This is all getting destroyed soon. Many of the houses in this area are empty and boarded up. These may be amongst the ones slated to go. The landlords who presided over these properties got paid, so the University owns them and will soon replace them with something better.
The top photo was taken between 1944 and 1955. These homes are on University, across the street from where Beverly Avenue begins.
Sunnyside was beautiful once. It had a school and a supermarket. It was a place that mattered. Then, a combination of negligent landlords, destructive renters, and a local government that simply didn’t care let an entire neighborhood rot. We’re now promised that things will improve, but so much history will be casually destroyed as part of what we’ll pay to see things get better. Maybe that’s good; maybe not. But it’s unfortunate that the worst offenders - the landlords - managed to profit from all this.
(Photo courtesy of West Virginia History On View.)
This is from Beverly Avenue in Sunnyside. Some of this is being torn down in the coming weeks but it’s worth remembering that Sunnyside was once a thriving community filled with city residents who valued the neighborhood. That’s all gone to pot of course, but these historical images are fun to look at, especially the top one, which shows a date of 1923, 90 years ago. Note that almost everything is the same in the picture I took earlier today: the houses on the left are as they were. The siding has changed in some, but this block is historical. And trashed.
In case you’re wondering about the third picture: if you look at the first photo, you’ll see a home on the right side of the image; that home is still there and is shown in the bottom image. It is blocked by the new something-or-other that’s been bult on the triangular corner of Beverly and University Avenue. The windows though are the same, as is the brick.
(Vintage Photo from West Virginia History On View. It’s the best.)
This image was taken at the Morgantown Ordnance Works (or what’s left of them). The MOW is visible across near the fracking site off the River Road, across the river from Aldi.
This was taken in 2007. This ladder has since been removed. It was though once possible to climb to the very top of the structure. Which I did. Which was terrifying. There’s very little left of the building that used to be there and obviously, nature is reclaiming what is there. Some of the structures that surrounded this have been torn down in recent years; I imagine it will all be gone at some point.
This is the view from Lorentz Street (first from 1945, then from last Thursday). Lorentz is one of the lower places in Wiles Hill; the dividing line as I always understood it was Jones, the street right below Lorentz. When I was a kid, Lorentz was where the college students were living. Everything further up the hill were neighborhoods for city residents. Students have now consumed almost all of the housing up the hill to Highland Avenue. That’s neither here nor there I suppose.
The obvious difference (besides it being a different season) is both all of the new construction (including the new bridge over the Monongahela River and, beyond it, the Lock and Dam), but also the landmarks that still survive, including Woodburn Circle (obviously) and the Hotel Morgan (above Chitwood Hall) in both images.
(Photo from West Virginia History On View.)
These are photographs from the Morgantown Ordnance Works. That’s the building you can see across the river from Aldi, high up on the hill. The fracking site is nearby. The factory functioned during World War 2.
I’ve lightened the newer photos (one I took several years ago) so more of the confirming details were visible. There are the vents on the walls and the rows of circular lights throughout the ceiling. The pinpricks of light in the fourth photo are the result of the building’s roof rusting out.
That building is now gone, torn down to make way for whatever it is that has replaced it.
(First Photo Courtesy of West Virginia History On View.)
I’m not sure if the building on the left in the top photo is the same as the building on the left in the bottom photo, but so much else of what dominates this image has changed, especially everything beyond the bridge at to the left of Walnut. Central School is gone, replaced by the parking garage, as is whatever building was behind it. The beauty college building is still there, but now with that larger brick building obscuring its view. I do like that the trees in both images are still there.
Also, note the cable car lines in the photo above. There are no dates on this photograph, so I am not sure when it was taken.
Photo courtesy of West Virginia History On View.)
Having spent almost all of my 32 years in this town, I embarrassed to say that I do not know the name of the small neighborhood where this is. It is at the corner of Brockway and Wade. That might be considered the back-end of Marilla, but I’m not sure if that’s actually the name of the neighborhood.
As in other photosets assembled here, there is so little change from the original photo (taken between 1944 and 1955) and today. With the exception of that bottom floor window, everything else is the same, especially the diagonal corner door. I have to wonder if this wasn’t once a storefront. There is a sign in the older photo, but I cannot read it.
(Photos courtesy of West Virginia History On View.)
This is at the corner of Wilson and Overdale in South Park/2nd Ward/Greenmont. This house remains virtually unchanged, save for a missing tree and a missing chimney. To give you some idea of this neighborhood’s age, you can see a triangular roof to the right of the photo at the top; through the trees, that same triangular roof is still visible. The first photo was taken somewhere from 1944-1955.
(Images courtesy of West Virginia History On View.)
This is from Grandview Avenue, on the top of South Park. I couldn’t perfectly match the photographs, because there’s now a house and a hedge standing where the original photographer was standing, but the brick home’s four side windows are still there, and more importantly, the curve of the road and the Wiles Castle are too. The castle’s third floor is visible on the left side of the image beneath the treeline. The first photo was estimated to have been taken sometime between 1900-1910.
Worth noting: that hillside was essentially empty as of 110 years ago.
This is High Street, obviously. The top shot is from this morning. The second shot is from 1900; the image on the left is from roughly the same place as all of the others. The paving image is from 1923, then a 1961 snowstorm, then a nightime shot from 1966.
