Downtown of my hometown is a historic place yet it is highly disregarded by many as just simply rundown. If you take time to look at the buildings that line the main street you can begin to understand what made Olean a unique place to live. There are many old buildings, 1880's, still standing and being used today. Two that I personally love are the banks that stand on the main corners of town. One is still the main bank in town while the other is sits empty waiting for a new owner. There is amazing architecture to be seen while looking down the main street; columns on the bank, facades of the cobbler and printing shop.
The greatest sights of the street are truly the parts that are unseen! The apartments that sit overlooking the street and the great rooms that sit in hiding stories above the traffic below. When you look closely at each building that comprises the couple of blocks of the downtown you realize the amount of unknown space that has existed above you your whole life.
About 12 years ago the city bulldozed what was arguably the greatest piece of architecture that ever stood in Olean...the Palace Theater. It was a brick masterpiece that stretched half a block with a full stage that hosted Vaudeville performances as well as a screen for showing photo reels (as they called them). There is one forgotten feature of this building and part that always grabbed my attention as a child walking by was a section of the upper floor with no windows and only an entrance shared with a neighboring business. I only recently found the answer to this puzzling "room" by asking my grandfather another question. This windowless room was actually a bowling ally built on what he recalled as the fourth floor above the theater and its balcony.
Sadly, downtown Olean met its decline in a similar fashion as that of Buffalo. Great minds thought it beneficial to the economy to close the main street in efforts to expand to more lanes and modernize but it only yielded boarded up windows and empty shops. Buffalo never flourished after the main street transition to a pedestrian area either.
I wish I could have experienced this downtown in its glory! The neon lights shining or the shop windows giving passersby glimpses of the latest fashions in clothing or interior decorating. What was it like to walk down this busy street in the 50's and 60's? Someday i would love to know.
A bowling alley--great stuff!
ReplyDeleteI love the contrast between the bottom two photos. It's not just that one is thriving and one is not. It'a also that in both, business ownners felt they needed to modernize the facades, but they did it differently. The 60s streetscape has a lot of huge modern signs stuck on the storefonts (look at second rom left, over Art Deco facade, the one similar to Kenmore municipal building). Then came the little rooflets, those shingle mansard-style things extending over the sidewalk. Classic 70s.