Casper, Wyoming.
Phoenix, Arizona.
Sheridan, Wyoming.
Michigan City, Indiana.
Williams, Arizona.
Banning, California.
York, Pennsylvania.
Eugene, Oregon.
Yakima, Washington.
Van Nuys, California.
Council Bluffs, Iowa.
Reseda, California.
Vintage Postcards: Downtowns And Main Streets Across The US – 1950s-1960s
– Posted on November 22, 2024
What a difference Sixty years make! Living 20 some miles from Michigan City, Indiana, even by the late 60s it was far from the thriving metropolis shown . Marquette Mall on the south side killed almost all of the remaining stores and restaurants in the CBD. An attempt to revitalize involving closings the main street to traffic was a total disaster. NOW Marquette Mall is closed and I believe scheduled for demolition. I’m not sure exactly what is happening since I haven’t had occasion to visit for over several years 🤔! Ĺike so many of the cars shown in all posts, Michigan City is GONE, while our own local government is currently destroying a once nice town, trying to turn it into a Megalopalas! PROGRESS? 🤣
At least there’s the prison? Not the kind of steady employer you want for a city when everything else is struggling.
Though I was very young, I recall many of these almost ‘junky-looking’ downtowns. Never appealed to me, when my parents asked if I wanted join them shopping or eating. You consistently smelled the street-level pollution, as a child. Plus, most of the businesses, seemed somewhat tacky, in appearance, and merchandise. And all the crowds. I felt downtowns back then, were best appreciated by passing through, in the backseat of my parent’s station wagon. lol
Wow! Now while I am no expert on downtowns, being only 1-9 years old in the 50’s, these downtowns look alive to me compared to how some may look today. I do have experience with downtown San Diego and San Francisco in the late 60’s to early 70’s. Broadway, in San Diego, looked like those above for a big city though. Dead quite at night. San Francisco, at Market and Fifth or Union Square, was packed and alive. Not as much today since Covid really upset the apple cart pulling a ton of office workers out of The City.
Lots happening, from a sensory point of view. Debatable, whether everyone enjoyed it. I recall regularly smelling pollution, plenty of litter, and the infrastructure (sidewalks, roads, buildings) were frequently pretty beat up. Plenty of signs of neglect. Lots of crowds, would get annoying/intimidating as a little kid. More atmosphere… but often, not pleasant. I don’t have idealized views of that era. Different strokes, for different folks.
Those blocks of Eugene look very different today. Every business is gone; the Newberrys is now a day care center, but still called “The Newberry” and has one old sign still on the building.
I think I like the one for Eugene, OR the best. Mostly, this is for the beat-up ’57 Ford on the far right. But I need to know why they felt that quotation marks were necessary. Is Eugene a nickname? Is the town’s real name something else?
People did funny things with punctuation back in the day. Yes, it really is and always was called Eugene, after the towns first white resident and one of the founding fathers, Eugene Skinner. And that’s Skinner Butte in the distance. His little log cabin was on the west side of the Butte.
I forgot to point out the green bus, a conventional school-bus type thing, with the words “City Bus” written on the front. Eugene struggled to keep bus service (which was private back then). In 1958 the bus company collapsed and the driver formed their own little collective providing service with VW buses and presumably a couple of converted school buses:
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/blog/history/vintage-snapshot-eugenes-vw-bus-transit-system/
Interesting – I’ve seen you mention Skinner Butte plenty, but never realized that Eugene Skinner was who the City was named for.
People did funny things with spelling back in the day too, and one of the other cities here, Casper, Wyoming is a great example. Casper was named for Caspar Collins, an army lieutenant who was killed in an Indian battle there. However, his name was spelled wrong when incorporating the town and the error was never corrected.
Lovely .
Winslow, Az. is still a nice town if much quieter than it appears in the postcard .
-Nate
The postcard is from Williams, which is west of Flagstaff. Winslow is east of Flagstaff. Both are pretty quiet compared to the Fifties, with Interstate 40 bypassing the towns, though Williams does get Grand Canyon traffic and Winslow gets Jackson Browne and Eagles fans who want to check out the flatbread Ford. I drive through both of them this fall but don’t recall stopping, unless it was for freeway interchange fuel.
’61 Dodge just entering the shot in Yakima.
It’s fun to find the newest auto in each photo, and to see how much “new car shine” it still has.
In Banning, CA, the Disney “Sleeping Beauty” had its final showing on 23 June 1959, providing a pretty narrow window for the photo’s actual date:
I see my car ! ( again). 1960 Valiant, light blue, left side of the Reseda photo. Must’ve been a Spring Special, since light blue wasn’t listed as a color in the brochure. My ’60 Valiant was the same color, and not a repaint, since it was behind the heater core housing on the firewall. An identical car appears in Albuquerque in 1973.
’61 Fury just entering the shot in Council Bluffs.