Can you recommend some Main Streets for me to shoot?

[Sandy Sorlien]

Hello to all architecture freaks and observant travelers. I am starting a new bo ok on Main Streets in America and want to select 12-15 American towns or cities which have interesting, "authentic" (if that has any real meaning) main streets (don't have to be called Main). The photographer David Plowden has given me lot s of good suggestions in the upper Midwest and New York State. I've also scouted many towns and have tentatively chosen Kutztown, PA (a college town with a grea t mix of residences & businesses, 18th-century houses, and Amish buggies rolling through), Abbeville, SC (unspoiled Main Street square), Bristol, RI (great mari time and patriotic character) and Bisbee, AZ (physically & historically fascinat ing - or at least it was in 1994 when I was last there).

I will be making B&W diptychs of the streetscape and subdued color pictures of i ndividual facades, using an Arca 6x9 view camera. I will also interview residen ts & businesspeople for my text. I am not interested in the sort of gentrified s treets that have nothing but cafes, boutiques, and gift shops for tourists. They could be streets in decline if there's a good story in the decline. Extra cred it goes to streets with a hardware store, barber pole, and/or pharmacy (not CVS or Rite-Aid). I'll drive anywhere!

[Jeff Buckels]

Albuquerque. The main drag -- Central Ave., which is Route 66 -- is plenty visual for a number of miles, esp. in the area known as Knob Hill. Sort of 30s-pueblo-deco-contemporary-outrage style. Anyway, since you're going to Bisbee, you may as well swing through town and see what I mean. If you do, email me in advance and I'll help. -jeff buckels

[Guy_2084]

California Ave. in San Francisco - look for the steep inclines, maybe with trolley descending. As a contrast point, you may want to get a picture of the main street at Bodie (ghost town north of Lee Vining in the eastern Sierra Nevada with a lot of the original buildings still standing).

[Richard Boulware]

Middle America main streets? Try Iowa! First on your list should be West Branch, birthplace of Herbert Hoover. When I was there covering the Hoover funeral in the mid '60's it was like turning the clock back to middle America in the 20's. Other targets could be Mt.Pleasant, and Mt. Vernon, Ia. Although I am in Colorado now,....if you want to get a taste of Grant Woods' America...head for Iowa! Richard Boulware - Denver.

[RichardRitter]

Keene NH its the lagrest main street in the US. Almost any main street in Vermont,New Hanpshire and Maine are gems to photograph becuse they all have some hishory behind them.

[Raymond Bleesz]

recommended Main St/s---Silver Plume & Georgetown, Colo-"The Silver Queen of the West"----a Williamsburg of the West and her sister town, Silver Plume--approx 600 feet higher in elevation---earlier photographer, William Henry Jackson gave it a shot!

[Richard M. Coda]

Main Street, Manasquan, NJ

Old world charm with many of the stores run by descendants of the original proprietors. They have a "real" jeweler, an old-fashioned hardware store, and old theater.

And it's just minutes away from the beach!

[David A. Goldfarb]

I haven't been back in years, but the main drag in Chagrin Falls, Ohio is quite nice. There's an old hardware store, candy shop, nice kite shop, structures from the old mill that ran along the falls, the falls themselves, beautiful 19th-century houses, and if you approach from the right direction, there's a very dramatic hill from which to approach the "Main Street" area.

For a very different kind of "Main Street," try Court St. in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn, New York, and get there quick before all the old Italian shops and the Italian "social clubs" are forced out by rising rents and replaced with 70's retro antique shops and nouveaux restaurants. You might wander around the neighborhood around Christmas, when brownstones will be decorated in full force.

[Ellis Vener]

Houston, Texas. Main Street here runs the gaunlet of modern urban life from poor neighborhoods that are gentrifying in the Heights and "El Northside" areas, into a dilapadated and in some places revitalized down town and midtown area, to a section where it is flanked by a major urban park on one side and a spledid University campus on the other, and then through the high density of the Texas Medical Center and then on out past some of the last "no tell motels" and then past the Astrodome and the new mammoth Football stadium (due to be finished in 2003 and declared to be ioutdated in 2012) to some more nightclubs and on out to suburban farmland. Oh and did I mention that there is a new light rail track being laid through the most urban part of Main St?

Besides if you come to Houston we can buy each other a beer!

[Ellis Vener]

Houston, Texas. Main Street here runs the gauntlet of modern urban life from poor neighborhoods that are gentrifying in the Heights and "El Northside" areas, into a dilapidated and in some places revitalized down town and midtown area, to a section where it is flanked by a major urban park on one side and a splendid University campus on the other, and then through the high density of the Texas Medical Center and then on out past some of the last "no tell motels" and then past the Astrodome and the new mammoth Football stadium (due to be finished in 2003 and declared to be outdated in 2012) to some more nightclubs and on out to suburban farmland. Oh and did I mention that there is a new light rail track being laid through the most urban part of Main St? And yes hardware store, garages, barbershops (with poles) closed movie theaters a plenty, as well as some real architectural gems.

Besides if you come to Houston we can buy each other a beer!