I knen I had a “then” shot….
To go with the “now”…
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Yarrg it doesnt look that much better with the black on the bottom in the before shot. if they went with a more brick colour for the pseudo-quasai columns it wouldnt LOOK THAT bad but it is still stucco.
A’Burg Dave – i can’t beleive you actually took “yarrg” out of my mouth lol
at….least it has…..windows…again.
why does this have that “used to be a car dealership” look to it?? kinda like the loop or the nash dealer on wyndotte.
While I agree the bottom half wasn’t that great, I liked the different rooflines, now it’s all the same. The bottom was brick painted black, but the upper floors had nice brick between the windows. I could have dealt with redoing the ground floor, but what they did to the top floor is just plain fug.
The building was originally an IOOF (Oddfellows) Temple, with ground floor retail.
thanks andrew! i liked that roof line too, now it’s lost forever.
Wasn’t the Complex a gay bar??
i don’t know…….was it???? lol
Colin, it was. I think it’s been closed for a few years though.
The top photo is from 2002.
Was the brickwork on the main floor painted black or was that siding? I thought I remembered seeing it fenced and the black siding removed with a couple of vertical 2×4’s attached to the unpainted brick. I saw some really nice preserved brickwork underneath, minus a few holes for the 2x4s. I don’t recall any of the original brickwork painted under the siding. I had high hopes for it when I saw it. Then this. I should have taken a picture with my cell.
Thanks for the “before” pic Andrew!! Seeing them both, I am not sure which is better! The older pic looks kinda dreary – I guess what we have now is better than a parking lot or vacant lot, or a generic new cinder block building. And the stucco isn’t permanent as we know, so in the future it could be restored, right?
If the before Complex is what a gay bar is supposed to look like, then those second floor windows makes it look gay to the power of a thousand. What next? A few months down the road the stucco gets painted a nice rainbow graffitti to finish it up?
I don’t see the point in adding the stucco above what looks like a first floor cornice (the top of the black paint where it meets the brick). But as has been said before money doesn’t equal taste, especially in this city.