Johnstown, Pennsylvania is a fascinating city to wander. Perhaps not quite known for being a vacation hotspot, it is certainly a town worth walking around and admiring with a camera for a few days. Out in western Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh tends to get much of the attention, but in many ways, Johnstown is equally as interesting, both from a historic, architectural, and photographic perspective. The heydays of Johnstown have long since past; gone are the once numerous blast furnaces and many of the expansive rolling mills remain idle or have been demolished altogether. Today, Johnstown is a much more quiet city, a place where one can admire the river as it winds its way through a channelized concrete cut. A place where Sheetz is now the most popping place in town. The quintessential Rust Belt poster child, a place worth being examined.
I understand these images completely, although I have never set foot in downtown Johnstown. A quintessential mid-western, rust-belt town. My wife’s family is from NE Ohio, around Alliance, and having visited often when her grandmother was living, much is familiar. These cities were once beacons of American industrial might, then the factories closed, money moved out, and the blue collar workers were too poor, and sometimes too proud and stuborn, to follow.
The Johnstown flood of 1889 is also part of the haunted history of the area.
Have to agree with B and D. Just came back from a short business trip to Boston, where old factory buildings, like in image D, are converted into expensive and trendy loft housing.
