Two of the biggest crimes against heritage ever committed in St. John's.
The extreme east and west ends of Water Street.
In the east, the previously winding street (at least three sharp turns) was straightened. Everything on the right was bulldozed. Everything on the left was replaced with parking garages/empty lots/(recently) condos.
This used to be every bit as bustling as the good parts of Water Street:
In the West End, they put an arterial road through, elevated ramps, etc. It cut off the west end of Water Street from the downtown, which killed it.
Slowly but surely, businesses closed, pedestrians disappeared, the trams were torn up.
Then they decided... hey, let's bulldoze all the buildings on the east side of the street and make it a divided road instead.
And they did.
To this day, the surviving buildings on the west side still haven't recovered. This area was always mostly wooden (unlike the east end above, which was proper, impressive, ornate Victorian stone buildings), but it's still dilapidated. The only thing that seems to survive on this stretch are antique shops with business hours of "knock, we live upstairs".
The changes to both of these extreme ends of the street MORE THAN HALVED the pedestrian-friendly, dense area. They effectively cut our most important street down to half its size in any sort of urban sense.
Red = The Water Street you know from my pictures. Nice, old buildings. Lots of feet on the street. Bustling, shops out its arse.
Blue = Used to be that, now looks like the above two photos.
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