Park Avenue at Main has changed from 1949 to today

EDITOR’S NOTE: This story was originally published on Richland Source in 2016.

MANSFIELD — There was a time, and it wasn’t all that long ago, when you could walk down Park Avenue West on a sunny afternoon and hardly set foot in the sun — it was such a cool, shady canyon of a cityscape.

Today the pavement of Park Avenue downtown dries much more quickly after the rain because so much more of it lies in the sun’s direct rays, unimpeded by buildings.

Here is the same view looking west from the Square, before and after the dawning of the sunny era of parking lots.