A friend recently cursed me by introducing me to HistoricAerials.com. I say “cursed” because for the last few days I have spent hours examining the changes in local streets instead of, say, going to bed at a reasonable hour. I have spent a lot of this time looking at how the freeway and time have changed the Urbandale neighborhood. So that is why I set out to walk through it in real life tonight, without considering that the snow of last night and today would probably not be very cleared there. All this preamble is mainly just to apologize for tonight’s entry, gleaned from one of the only cleared sidewalks I traversed.

OK, yes, it’s one of these. But isn’t it pretty?

This is on the east side of South Fairview Avenue, just south of the corner of Harton. (Harton is a source of fascination for me and I have spent some time on HistoricAerials trying to figure out when and why it lost its three middle blocks. Sadly there is no sidewalk on any part of Harton, so I will not be able to feature it here.) I can’t read the date but it is obviously one of the numerous 1987-88 stamps found all over the east side. The house it’s in front of is the only one on the east side of the 700 block. The southernmost blocks of the Urbandale streets have lost many houses to demolition and look very sparse and forlorn.

Looking south on South Fairview. This is the last house on this side of the street. I appreciated that they shoveled their walk. You can just make out the cleared area where I brushed snow off the stamp, past where the fence begins.

Looking north on South Fairview, toward the intersection of Harton.