Industrial Bank Clock - 5pm

Wonderfully composed. Who cares what time it really is? Love the tonal range and the patina on the old metal.

This really speaks to me. There is a narrow window of now distant subjects that I can vividly remember from childhood that were all mainstream things at the time. Things at the very center of people's attention. But now for most of them no longer is much, if any at all, attention paid. And it's sometimes a melancholy experience to see them again from such a later perspective in life. Kind of like remembering a relative from when you were very young, then seeing that person again many decades later. Sort of an unexpectedly jarring reset to your memories. And an equally jolting new mile marker for yourself.

I've never seen this particular subject in person. But that's what it feels like to me as I look at this photograph of it.

Wow, Ken, that is incredible. I'm glad one of my images struck such a resonant chord in someone. That's the kind of reaction you hope to provoke in someone when you take photos; I'm glad one of mine was able to do that for you.

I really like the sinister mood in this image! And it would be a perfect illustration for the topic of bank crisis - even more if you had put the clock to "5 minutes before 12" instead of "8 minutes before 5"

I don't think of it as sinister, really. More sad, perhaps... a small independent local bank that is losing its purpose and ability to compete as the social forces that brought it into being are transforming - the legal and social racism that required a bank like this to exist in 1900 are largely obliterated now, so competition for loan customers is fierce - why would I borrow my mortgage from you at 7% when I can go in Wells Fargo, TD Bank, BB&T, Chase or Capital One and get a loan for under 4%? History is important, but when you're talking about a $500/month difference in mortgage payment, not so much. That's the kind of problem Industrial Bank is facing. Shrinking deposits and shrinking loan customers mean that they are not able to offer competitive rates on savings or loans. And so they shrink more.

Vaguely phallic. Was that the intent?

No, that's not the intent. If I want to photograph a phallus, I'll photograph a phallus

Did you ever see the photograph of Weegee crouched with his cigar and Graphic and peering into the ground glass above Frank Lava's gun shop at #6 Centre Market Place in Manhattan? It was located right behind police headquarters and back then that entire street was filled with gunsmiths servicing the police market. This was the era of Murder, Inc. and those gun shops were bustling operations at the center of every policeman's attention.

Today they are all gone, as is police headquarters, replaced by fancy residences occupied by people who probably have no clue. But if you walk the little Google Street man up to #6, then look to the left at the graffiti-covered windowed door of #7, then look up into the far right-hand corner under the circular whitish tagging, you will see the vestigial remnants of a hand-painted pistol with an 'S' shaped wisp of smoke emanating from the barrel. Only the barest right edge of the handle of the painted pistol is still visible. In the lower-left of that same pane is painted the name Brescia, Italy, the home country of the now long gone proprietor, also severely obscured by graffiti.

When I first viewed your above photograph for some reason this melancholy, abandoned, and long-forgotten gun shop door is what immediately came to my mind. Isn't that strange?

Standing on that Manhattan street today, I wonder what Weegee might think. Standing under your decaying bank sign today, I wonder what someone who first saw it new as a child might think...

That's a very cool bit of history- Not something I would ever have noticed or looked for walking by there. Or would have likely ever walked by it on a visit to NY - Today the neighborhood is, as you noticed, so gentrified and sanitized that it's uninteresting. It seems with a few exceptions (the diamond district, flower district, fashion district) the old pattern of neighborhoods built around an industry is vanishing. There used to be a real photo district (hence the name of the magazine) but before that, there was another photo district where all the professional photographers had their shops. It moved as the city grew; the original cluster was on lower Broadway and spanning over to what is now 1 Police Plaza. As the wealthy of Manhattan moved uptown, the portrait studios all followed them. You can trace that progress with two or three famous studios as markers - Mathew Brady and Gurney & Sons being prime examples. In the 1840s they were in far lower Manhattan (between what are now known as TriBeCa, Wall Street and Chinatown). By the 1880s, they were as far up as Midtown.