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Detroit circa 1908. "Walker Block, Griswold and Fort Sts." 8x10 inch dry plate glass negative, Detroit Publishing Company. View full size.
Here's from the Detroit Free Press December 17, 1908. It explains the Closing Out sign for Laughlin Pens.
The power lines are being run through cast-iron pipes (look at the junctions), carried on cast-iron poles. In England this was common for telegraph wires that were buried underground. The stays attached to the pole lower down are the carrying support-wires for the thinner trolley wires.
The thick wires in the right foreground are the feed wires for the electric streetcars. The thinner trolley wire can't carry all of the current, so it has to be fed from these thicker wires every few hundred feet.
I'm curious about those wires in the foreground. They seem unusually thick. Anyone know the story??
We've seen the Dime Bank headquarters several times on Shorpy.
Also, note the storefronts on the sides of the church. Renting those to businesses brought in additional income for the congregation.
The Walker Block building is in its last days in this photo. The building was built as the First Baptist Church in the early 1860s, but had been used as a commercial building since the congregation moved further north in 1872. By 1910 Daniel Burnham's huge new Dime Building (named for the Dime Savings Bank) will rise on this spot, where it still stands today.
The building is the First Baptist Church, shortly before the congregation moved and a Dime Bank erected in its place.
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