Just lately heavy machinery has been chowing down on the Park Avenue West streetscape, and revising the way a city block looks near the 5-way light.
As iron jaws do the work of chewing up the past, folks heave a wistful sigh at the end of an era as they watch the familiar landscape segue into history.
But at this particular intersection any new demolition is not really a milestone in time so much as a continuation of an era that never stopped ending and beginning: because this little corner of the city has been in a state of slow renovation for at least 150 years.
This place on the map, where all these streets come together, has only ever managed to remain unchanged for a generation at a time before it is erased again and redrawn.
What any city does if it is healthy is recycle and revise and revision.
Nothing is more certain than the collision between changing societal values and unchanging brick and mortar.
There is no intersection in our town that has seen a wider range of reconfiguration through time than the place where Park Avenue West, Bowman Street, Marion Avenue and Sturges Avenue all converge.
The changes have been innumerable throughout the eras, far too many to document. Fortunately we have photos, so here are some highlights.
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I got to know Park Avenue very well in the 1980s when a little group of us used to walk up and down the street late at night in the quiet; in those hours when the door between the present and the past seems to be left open.
For Dwight Barker (1960-1989).
