It’s always fun checking out the views from within the confines of an historic home–the romantic in my inevitably ponders how much the streetscape has changed or remained the same in the past 100+ years. This view is looking north on Delaware from the home of the famous Dr. Wishard who lived in this home for decades. One wonders if he had a favorite view and if so, which was it?

One thing we know is different: the esplanades that stretched from 19th to 22nd street are gone to accommodate more cars…

(Above) Here’s the view directly across the street (east) as of March 2012…and (Below) What was left of the Julius Walk House in November 2011.

Gone forever–at one time, one of the largest homes in Herron-Morton Place. It just couldn’t survive after it had been horribly cut up into many apartments and then the mysterious fire around the time it was going to be “redeveloped,” and then a period of years open to the elements. Sickening. And I’m still on the lookout for what this gem looked like before both levels of the front porch had been enclosed…

(Above)- Looking south to the east side of Delaware Street in a stretch that includes a rare example of a residence designed by well-known architect, Herbert Foltz. (Below) Not a great photo, but showing no other space between the Wishard Estate and the former Efroymson Home, in recent years saved and redeveloped into condos. What a neighborhood (and street) this was! Dr. Wishard in this house, Dr. George Row in the peach house (back to above) to the left of the green house and Dr. Barnhill in the 1900 block of Delaware. Department stores were just as heavily represented. Also formerly across the street and long gone, the house that was north of the recently demolished Walk House was that of A. L. Block, the president of L. Strauss & Company. In the 1900 block, William H. Block had one of the larger homes in the neighborhood, and a few blocks south, once stood the home of L.S. Ayres, south of where the President Benjamin Harrison Home still stands.

Whoever ends up living in the Wishard Estate will have ample fodder for reflecting on the past, while gazing out upon the present.