Help me figure out this old photo

[scooterj]

is burlington still that dense (i really have no experience that i am aware of driving on burlington)?  or is that just a trick of the angle of the photo?

It's got to be a trick of the lens, as I drove down it about an hour ago and could find most of the buildings in the photo.  Because of the angle and the foreground tree on the left this has to have been taken at Waterworks Park, which means the lens is showing us  2+ miles of Burlington compressed together.

[moderne]

Think you are right.  Too bad the resolution of the photo is not better, interesting to see City Center Square under construction.  You think river crossing pedestrian access is a problem now(pre-bike lane HOA),on the ASB the sidewalk that literally was cantilevered over the river ended just past the levee and you had to descend an iron spiral stair and risk your life crossing the rail yards to get to NKC

[KC Kropf]

Wouldn't ATT be further to the left behind Oak Tower/City Hall?  I think that is Fed Reserve and ToG and the Reserve just must have had some shit on the roof back then. 

Could be... ruling it out as AT&T as it looks like the towers were installed in 1981?? 



http://long-lines.net/places-routes/Kan ... index.html

[voltopt]

??? is the old Commerce Bank building on Walnut and 10th.

[scooterj]

It's definitely the Long Lines building.  You can see the square satellite dish protrusion on top.

I just recreated the angle in Google Earth and, while the telephoto distortion can't be replicated, the position at that angle almost certainly makes it the old Federal Reserve.   The protrusion at the top is the top of the elevator shaft + the HVAC units.   Longlines is obscured from view on the left side of the photo when compared to Google Earth.

The middle ??? remains a mystery to me.  Because of telephoto distortion it could be as far away as 31st, but more likely candidates are Hotel Phillips, Commerce Trust, Chambers, Mark Twain, or a building that no longer exists/replaced by glass towers.   Remember, this is looking at an angle slightly off from the street grid and the telephoto exaggerates the space between the buildings.

[voltopt]

Its absolutely Commerce Trust.  Look at this photo from the rag's own Grid -

[scooterj]

That settles that.    Interesting how Longlines isn't visible in Grid's photo either.  (I think his is from Briarcliff if I remember right.)

[voltopt]

Just for fun I removed the buildings that weren't there in 1976 (to the best of my knowledge, in limited time) from Grid's photo. 

[DaveKCMO]

Just for fun...

viva voltopt!

[FangKC]

The "???" building is the old Commerce Trust Building.

[Major KC Fan]

The building labeled AT&T Long Lines is the Federal Reserve building for the most part.  You might be able to see the top of the Long Lines building (the long skinny tower that was removed in recent years).  The building labeled ??? is the old original Commerce Bank building, I think.  It's now obscured in part by the newest Commerce Bank Building.  If you look past the middle of the downtown loop buildings I think you can see a crane from one of the Crown Center buildings, either the Hyatt Hotel or the Lathrop & Gage tower at Pershing and Grand (originally constructed as the IBM Building).

[moderne]

The newest Commerce Bank building could not obscure the old one from the north, because it is south of the old. Lathrop and Gage was orignally constructed as Mutual Benenfit Life, IBM was the small satellite building right on the corner of Pershing and Grand. The crane you see at Crown Center is way way before Lathrop and Gage and 4 years before the Hyatt, the San Francisco Tower was under construction in 1976, this photo was taken the summer of the GOP convention.