Tag Archives: Windsor Hotel

Wesley Plott’s Downtown Bottlescape

Two Centuries of Creativity: William Morgan, McMurray Livery

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A complete architectural vision would seem to have assembled itself overnight. In William Morgan’s architectural offices, in the old livery and stables he’d renovated downtown, he drafted designs for homes and headquarters where Isaiah David Hart, the founder of the city, built his own first home.

There was a fire in 1850. There were fires in the Civil War. The Great Fire of 1901 was the third largest urban fire in United States history. In 2012, artist and photographer Tiffany Manning smelled smoke in her studio above where a blacksmith’s shop had stood 100 years before. Firefighters said if she hadn’t been there, the building would have burned down. She writes with light.

Grand Park’s Rap Videos, Pseudo-Gangs and Lynch Mobs

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Grand Park has always been about passing through. The sheriff and state attorney talk of gangs. Desperate young men beg for attention with prop guns and get it, but what’s it mean to be a rapper from a big “kountry” town?

Was Grand Park more or less “kountry” when Sheriff R.E. Merritt forestalled a lynch mob in 1922, the second storming of the jail in three years? Remember when Grand Park fed the cops barbecue, when the police were part of the community, not some outside force?