The Destroyed City
 

A rather depressing display of the loss of heritage buildings downtown. Certainly some buildings in this picture were beyond saving and didn't have "heritage value", but the loss of landmarks like old City Hall and the CIBC building, among others, really reduced Hamilton's heritage building inventory.

Disgusting. Though I note that the Lister Block is shaded red in this as well... I can't blame you. What it is to become isn't too much better than a demolition.

whoops! There is another mistake in there too, but this photo is mainly to show the entire blocks that were replaced.

There is evolution and change, with new buildings replacing older ones over and over in every city, but Hamilton has little to show for all this destruction.

Yup, that definitely comes across. It makes me depressed beyond words. For me, the skyscraper district that we had on James South between King and Main was a HUGE loss. I am so very thankful we still have the Pigott building.

Would be interesting to see this on an even larger scale. Incredible. And incredibly sad.

Meanwhile others are praising Hamilton...

http://www.buffalonews.com/185/story/884855.html

Anyway.

Oh come on. With the exception of a few, those buildings would largely have been demolished in any decent city.

The problem is not the buildings that are gone. It is that in the 80s 90s and 00s this city lost the very ambition the city was built on. Nothing happened.

If this city was doing better business wise I wouldn't mind grabbing a little more red chalk for some of those buildings on King.

Nice article, in the Buffalo News.

I tend to agree with you on the assessment of the old downtown. I am old enough to remember most of the old downtown. I was very young but my recollection of those areas of the downtown were of derelect buildings.

I am sure there were some buildings that would have survived to this day, but for the most part, the areas that were bulldozed were razed because they were derelect.

The old CIBC building had to be jacked up every few years. It would sink. When it was built there was no such things as pilings. You could tell when they jacked it up because the sidewalks around the building would slope away from the building for a year or two, until it once again would sink.

The old CIBC building had to be jacked up every few years. It would sink. When it was built there was no such things as pilings. You could tell when they jacked it up because the sidewalks around the building would slope away from the building for a year or two, until it once again would sink.

When the original building was built (lower 2 stone floors) the foundations were fine. Only when the upper floors were added did the weight becme a problem.

Here is a similar story I did on BuffaloRising a few years ago
http://archives.buffalorising.com/st...ave_everything

http://www.buffalorising.com/city/ar...03/airview.jpg

The red Xs in this one show additional buildings that people wanted to destroy
but which have been saved by shear will and determination to defeat the ignorance.

http://www.buffalorising.com/city/ar...irviewxout.jpg

Wow Buffalo has it bad too. It seems like less of the buildings that were demolished turned into parking lots though? I don't remember as many empty lots as there are in Hamilton.