I was able to date this photo from the movie marquee in the original postcard. Murder Among Friends was a 1941 American mystery film directed by Ray McCarey and written by John Larkin. The film stars Marjorie Weaver, John Hubbard, Cobina Wright, Mona Barrie, Douglass Dumbrille, and Sidney Blackmer. The film was released on February 28, 1941, by 20th Century Fox.

This post is special to me, not only because this is an amazing part of the city with incredibly preserved pieces of New York City’s architecture and history but also because this is the first independent before-and-after photo contribution from my son Deklyn Gardner, a first-year student at Parsons.

The before photo is from the book, Ottman & Company: Meatpacking District Pioneers. Jacquelyn Ottman, fifth-generation Ottman family member, unpacks the Meatpacking District and its most storied meat purveyor, Ottman & Company.

_{This blog has no affiliation with the book or author.}

The image above shows 430 Lafayette St. It is the last remaining building of the famous Colonnade Row, and the location of the infamous Astor Place Riots of 1849. To learn more please check out this link: https://www.boweryboyshistory.com/2017/05/witness-violence-colonnade-row-astor-place-riots-1849.html

Sometimes what is no longer there can be just as interesting as what remains. This happens a lot. I’ll track down an interesting image, find the location, and learn that the building no longer exists. It can be a little sad and sometimes a little haunting. I wonder how much longer the building on the right will remain?

The image above is a good example of how lens distortion can make it difficult to get a perfect before and after match. Whatever lens the photographer used in the original image created a perspective distortion making it look different even though the angle and distance of the two shots were the same.

The American Hotel was built in 1898–1900 by W.Kromhout and H.G. Jansen in the Berlage style. In 1927–1928 an expansion was realised from a design by the architect G.J. Rutgers in collaboration with K. Bakker in 1927–1928. Both the expansion and the café are National Heritage sites.

It is now call the Hard Rock Hotel Amsterdam American, also known for its Café Américain, on Leidseplein in Amsterdam, Netherlands, is a hotel and café restaurant with a Jugendstilreading room.

The 1945 shooting on Dam squaretook place during the liberation of Amsterdam on 7 May 1945, in the last days of World War II in Europe. Germansoldiers fired machine guns into a large crowd gathered on Dam squareto celebrate the end of the war, killing over 30 people.

Read the full story here: https://dutchreview.com/culture/history/amsterdam-liberated-snipers-at-the-dam/

Leidseplein is a buzzing nightlife hub centered around Leidseplein Square, where crowds are entertained by street performers and the surrounding bars and restaurants are always busy. Local theaters, such as the neo-Renaissance Stadsschouwburg, present classical music, stand-up comedy andmusicals, while iconic concert venues Paradiso and Melkweg host DJ gigs and concerts by indie and big-name bands.

Ransom Gillis House on the corner of John R and Alfred Street in downtown Detroit. Unoccupied since the late 1960s, the Ransom Gillis mansion was ready to crumble when the Rehab Addict team came to the rescue. See how this Detroit landmark was transformed from top to bottom. 

The GAR Building was designed by architect Julius Hess, and constructed at 1942 West Grand River and Cass as an appropriate structure for meetings and other GAR related activities. The cost was split between the Grand Army of the Republic (who paid $6000 of the cost) and the city of Detroit (who paid the remainder of the $44,000 total cost). Construction commenced in 1897 on the five-story building.

This was originally the home of the Conductors Protective Association, a UAW of sorts for train employees. Hence, it was built across Michigan Avenue from Michigan Central Station. It was designed by Alvin E. Harley, who is better known for his residential designs. Check out the vision of this building’s possible future: https://www.loopnet.com/Listing/2411-14th-St-Detroit-MI/17329774/

The Woodstock Apartments are located at 475 Peterboro and were built in 1914. The Beaux-Arts style buildings have 80 apartments in the center of Detroit’s Cass Corridor. During the 1920s, Peterboro Street was home to 12 similar apartment buildings. Today the Woodstock Apartments are the only two such remaining buildings.

Wiesbaden Hauptbahnhof is a railway station for the city of Wiesbaden, the state capital of the German state of Hesse. It is a terminal station at the southern edge of the city centre and is used by more than 40,000 travelers each day, so it is the second largest station in Hesse after Frankfurt Hauptbahnhof.

The Deportation of the Jews of Wiesbaden

In March, May and June of 1942 some 500 Jews were deported from Wiesbaden, among them several rabbis. The deportees were led in groups down the city’s streets toward the local train station, loaded onto cattle cars, and sent to the Lublin district in Poland. After a layover in Piaski these Jews were sent to Sobibor, Belzec and Majdanek, where they were murdered.

On the 11th of June 1942, more than 600 Jews from the district of Wiesbaden, mostly from the city itself, were loaded onto cattle cars and deported to Frankfurt. From Frankfurt, these Jews were deported together with 600 Jews from the Frankfurt community to the district of Lublin. Nearly two hundred of them were deported directly to Majdanek, and the rest were sent to Sobibor following a two-day stop in Izbicia. It is not known of anyone who survived this transport.

By the time of the next deportation, some 40 Jews in Wiesbaden had committed suicide.

On the 27th of August 1942, the last public prayer service was held in Wiesbaden. From the 27th to the 29th of August 1942, six hundred Jews, many of them elderly and weak, were collected in the courtyard of the Orthodox synagogue. The Jews were photographed at the collection point in front of the Orthodox synagogue, during their registration at the police station, and when they boarded the deportation train at the city’s train station. On the 29th of August the Jews of Wiesbaden were deported to Frankfurt, where another 600 local Jews boarded the train. On the 1st of September the train left Frankfurt, and it arrived in Theresienstadt the following day. The Jews on this transport were primarily elderly or sick people, as well as Jews who had been decorated or injured in World War I, and their families. Later, these Jews were deported from Theresienstadt to Auschwitz. Thirty-two Jews from this deportation survived the war.

The responsibility for liquidating the community’s assets was placed on Berthold Gutmann, a lawyer who was sent on the September 1st transport to Theresienstadt together with his son. The head of the Jewish community, Moritz Maxheimer, was also deported and was murdered in Auschwitz a month later. The secretary of the Jewish community, Arthur Strauss, was deported in March 1943 together with his wife Anna to Theresienstadt, from where he was deported in October 1944 to Auschwitz. Thirteen Jewish doctors from Wiesbaden were deported and perished as well, most of them in Theresienstadt. 

In December 1942, fewer than 200 residents of Jewish origin remained in Wiesbaden; most of them were “half” or “quarter” Jews, or Jews married to Aryans who had been defined by the regime as having extra privileges. In 1943 these Jews were added to the Frankfurt community. Twenty-five of them were deported to Theresienstadt in February of 1945.

The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier (Polish: Grób Nieznanego Żołnierza) is a monument in Warsaw, Poland, dedicated to the unknown soldiers who have given their lives for Poland. It is one of many such national tombs of unknowns that were erected after World War I, and the most important such monument in Poland.^[1]

The monument, located at Piłsudski Square, is the only surviving part of the Saxon Palace that occupied the spot until World War II. Since 2 November 1925 the tomb houses the unidentified body of a young soldier who fell during the Defence of Lwów. Since then, earth from numerous battlefields where Polish soldiers have fought has been added to the urns housed in the surviving pillars of the Saxon Palace.

During the 1939 invasion of Poland, the building was slightly damaged by German aerial bombing, but it was quickly rebuilt and seized by the German authorities. After the Warsaw Uprising, in December 1944, the palace was completely demolished by the Wehrmacht. Only part of the central colonnade, sheltering the Tomb, was preserved.

After the war, in late 1945, reconstruction began. Only a small part of the palace, containing the Tomb, was restored by Henryk Grunwald. On 8 May 1946 it was opened to the public. Soil from 24 additional battlegrounds was added to the urns, as well as more tablets with names of battles in which Poles had fought in World War II. However, the communist authorities erased all trace of the Polish–Soviet War of 1920, and only a few of the Polish Armed Forces’ battles in the West were included. This was corrected in 1990, after Poland had regained its political autonomy.

Here are a couple of photos of Saxon Square before the German destruction of the city.

An aerial view of the city after the war the Germans destroyed. The losses to Warsaw’s urban architecture at the beginning of 1945 were estimated at around 84%, with industrial infrastructure and historic monuments destroyed at 90% and residential buildings at 72%. After the Warsaw Uprising, a city which was home to over 1 million people before the war was almost deserted, with only a few thousand people living in its ruins.