Monday, June 11, 2012

The Backside in Front of Us

From Joe Viger:

Recently I made an overnight business trip to Baltimore and checked in to the downtown SpringHill Suites. The location was interesting...a couple of blocks off the famous Inner Harbor and a couple of blocks from Baltimore's infamous "The Block." For the uninitiated, The Block is the city's red-light district. Needless to say I was in a street photographer's heaven (check out this post at Joe Blog for more on that).

My room was on the 10th floor and as is my habit, I went right to the window to open the blinds and let some light in. I was surprised at what I saw. A Backside gem relic... five stories of empty building a block off the Inner Harbor and in the middle of some of Baltimore's nicest downtown real estate.

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Over the next 24 hours, I walked through the downtown area many times going to and from meetings and began to notice more and more that beautiful old buildings were empty all around the newer high rises. In fact, the back of my hotel was a great example.

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Sometimes the first floor of these buildings housed active businesses, sometimes they did not.

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As I snapped away with my iPhone making pictures of all these buildings, I was struck by the Backside all around me. This is exactly what we always write and photograph here on The Backside. Wonderful heritage and architecture laying to waste and how it was seemingly forgotten by the hustling masses on the street as they made their way to a glass-sided high rise or swank new hotel. I kept thinking how great it would be to live on one of those empty floors with 10-foot windows and lots of open space.

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