Sunday, April 07, 2013

Where am I?


This one should be a good puzzle. The location where this photo was taken isn't visible via the Google Street View (at least I just checked and I couldn't see it), so you'll have to rely upon something other this time. 

Here are your clues:

  • During the time that this town was thriving, the water nearby certainly wasn't stagnant. 

  • It's old. Elements of it date back to the Pre-Cambrian Era, and its history is richly intertwined with the narrative of our nation, a major industry, and at least one notorious historical figure. It even has over 100 buildings listed in the National Register of Historic Places. 

  • This door is close to the beaten path but only the locals generally know about it, and it's now scrawled with graffiti. 


So there you go. Have fun.

Mitch made me do it.


Here is another clue...



Here is another clue...



27 comments:

Baydog said...

Pig Roast
Coffee
Suga......ooops, wrong kind of quiz

Tillerman said...

Very close.

Genie said...

You might be in Boonville in the Adirondacks. The Adirondacks are part of the PreCambrian Shield. There are certainly over 100 buildings in the National Register (including the Post Office). Butch Cassidy was sentenced in Boonville to the only jail term he ever served. Other notorious figure include George Parrott and Tom Horn. The waters surrounding Boonville have stagnancy problems...the Hudson, Lake George. Hotels and houses in the area were accomodations for Civil War Generals, U.S. Presidents and all sorts of intelligentia. And major industries could be diverse agriculture and recreation.

Tillerman said...

Very close.

Baydog said...

I don't think graffiti runs rampant in the Adirondacks, but I could be wrong.

Tillerman said...

You're getting warmer.

Genie said...

Mmmm. How about Boston? Also fits the criteria on all counts with the Boston Basin being late Pre-Cambrian. Irish mob leaders and gangsters like Eddie Coyle abound. The Charles River has problems. The American Revolution, Bunker Hill, the Boston Tea Party, the Kennedys catapult the town into historical fame. Major industries ... finance and hi-tech research.

Tillerman said...

Very close.

Tillerman said...

I have just posted another photo of the other other side of the street. Huge hint, practically gives it away.

And why do I keep saying "very close"?

Genie said...

Possibly because it is very close to you. I'm going to say Providence, but I'm not at all certain.

Tillerman said...

Well you are on the right track in thinking this is a city that's very close to where I live, but it's not Providence. The answer is staring you in the face.

Genie said...

So, it must be Portsmouth. I'm very hazy on the history of this area.

Tillerman said...

No. Not Portsmouth.

Think of a town that once was thriving with a major industry, in fact it was the leading center for this industry in the whole US, but has since fallen on hard times.

Genie said...

Well, at least I have learnt something about the Rhode Island area. The city must be Newport which monopolised whale fishing and manufactured oil and candles as well as having a shipping trade second only to New York.

O Docker said...

You can only be referring to Easton, Massachusetts, home of the Ames Shovel Works which at one time produced more shovels than any other company, making Easton the de facto shovel capital of the world.

But oh, how times change! Today, Ames snow shovels (with the patented Versa-Grip) are wielded by only a few knowledgable and discerning New England shovelers who refuse to let a little snow keep them from their frostbite races.

Tillerman said...

Good guess O Docker. But wrong.

Tillerman said...

Genie, if you had been to Newport lately you would know that it still is a bustling, thriving, prosperous town. And Newport was involved in whaling to some extent but it was never as prominent in that field as New Bedford or Nantucket (which are not the right answers either.)

Tillerman said...

I have posted another clue, a picture of a building that is very typical of this town these days. Like many buildings in this town it is built of local granite (hence the Precambrian reference in the original clues.)

This is a huge hint. I am practically giving it away.

O Docker said...


So your fallout shelter is in Fall River?

Genie said...

Could it be Westerly? Well known for it's granite, especially blue granite.

Tillerman said...

Bingo! O Docker has it. Again! It is indeed Fall River.

Fall River is "very close" to the town I live in, Tiverton RI, even though Fall River is in MA. In fact it is the adjoining town to the north and the state boundary is only a couple of miles up the road. Indeed the southern part of what is now Fall River was once part of Tiverton.

The reference to nearby water that was "certainly not stagnant" was to the Quequechan River, the "falling" river gave Fall River its name. Apparently it once ran through the town and dropped steeply into the bay, but it now runs underground in a series of culverts.

The Quequechan with its series of eight falls made this a natural site for mills and industrialization and Fall River was, in the late 19th century, second only to Manchester, England for the size of its cotton industry. But as so often has been the story in the US, the prosperity didn't last for ever as the trade eventually moved to areas of lower labor costs.

The notorious historical figure I was thinking of was Lizzie Borden. Many may have heard the nursery rhyme about her without realizing it is based on a true story. Lizzie was tried in the 1890s for the brutal slaying of her father and stepfather. She was acquitted but nobody else was ever charged with the murders.

An interesting place with many fine buildings. The corner in my first two photographs reflects that there are certainly some run-down areas but is not reflective by any means of the whole city.

I had never before seen a sign for a fallout shelter in the US even though I have lived here over 20 years. Do other cities have them or is this a leftover from the 1950s era of nuclear war paranoia?

Genie said...

Oh, that last clue must have been Chace Mills! I got on the wrong track thinking the building looked like an abandoned asylum or prison. According to Google, there are still a lot of fallout shelters in existence, some are museums, but most have been decommissioned. A fun puzzle! Thanks.

Tillerman said...

It is indeed Chace Mills, picture stolen from Wikipedia, not an original by me. There are a lot of old mills like that along the route of the Quequechan.

O Docker said...

Fall River was one of my first hunches, but I couldn't find a street like that near a post office, 'driving' around in Google Maps, so gave up until you posted the picture of the mill.

It's amazing how many of the old mill buildings still remain, considering their size, but what do you do with something that big built of heavy granite stones? They all seem to be the same shape - about five stories high and very long - probably due to the way the mill machinery was driven.

Some clever entrepreneurs have opened a Lizzie Borden B&B !

I wonder if kids stay free when accompanied by parents.

Tillerman said...

The buildings were on Elm Street, I believe. One block north of the W end of Bank Street, which as the name suggests is the banking area of the city. What struck me was that there were these two buildings, boarded up and covered in graffiti, apparently no longer in use, only a block or so away from what appeared to be the commercial center of the city.

Some of the mills do have occupants. One has been taken over by one of those large medical primary care companies so presumably is full of doctors' offices etc. Other mills in nearby towns have been converted into condos. But several of the ones in Fall RIver do seem to be boarded up still.

And yes, if you want to spend a night in a house famous as the site of two gruesome axe murders then you can stay at the Lizzie Borden B&B.

O Docker said...

And oh, the fallout shelter signs are familiar to those of us of a certain age.

They were posted on many public buildings in the fifties and sixties, mainly to give an imagined sense of security to the masses. They were a nice piece of theater designed to assure us that our government was doing something to protect us from an unseen peril.

They may be a good thing to think about the next time you're enduring the take-your-shoes-off-and-empty-your-pockets drill at the airport.

Tillerman said...

I felt a lot safer, while doing my run in Fall River, knowing that if Kim Jong-un decided to launch a nuclear strike on New England I knew where to hide.

Post a Comment