Thursday, December 22, 2016

Swing... and a miss!

Sometimes you can find an old vintage photo of a scene, and then either go on location or do a search on Google maps and instantly recognize most of the key structures etc...
That was the case with this post from a couple of weeks ago where I found the old Perry granite shed was still sitting in Waterbury relatively intact.
Sometimes, things don't quite work out as well.
Take for instance, the Eldredge* Woodworking plant. It showed up in the Wordless Wednesday post from December 14 - and in the 1938 aerial photos of Waterbury mentioned above.
Here's what Google street view reveals the building looks like today:


The structure that was immediately adjacent to the track in the photos from "back then" is either significantly changed or just .... gone.
I guess sometimes you just strike out...

*Determining the proper spelling of "Eldredge" has been problematic.
The Central Vermont Railway engineering department plats clearly show it as "Eldr-i-dge." While the Sanborn Map spells it "Eldr-e-dge."
Yikes! Which was correct! Historians tend to be fairly anal about the spelling of surnames...besides, I needed to make a sign for the model!
The History of the Town of Waterbury, which has proven fairly reliable, references a number of folks with this surname. Since it spells all of them "Eldredge" that's the spelling I've chosen.





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