ColDay Presents: Gary

[Mr Roboto]

I have go to gary sometimes for work. Its empty downtown, and some neighborhoods are ok, others look in shambles, and others are plain razed out. There is nothing really cool about the city in general Ive seen, its depressing. More depressing to me is the fact that there was a multimillionaire family to come out of there and one of them maybe a billionaire, and have done little to nothing Ive heard of to try to invest their money there in new businesses in the area. I realize they dont necessarily owe Gary anything, but Id like to think if I ever made that kind of money, I would be inclined to invest a little in the area Im from. Maybe its just me. Anyways, I heard the public bus system was shutting down on the local radio there recently. Hope its not true.

Pretty good pics btw.

[Ex-Ithacan]

VA-va-va-voom. Gary on the forum. Thanks goodness GaryRocks isn't here any more. I do believe he would have hijacked this thread and try to convince us Gary is soon to become the best city in the USA.

Love the shots CDM, but it is kind of depressing.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by kcexpress69

At one time, Gary was the largest producer of steel in the U.S.. I'm not sure what's left of it.

Gary is home to U.S. Steel's Gary Works, it was at one time the largest steel production facility on the planet and it is still the largest integrated steel works in north america. there is also a concentration of other steel manufacturing in northwest indiana as well. northwest indiana is still north america's largest steel producing region.

gary got hit with a pretty bad double whammy: gary was built as a factory town, it's entire economy more or less sprung forth from the massive gary steel works, employing tens of thousands of people. during the time when all of the white people were fleeing gary for suburban pastures south of the city, the steel industry was going through MASSIVE man-power efficiency increases stemming from automation. the hard labor of 10 men could now be accomplished with one supervising engineer, and thousands upon thousands of good family supporting jobs simply disappeared over the years. this lead to an almost entirely black, and increasingly poor urban population left to watch their world crumble around them as the vicious downward spiral of racial segregation/abandonment, joblessness, poverty, and crime wrought its malevolence upon the city. this same cycle worked its way through many other american cities, but it was especially savage towards gary, as the haunting images in this thread clearly display.

thanks for the tour, C-man.

[BnaBreaker]

I always get a little depressed every time I am in Gary. Like someone else said, there is so much potential there that every time I see it I start to think that if only some developer had the balls to revamp one of those massive structures downtown, that it would start a domino effect and change the town back to what it once was. Then I remember all of the previous attempts that had already been made that didn't pan out. The baseball stadium with the attached Bennigan's is the most recent attempt, but I wouldn't be overly surprised to see that go by the wayside eventually as well.

[GVNY]

Michael approves!

[kcexpress69]

Originally Posted by GVNY

Michael approves!

Now that's an eyesore!!!!

[Rusty van Reddick]

Originally Posted by Tom In Chicago

Nice photos. . . Gary is vacant. . . Hammond is typical suburban. . . Whiting on the otherhand is quite nice. . . surprisingly. . .

I grew up in Hammond, HHS class of '82, and my entire family still lives in either Lake or Porter County.

Hammond is NOT typical suburban any more than Skokie or Cicero is. It has (well, had) its own downtown and has swaths of slums that are as bad as parts of East Chicago's if not Gary's. Hammond has a couple of older wealthy-ish areas around Forest Ave in the SW and Knickerbocker and Moraine Parkways in the Woodmar area not far from Purdue Cal.

The Robertsdale part of Hammond in the extreme north (contiguous with Chicago, its extreme SE part) is so closely integrated with Whiting that it's nearly impossible to tell where Hammond ends and Whiting begins.

[Paulyt23]

It's hard to believe how segregated the Chicago metro area is. Just compare Gary to places like Schaumburg, Naperville, Lake Forest....It's a totally different world altogether.

[Rusty van Reddick]

Originally Posted by Paulyt23

It's hard to believe how segregated the Chicago metro area is. Just compare Gary to places like Schaumburg, Naperville, Lake Forest....It's a totally different world altogether.

A comment was made earlier about Gary's "history." Gary was founded in the early 20th century specifically to house US Steel workers, and the city was divided racially from day 1, recognising that many of its workers would be blacks migrating from the south. This was probably seen as "progressive" back then.

Gary's history is as much about race as it is about steel.