Before.
After.
Preservationists fought a losing battle to save these buildings, not because any one of them was an architectural masterpiece, but because the 100 block of Market Street was one of the few remaining blocks downtown lined with mid-Victorian buildings on both sides. They predated not only the skyscraper age but also the age of six-storey commercial palaces that preceded the skyscrapers.
If there is any silver lining to the demolition, it is that the open space allows a full view of the buildings on the other side of the street, without resorting to too much photographic trickery.
Not that old Pa Pitt has ever been above photographic trickery, as he demonstrated a few months ago with a picture of the whole block of condemned buildings before they came down:
