with the old storefronts in poor condition and the second floor windows often boarded up. A lot of the factories that supported small town life in northern Indiana have gone to China, and they took the towns' prosperity away too.

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

Relaxation Station is a now-closed massage studio on the corner of Main Street and Mitchell Street in the small town of Kendallville, Indiana.

The building, which was originally a bank, is plain and unadorned except for the neoclassical entryway.

 

[Darthfeeble]

You've been busy, usually I have to read a page if that when I visit. I had to go through two and a half pages this visit. Enjoyed ever bit of every one. Thank you.

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

You've been busy, usually I have to read a page if that when I visit. I had to go through two and a half pages this visit. Enjoyed ever bit of every one. Thank you.

Thanks, Darthfeeble. I'm either too busy, or not busy enough, depending on how you look at it. I have a backlog of over 500 photos waiting to be edited. So, I have been too busy shooting or not busy enough finishing the work!

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

Kendallville Auto Parts is a locally owned auto parts store on the corner of Main Street and Mitchell Street in the small town of Kendallville, Indiana.

This is the kind of locally-owned auto parts store I remember from my childhood, before the big chains like AutoZone came to Indiana. The owner told me that his father opened the store in 1972. He said they have so much old stuff in stock that the second floor is also full of car parts.

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

The second of several photographs that I made of Kendallville Auto Parts in the small own of Kendallville, Indiana.

Going in this place is like stepping back in time 30 years. They still look up parts in paper catalogs held in a rack on the counter!

 

[Moto-Uno]

^And those great pounded tin ceiling ! Peter

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

^And those great pounded tin ceiling ! Peter

Yes, love the ceiling! When I was a kid, my dad used to buy car parts at a locally owned place in Fort Wayne called Hires Auto Parts. It was in an ancient brick storefront on Broadway in the middle of the city, just like this place in Kendallville, and the inside was damn near the same. Tin ceilings, grimy beat-up steel counters, fan belts hanging along the tops of the walls. They even had some of those shock absorber stools!


The store closed 20 yrs ago.