210 Victory Boulevard, ca. 1940
I have only the slightest memories of this building, even though I grew up a few blocks away and probably walked past it hundreds of times before it was torn down in the early 2000s. I suspect the reason it never really registered in my mind is because it was set way back from Victory Boulevard and the property was no longer the nicely-maintained lawns and hedges depicted above, but a mass of uncontrolled trees and bushes.
When I was a kid, those set-back buildings had acquired a reputation for housing shady characters. A friend of mine lived in one of them - maybe even this one - and I visited once, and it was fairly creepy.
According to Dept. of Building records, in 2000, it was reported that the back of the building had collapsed and the front was in imminent danger of coming down. I've always been fascinated about the circumstances by which a perfectly decent building reaches a state where it's abandoned and left to ruin. Whole families lived there once. Hopes were hoped, dreams dreamed, and lives lived inside those walls. Now, it's not much more than a few photos. As such, I'm going to do a series of short posts about buildings similar to this one that once graced our streets and at some point - poof!- just seemed to vanish into the æther.
2013
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