Fourteen thousand souls. Olean "is one of the principal cities of the Southern Tier region of Western New York." Seems a rarified series of definitions.

Holy Hannah, that’s a nice piece of work.

Just drips with excess, but still maintains a certain dignity and restraint. I think it was a library. Doubtful it still is, since cities fled these old places for unhappy boxes. Googling . . . yes, that’s the old library.

Next door, more Beaux-Arts civility.

The First National Bank Building. The town was fortunate to have a bit of a boom at the height of the Beaux-Arts revival:

Abandoned for years, but eventually rehabbed and converted.

Manny-Hanny.

M-H booked out in 1994.

About that Beaux-Arts civility:

MOOSE

And Elks! BPO, of course.

Even from the distance of all these years, with so much damage done, we know it, right away, without a second’s thought.

Name, erased

If ever there was one.

Probably not black when built, but who knows? I’d have to see it close up to check if the stone is stone, or pressed tin.

MARTH

OUMB. But restrained in its banality, so there’s that.

It's barely architecture at all.

Painted ladies.

The blinding of the upper floors on the blue building doesn’t look as bad as it usually does, perhaps because the building next door has nice windows. Makes it all look as though it’s probably not abandoned.

Nearer my God to Mies, as we say around here.

Modern churches look like they could absolutely have a TV transmission tower on top.

Civic mosaic with all the things people no longer approve of:

Lumber, smokestacks, oil - gah! A trigger-warning label, maybe?

More next week.

That will do: hit the road.