Coincidence or Message from the Universe?

A photography buddy of mine (Oh, and do go look at his things as he is one of those people who really capture his area. It doesn’t hurt that Minnesota is stunningly beautiful.) ended up with a bunch of old negatives that he didn’t have time to deal with. It seems newborns take an excessive amount of time out of one’s schedule. (Lifehack: Children are like bananas. Buy them fully ripened. If the stork brings them when they are green, they are nothing but waiting and outgassing.) So he sent them to me. The negatives, not the child.

Anyway, these seemed to be a bunch of family photos, some of which were taken in Cleveland.

Now, in the background you see The Terminal Tower (Have you read about the Van Swerengen brothers who built that? There is some odd folk.) and the Cleveland city hall. If you look on this side of the City Hall you see a wall. So these folk are standing on the landfill that extended the waterfront Northward.

Here is about this spot today:

Well, you can’t see the Terminal Tower anymore from here and Eisenhower’s infernal highway blocks more, but there we go. Progress builds its entropy in pavement it seems. Unfortunately everything else in the picture that I can see is probably gone. There might be Public Hall in there but it is obscured by the glorious, glorious negative grain. But you think this could be the ’30s? Could be.

That, of course, would mean that right behind the photographer a couple of the Torso Murder bodies were found. So there’s that.

Here is another easy one:

That’s the old front entrance to the Cleveland Museum of Art. Right over them you see Rodin’s The Thinker. Obviously this is well before one of our former president’s buddies blew it up.

Then comes the next picture:

A simple diner. Hmm. Where could this be? Here is another shot:

Let’s zoom in on that calendar.

Colgan and Binns. Googling… They were an insurance and real estate company. The insurance thing still goes on. So where are they? Donora, Pennsylvania. Uh. Well, you see, my paternal grandmother grew up in Donora, Pennsylvania.

Let’s look at another picture:

Looks like a fire. The picture is obviously taken from further up a hill. In the distance you see a group of factories and then the hills on the other side. Now let’s look at something else:

This is a picture from my great-aunt’s photo album. Look at that background. By 1971, the wire mill had mostly closed along the river. You know, after the unpleasantness.

See the building in the bottom right of the color pic? Does it kind of look like the one in the middle right in this blow up of the first pic?

Maybe not. Anyway, pretty similar.

I’ve gone through the rest of the pics and not picked up much. I’ll keep looking and see if I eventually figure something out. Until then, here is a few of them: