vacant strip between Lawrence and Burlingame near Lodge

[220hendrie1910]

Does anyone know why there's a vacant strip of land, about 20 yards wide, separating the rear lanes of Lawrence and Burlingame, running for two blocks from Woodrow Wilson to Hamilton? It appears to be an easement of some sort, and important enough that the builders of the Lodge edged it with an expensive-looking retaining wall and put a crazy-looking kink in the service drive on the east side to accommodate it. https://goo.gl/maps/hs26e

[EastsideAl]

It appears that there was a rather unusual line of apartment buildings wedged mid-block between the two streets. Here is a picture from the 1952 DTE Aerial photos:



To orient you, at the very top is Webb, Hamilton is to the far right, Woodrow Wilson [[and the former Academy of the Sacred Heart building on Lawrence) is on the left. I think the kink in the service drive was put in to accommodate the back of the apartment building with the light roof.

[EastsideAl]

Here, from the 1961 DTE aerials, is confirmation that the kink in the service drive was built around the apartment building.

[Zacha341]

Awesome photos. Interesting to compare the old [[pre-US10) view to the current. Yes, a whole row of apartments in which the freeway was adapted to go around at that juncture. There are wide open strips were rows of apartments once stood on Chicago Ave. and Longfellow streets, etc. pre. '67 riots. I was a child that living in one of them before it was torn down.

[MikeM]

The service drive jogs around the Penobscot Apartments, 11535 Byron, a three-story building.

Between Byron and Hamilton were the four-story Ranier Apartments - two separate buildings with addresses on both the east side of Byron and the west side of Hamilton. The rectangle in the middle of the block, between the two apartment buildings, was a 65-car garage, according to Sanborn maps.

[MikeM]

A couple more views of the apartments from different years. The Raniers were gone in the 1981 aerials but the Penobscot remained.

[Zacha341]

We've lost so many apartments to squalor and what not. Gone are dense areas of apartments as was on that strip and related areas.