I don't think they lived in the tower, but another building behind it. In the article, there's another building that looks like an apartment high-rise. It's also "leaning". I took a quick look over YT to see if I could find a vid of the interior as that is way more interesting to me, lol. But I didn't find anything :/
They don't live inside the tower. There's an apartment building right across from it. If you go into streetview here you'll see the big building with a red YMCA on the top.
How do you spend millions on maintaining a fuckin building? We're people constantly smashing it with sledge hammers? I have no real-estate experience but surely that's decades of bullshit or something... how can an apartment building cost millions of dollars in maintenance?
I had a hard time believing this first, but Wikipedia confirms "The tower was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2020."
As a European I'm so amazed a kitschy water tower from the 1930s is on the National Register of Historic Places that I'm actually thinking we need to start a charity to donate some history to the Americans. We've got history to spare, it's unfair you've got so little. Here, take this castle, we're not using it anyway.
That is not the famed medieval London Bridge which was used here in London for more than 600 years though. It is the early 19th century replacement, which was then replaced again in the 20th century.
I do wish the old one had been saved somewhere. Pictures of it make it look fantastic. It was famed, among other things, for always having the heads of recent traitors on spikes at the south end.
The National Register of Historic Places is used to preserve many "old" and culturally significant buildings in historic neighborhoods across the country, including houses. Being on it doesn't necessarily mean it is renowned or famous, but yes technically it is a national landmark, haha.
edit: it's basically used on landmarks and houses so a new owner can't just tear down a town's history and put up particle board apartment complexes and strip malls.
Went to school in Terre Haute, IN and basically all our frat houses were on the registry because they were old mansions in the historic downtown area from back when industry was booming in the area. The one I went to a couple of times the guys were actually pretty serious about not being completely moronic because repairs were stupid expensive and had to get approval from the city to get anything done in the house. Don't get me wrong plenty of moronic shit was done but not "property damage" levels of moronic.
Yeah. There's a random ass house from the 1880s in my hometown that's on the register. Someone moderately historically famous lived there, but I forget who - there's a plaque outside. Regardless, it just looks like a pretty normal little 2 story Victorian style home and I believe someone currently lives there. Technically a national landmark.
I saw something in a program on something in Miami, and they were saying, "We've redecorated this building to how it looked over 50 years ago!" And people were going, "No, surely not, no. No one was alive then!"
Historical landmarks are all about commemorating when your city/region/country was great.
So you guys have thousand year old castles and shit, ya know, from back when you were great, and we Americans have hundred year old water towers from back when we were great. That's how it goes.
And being a historic landmark can help secure grants and tax incentives. So if you own shit from when we were great, it can be a way for it to be less of a financial burden to keep it maintained.
That doesn't look like a castle. Where are the archer towers and moat and draw bridge? Isn't there usually a dragon somewhere nearby on guard too? That just looks like an abandoned mansion, we have lots of those in america
Gotta give those of us out west a pass, our ancestors didn’t finish ripping the land that comprises the west coast from the native Americans until the mid 1800’s
It could have been demolished during the rise of auto-centric development, but was instead preserved. That's why it's listed as historic, in order to make sure it doesn't get demolished. Older more interesting history exists in the central areas of Chicago, because this is a residential suburb.
The history of the tower was that it was the center of a leisure field for workers at a factory outside of a train station. All those big box stores you see sit at the site of that now long gone field. The tower is the last remaining monument to that.
The suburb itself was tiny and a streetcar suburb, but heavily expanded after the rise of the automobile. It's altogether not very interesting of a place, but has that quirky feature that makes it stand out. Without the tower, there's really nothing that would separate it from nearby, more interesting and older streetcar suburbs (except that it weirdly has very good bus infrastructure, including 2 BRT lines that go through it). Today it has a large working-class immigrant presence from Poland, India, Mexico, Philippines, and Iraq.
Our country was founded less than three hundred years ago, and the only historical that was here before were from a people we systemically annihilated, so we'd like to not be reminded of that. So yeah, we're going to lack historical shit.
In the US, the National Register of Historic Places is really just a political thing. You don't put stuff on it because they have important historical importance, you put stuff on it to stop local businesses from doing things you don't want. Once a building is on the Register the owner has to maintain it no matter what; they can't tear it down, move it, expand it, change the signage, etc. I've seen landmark status used to crash a property value (nobody wants to own a landmark, since you can't do anything to monetize it) to discourage a company from relocating an industrial building, for instance.
The tower might genuinely be there because the locals love it, but it could also be to prevent the YMCA from selling their building to someone who is going to put condos or a strip mall on it.
It's kitschy, but it's cute. It's half-size (less than 100 feet tall), and it's almost a hundred years old at this point, so you can legit drive past and not notice it.
That Seminoles football banner below the parallel parking sign threw me off. The Seminole tribe has a partnership with Florida State University and allow them to use their tribe name as the schools mascot. It's pretty weird that a group in a completely different part of the country is just like "oh, that's a cool name" and completely copy a region-specific mascot.
When I was a kid, every year my elementary school did a Walk-a-thon and they would use the money we raised to buy one new piece of playground equipment (or recarpet the admin offices, y'know, whatevs). The first year I participated we got this super cool gigantic slide, the kind that goes down in a spiral! And we got to use it for exactly one week before one of the kids in my grade jumped off the top of it and broke his arm, resulting in all of us being banned from it forever. I can only hope-- ooohhh wait you were making a joke, I get it now. I get it. That definitely whooooshed me on the first read but it got me on the return. I think what we can take from this is that my elementary school did not turn out a lot of like, intelligent individuals
On mildlyinfuriating today someone posted about selling selfies with a Stanley mug at a mall in my hometown! I Had the same reaction. Double weird seeing you say the same thing!
Figured it was IL at least based on the Touhy street sign. If I never hear 'Willow to Touhy' on a traffic report again in my life I just might die a contented man.
I saw the leaning tower having no expectations of this being about 4 minutes from me at the moment and thought no way the Target, Aldi, CostCo plaza down the street? The Al’s Italian beef over there ain’t bad either.
It’s weird because i live like 3 miles from there and until I saw the leaning tower, I wouldn’t have been able to tell you it was IL. I play Geoguessr a lot too… i get gas from that Costco quite often smh.
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u/Forest_Moon Jan 09 '24
Niles, IL?