Historic photo sales to benefit Main Street Greencastle

Friday, July 17, 2015

Tucked away in a dusty, forgotten corner of the Putnam County Courthouse was a piece of Greencastle history.

Fortunately for local history buffs, progress sometimes has a way of revealing the past.

In this case, the progress is the form of the ongoing HVAC upgrades at the courthouse and the piece of history is a gem of a photo taken from above Greencastle in 1924, several blocks southwest of the courthouse square.

History buffs will have a chance to own a piece of that history this week at the Putnam County Fair, where Main Street Greencastle will be selling small poster-size versions of the photo for $10 each.

The Main Street Greencastle booth will be set up inside the industrial tent.

A number of the buildings in the photo remain largely unchanged. The courthouse, just 19 years old at the time, is almost identical from the outside, only with no monuments, no communication tower and a much larger lawn.

Likewise, the same buildings stand on the square, except the two that most recently housed Mac's men's apparel and and Mason Jewelers.

A look around the rest of town reveals some serious changes. Dozens of buildings have literally risen and fallen in the 91 years since the photo was taken.

The Voncastle Theater still stands on East Washington Street, but kitty-corner to it is an opening that had yet to spawn the Greencastle Masonic Temple.

A block south, the Putnam County Public Library and Greencastle Post Office both stand, but without the expansions that come with nearly a century of progress.

Moving north and east of the square, the differences are even more stark. A pair of mystery buildings stand on East Franklin Street -- one a three-story brick structure on the current site of 1 Central Square and the other what may be an old farmhouse with a large wraparound porch at approximately the site of Beyond Homeless.

Beyond this to the north is a lot of country in place of what current residents know to be the Northwood Addition.

A series of greenhouses owned by Eitel's sit just off of Melrose Avenue, and beyond this Putnam County Hospital (which ceased to be a hospital in 1979) stands in the wide-open country, a nearby farmhouse its only neighbor.

Even one of Greencastle's great claims to fame was yet to occur when the photo was taken.

The former Central National Bank stood at Washington and Franklin streets, but not yet relieved of $74,782.09 by John Dillinger and his gang. That came nine years later in 1933.

But for all the changes in the landscape of the town, perhaps the most remarkable thing about this photo is that it exists at all, and that it was found and is now available for the public to see and purchase.

After courthouse custodians found the 8X10 photo, they hung it up, one of a number of old gems around the courthouse. When Main Street Greencastle Director Tami Van Rensselaer saw the photo, wheels began to turn.

After head custodian Brian Smith granted her permission to borrow the photo, she took it to Lester Wilson of Wilson's Photography and Buzz Bomb Photo Fix, who offered his knowledge of camera technology and his services to help turn the photo into a money maker for Main Street.

The photo, Wilson surmised, must have been taken from a hot air balloon, as neither the airplanes nor the cameras of the day could have allowed for such clarity.

"The photo is extremely sharp," Wilson said. "In 1924, the film speed was probably 25 ISO, at best 32."

Compare this to today when ISO speeds measure in the hundreds or thousands. Even so, aerial photography remains a difficult art.

In the pre-photography days, bird's-eye view images involved sending an artist up in a balloon to paint the view of the city.

Wilson's best guess is this photo was a mixing of the old tradition with "new" technology.

With the photo in hand, Lester's wife Judy scanned the image into digital form at a high resolution, making reproduction on a 15X18 poster possible without losing resolution.

As for the "fix" part of the Wilson's business, it was minimal on this project, involving mainly darkening the foreground and lightening the background of the photo.

From there, the Wilsons used their high-end printer to produce the poster-sized reproductions of the photo that will be available at the Main Street booth.

Besides Main Street having the 15X18 versions available at the fair beginning tonight, Wilson's will also perform any matting, framing or laminating of the posters, with 25 percent of their profits donated to Main Street Greencastle.

For more information about Main Street Greencastle and its programs, including its already successful historic postcard program, visit them at the fair.

After this week, visit Main Street Greencastle at 2 S. Jackson St. or call Van Rensselaer at 653-2474.

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  • I believe the correct term is "catty-corner".

    -- Posted by donantonioelsabio on Fri, Jul 17, 2015, at 11:48 PM
    Response by Jared Jernagan:
    While it can be a very divisive argument, even in our newsroom, neither is technically correct. Both are colloquialisms derived from "cater-cornered," the version most often recommended by most dictionaries. But I don't know anyone who says that nonsense.

    http://grammarist.com/usage/catty-corner-kitty-corner/

    The link below is to an interesting dialect survey regarding the issue, with maps breaking down the various ways of saying something is across the street diagonally.

    http://www4.uwm.edu/FLL/linguistics/dialect/staticmaps/q_76.html

  • The old Central Bank was at the southeast corner of Washington and Jackson and is NOT now Old National.

    -- Posted by sfrost@iendeavor.com on Sat, Jul 18, 2015, at 9:29 AM
    Response by Jared Jernagan:
    You are correct. Thank you kindly for the observation.
  • Central was at the corner of Washington and Jackson. The bank in question on the Northeast corner of Washington and Indiana was what most of us know as Citizens. Terrific article with great descriptions.

    -- Posted by Nit on Sat, Jul 18, 2015, at 6:13 PM
  • Jared--I grew up in the "environs" of Greencastle and Putnamville. I always heard "catty-corner".

    I guess it depends on where one does grow up and what English they hear and how it is used.

    I probably could find a dialect survey but, I don't think that is necessary.

    Have you ever heard someone say, ". . of an evening" or "of a morning" etc. This was a German way of speaking and was carried over into English.

    This was commonly spoken when I grew up there in Indiana.

    Anyway, this is fun.

    -- Posted by donantonioelsabio on Sun, Jul 19, 2015, at 9:55 PM
  • This is a true treasure. the large, bulky and slow-speed cameras were difficult to operate on the ground. In aircraft was near impossible. Great find!

    -- Posted by GRNT on Thu, Jul 23, 2015, at 9:35 AM
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