FALL TOWN (2003-2024)

East Side & Downtown

Nicknamed the Forest City, the shot was taken from East 130th Street, the southeastern boder of the ciy. Underneath the trees are neighborhoods.

Hodges School, Transom Window, East 74th Street

Built in 1904, by the1970s it was closed. People live there now, but don' think big beautiful lofts in an old school. It's run-down and wouldn't pass inspections. In Fall Town an occupied structure is a positive.

House, Bayliss Avenue

Home & Car, Coit Road

Fall Town is called the Forest City, but with no maintenance that is true than ever.

Ferry Cap & Screw, Scranton Road

Built in 1907, closed in 2015, demolished in 2024. The bluffs above the valley where the machine shop used to sit, is now the most expensive real estate in the city. This neighborhood was known as Duck Island not because of any relationship to any sort of animal, but, particularly during Prohibition, COVID-19 it's isolation was a great place to duck into.

Hough Bakery

Started in 1903, it was the city's dominant bakery and closed in 1992. That's a long time in ruin.

Home & Basic Oxygen Furnace Stack, Nursery Court, Willow Neighborhood

Lakeshore Power Station - Built 1921, Closed 2015, Demolished 2018

Another coal-fired plant bites the dust. This one blew directly over the old Slovenian neighborhood - Superior/St. Clair - for its entire life.

Saint Sebastion, St. Micael Church

Built by German immigrants in 1888, the church features, which ones was the tallest structure in the city, its steeple. The exterior is sandstone, and the interior is entirely wooden, carved into intricate detail, and saints are everywhere.

It's still largely an immigrant church, but, Spanish-speaking.

Church, East 82nd Street, Forgotten Triangle

Clearly, it's a city of houses as well as industry. The many houses found many uses over the years, including bars, stores, and churches, and became a Mom & Pop industry where the owners really lived there.

Skull Look Over Fence, East 77th Place, 2008

The last Polish person in the neighborhood had set up a very eccentric backyard and front yard. 77th Pl. is the alley behind his house. When I took the shot, he surprised me when the garage door opened and he saw me. The surprise was he immediately went for his gun, then aimed it at me, not five feet way. Obviously, I talked him out of it. I wouldn't have liked to die for any shot no matter how appropriate to it's context.

As one of the last of the Mohicans, you should be able to understand why.

Danzey's, East 79th Street

This was a commercial strip that had a lot of great buildings. By the time the shot was taken there were only a couple left. Danzey owned, worked and lived in the building. He stayed until the neighborhood was almost gone, but he definitely decided to move out when his daughter was murdered in a robbery. He ended up about three blocks away at a little strip mall, that, while isolated, was not as isolated as as original store which was part of an old style strip, none of which still exist anymore.

Old Fashion Hot Dogs, Lorain Aveue Opened 1920, Closed 2020

Bedroom Window, East 58th Street, JBI Scrap

The home is gone as well as the scrapyard because the highway called the Opportunity Corridor came through here and claimed eminent domain.

Bar, Maple Lanes, St. Clair Avenue

The painting was done right on the wall by a regular at the bar during the 1950s. For a six-pack of bee.He recreated Jill Saint Cyr, a well-known burlesque queen and lingerie retailer. I'm sure she would have approved. These were her glory days, the 1950s. They were also the glorious days of the city which began to lose population in 1952 until over 2/3 of the population had left by 2026.

Bowling Alley, Maple Lanes, St. Clair Avenue

There were more Slovenians in this town than anywhere outside of Europe and many of them live the long Saint Clair, which was a ha for neighborhood bars, all of which are gone. The Maple Lanes on today and is in great shape and always needs more patrons.

Tim Willis Homestead, East 83rrd Street

Tim built each one of these over a period of 30 years by himself and by hand. He would wear a white T-shirt and, I swear, never had a bit of grease or stain on it ever in an age of carbon fiber and lightweight, space-age materials, 10 used heavy duty still played. The robots, dragons, etc., were all motorized and could move including their limbs. I guess you could call Tim a self-taught mechanical genius and he certainly was. This is exactly where he was from. Pretty much smack dad in the middle of the hood called Fairfax and his creations are on display in an open field where two of his old Cleveland homes used to be.

Pierson Upbound & Downtown

Strategic Glass, Rail Line & Downtown

The plant is now gone.

Jefferson Avenue Bridge Site

In the 1950s the movable bridge was hit by a lake freighter and was never replaced.

Door, Lakeview Avenue

It was a thriving Jewish neighborhood until the 1950s when they left to go to the Heights. In 2006 the Jewish Federation closed downtown offices, signifying the end of Jewish people in the citty.

Ivy, Apartment House, Roxford Road, 2007

Apartment House, Roxford Road

Calvary Hill Temple, Church of God in Christ, Woodhill Road

Completely fixed and clean today.

Mailbox,