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titusnowlWhen I go home, Mom's going to take me on a tour of her mom's house. It was built in the mid 19th century and has been expanded several times since then. She'll show me where the additions were built, when (if she knows), and illustrate the changes that were made in her own memory. It's a very interesting house, with a dugout cellar and a secret door in the living room that leads to an upstairs apartment.
The gas station on the interstate, up by McDonald's, used to be a Lustron service station. The enamelled-steel tiles have been painted cream, but they still make the telltale metallic ring when you tap them, and the corners of the building are dented where cars have run into it over the past fifty years. When you take a step back and look at the shape of the building, ignoring its current layout, you can see where the service bays were and what it looked like once upon a time.
If you take a drive up Harry Hines Boulevard in Dallas, you can see a lot of old neon signs - ditto on I-35E in that area, where you'll spot 1950s steak house after 1950s steak house. In one spot there's a motel with a new backlit plastic sign with its name on it, but the actual word "motel" is in a distinctive font in turquoise and orange, and the building is roughly A-framed. It was a Howard Johnson motel, and the original HoJo restaurant is still standing next door as a separate business (a tire shop or something - no longer a diner). At least one of the buildings - I forget which, and it may have been both - was still painted with orange trim, as well.
There are three sorts of places I would choose from for a permanent address: a large 1910-20s home, in the bungalow-inspired style that was popular in this area - brick construction, massive columned porch, Prairie aesthetic; a low-slung 1950s ranch that was ultra-modern and trendy at the time of its construction, with innovative built-ins and streamlined architectural detailing; or a Victorian-era former general store in a historic downtown, with its period detailing weathered but intact, the bottom floor converted to a photography studio for Justin and the upstairs made into a stripped-down, open-plan home space. There are multiple examples of each to be found in towns all around here. Each has its own particular charm.
It's really hard to find postcards of Greenville, because apparently the town has always sucked - there are 1950s businesses and motel buildings in town, but I've found very few postcards for any of them. Usually the only postcards eBay turns up for this town are of a lynching in town square in the teens and a '40s-era linen print displaying the BLACKEST LAND - WHITEST PEOPLE sign that used to hang across Lee Street. The white people who run the town often express their concern and confusion as to why the rest of the country, when they think of Greenville at all, think of it as a racist wonderland.
The gas station on the interstate, up by McDonald's, used to be a Lustron service station. The enamelled-steel tiles have been painted cream, but they still make the telltale metallic ring when you tap them, and the corners of the building are dented where cars have run into it over the past fifty years. When you take a step back and look at the shape of the building, ignoring its current layout, you can see where the service bays were and what it looked like once upon a time.
If you take a drive up Harry Hines Boulevard in Dallas, you can see a lot of old neon signs - ditto on I-35E in that area, where you'll spot 1950s steak house after 1950s steak house. In one spot there's a motel with a new backlit plastic sign with its name on it, but the actual word "motel" is in a distinctive font in turquoise and orange, and the building is roughly A-framed. It was a Howard Johnson motel, and the original HoJo restaurant is still standing next door as a separate business (a tire shop or something - no longer a diner). At least one of the buildings - I forget which, and it may have been both - was still painted with orange trim, as well.
There are three sorts of places I would choose from for a permanent address: a large 1910-20s home, in the bungalow-inspired style that was popular in this area - brick construction, massive columned porch, Prairie aesthetic; a low-slung 1950s ranch that was ultra-modern and trendy at the time of its construction, with innovative built-ins and streamlined architectural detailing; or a Victorian-era former general store in a historic downtown, with its period detailing weathered but intact, the bottom floor converted to a photography studio for Justin and the upstairs made into a stripped-down, open-plan home space. There are multiple examples of each to be found in towns all around here. Each has its own particular charm.
It's really hard to find postcards of Greenville, because apparently the town has always sucked - there are 1950s businesses and motel buildings in town, but I've found very few postcards for any of them. Usually the only postcards eBay turns up for this town are of a lynching in town square in the teens and a '40s-era linen print displaying the BLACKEST LAND - WHITEST PEOPLE sign that used to hang across Lee Street. The white people who run the town often express their concern and confusion as to why the rest of the country, when they think of Greenville at all, think of it as a racist wonderland.
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Date: 2006-05-06 01:10 pm (UTC)And the town leaders are confused about why they have racist reputation? I'm confused about why they're confused.