Comment by nostrademons | Hacker News Reader

Comment by nostrademons | Hacker News Reader

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Much of the Northeast has this flavor. I dunno if you've ever been to the Boston area, but many of the buildings have this same sense of history to them. In the leather district, you've got former tanning factories which became porn studios which became software offices and yuppie lofts. In Maynard, you have old textile mills from the industrial revolution, which became DEC in the 50s and 60s, which became Monster.com in the dot-com boom of the 90s, which are now used for web2.0 startups and consultancies. In Lowell, you still see the old textile mills and canals alongside the remnants of the Wang Labs towers and newer businesses.

From what I know of NYC, it's much the same, with bohemian lofts where old tenements once stood.

That's one of the things I miss most about New England, having moved out to California. Here, everything is cookie-cutter suburbia, built in a hurry during the 70s and 80s. There's none of the charm or history of the Boston area. I can walk around downtown Lowell and say "This is a charming city, even if it's a little economically depressed." I can't really say the same about San Jose, even though it's cleaner, safer, and much more well-off.

'Old' in Europe is more like this:

http://pics.ww.com/v/jacques/buildings/dscf1025.jpg.html

or this:

http://pics.ww.com/v/jacques/buildings/dscf1021.jpg.html

The oldest parts of this building date from the 12th century:

http://www.engelmunduskerkvelsenzuid.nl/images/foto_kerk_2.j...

I've actually had an office in the 'carpet factory' in Toronto, which was an industrial revolution age textile mill, amazing building, white pine roof beams that were easily 1 1/2' on a side in the section that we were in.

Fortunately some of those buildings remain, but an enormous number of them got torn down.

I'd have said "old" in Europe is more like this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skara_Brae

Skara Brae had been abandoned for 1200 years when Troy fell!

For a building that can actually be used, how about this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tower_of_Hercules (1900 years old) or the Pantheon http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pantheon,_Rome (~1900 years).

Although my favourite is Hagia Sophia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hagia_Sophia - a youngster at almost 1500 years old.

Wow! That's more like 'ancient' ;)

The other buildings are in daily use though, which is why I used them instead of old Roman buildings and such.

Boston doesn't have anything old. "Old" in the US is more like this:

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Acoma_Pueblo

although there are ruins that are much older:

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Chaco_Canyon

In other parts of the continent, there are much older continuously inhabited cities.

> That's one of the things I miss most about New England, having moved out to California. Here, everything is cookie-cutter suburbia, built in a hurry during the 70s and 80s.

San Jose was founded in 1776. The houses in my neighborhood were built in 190x, mine in 1902.

All of the "mission" cities date from about that time. They're all full of old buildings. (Yes, there are Victorians in Monterey.) Heck, the Sacramento and Central Valley are full of towns that date from the 1850s.

Don't confuse Palo Alto with California.

Philadelphia & Boston are probably the most "old-world" looking major cities in the US.

Montreal in Canada is also worth taking a look at.

The southern part of Manhattan Island (below all the streets with numbers, like Wall Street) still has a very "old-world" street layout, and if you imagine shorter buildings down there, it's definitely laid-out pre-car. I'm smitten by how twisty and close-in everything is when I get down to that part of the city. Probably due to that, it's also a bit more walkable in certain ways than the rest of the island.

Some of the old Spanish settlements in the South, and especially the old part of San Juan Puerto Rico are very old world feeling.

The numbered street grid in Manhattan was laid out at the beginning of the 19th century. The reason there are so many streets and so few avenues was to facilitate river-to-river movement of freight. The reason for the standardized grid was to make land development more predictable (it's also called the speculative grid for that reason).

Quebec City is also quite "old world".

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