Monday, January 1, 2007

Kellogg Tour: Uptown, Photos taken 12/30/2006 (Part 4)

In its heyday, Kellogg's uptown area bustled with taverns, churches, clothing stores, banks, cafes, the city library, the Elks Club, car dealerships, furniture stores, drug stores, a bakery, an office supply store, etc. It's hard to believe, looking back, that so much was going on. Today, January 1, things have slowed down considerably. Here's a view looking up Kellogg's empty Main Street:


Where there used to be clothing stores and a loan center, now these second hand stores operate:




My dad's favorite bar is gone. Here is Dick and Floyd's exterior:




Next door is the entrance to the old IOOF hall. Our church was too small to hold all the Sunday School classes, so we older kids had Sunday School class upstairs through this door:




It's a gymnastics center now, but until I was in about the fifth or sixth grade, this was the United Church of Kellogg:




In the last year, Emmanuel Episcopal Church merged with the parish in Wallace. Consequently, the church building uptown is up for sale:


For years, the most important place for me and my friends was the YMCA, long since closed:


Right next door to the YMCA was the little office and waiting room where Bunker Hill's employing agent Albi Sinks handed out orders, telling new employees where and who to report to when we started a new job for Uncle Bunker:



I hear that Dick and Floyd's and the YMCA and employment office are all being remodeled into condos. I hope the new residents don't mind the sounds of ghosts swimming, playing basketball, getting drunk, and being hired out on a new job.

1 comment:

Katrina said...

It's amazing, how (relatively) quickly things change. It would be flippant for me to blanket label all changes as unwanted--or not--but like most people, I resist the evolution of that which is familiar to me. I guess I measure out my approval on a change-by-change basis.

And (on a mostly, but not completely, unrelated note) sometimes I amuse myself by imagining how quickly all of our buildings and roads would collapse into dust if we were to just suddenly disappear. Not that I'm wishing for that; it's just something I think about.