Montage du jour : La maison de Sir Mortimer B. Davis

9 comments

1. Sad. A beautiful home like that degraded to this…

2. Yeah – we need more tobacco tycoons building mansions in the downtown core and then abandon them leaving the inside totally undisturbed. People on this site complain no matter what. Heaven forbid vending machines!

3. Once, not that long ago, they sold cigarettes from vending machines, you pressed a separate button if you wanted matches, but, in this instance the machines DO detract from the ambience of the decor.

   In the fifties they still allowed the customer in shoe stores to step up and insert his feet into an X-Ray viewer to ‘check the fit.’

   Foot bones all visible on a green screen as well as nails in shoes and lace eyelets, etc.

   There was a separate viewing port for the sales person or parent.

   Some kids, when not observed would stand there looking at the the image for minutes.

4. Cdnlococo, that’s a fascinating anecdote. If you have any links to webpages with pictures of those machines, I’d love to see them.

5. It’s that drop-down ceiling that really is hellish. Whoever approved of that should be forced to eat the asbestos in those square insulation panels. That is just heinous.

6. Je suis retourné sur les lieux récemment et j’ai pu constater que le plafond est maintenant refait en panneaux de placo plâtre.

7. Est-ce que les panneaux sonts levés jusqua’au l’hauteur du plafond original maintenant, Guillaume? Si oui, c’est une bonne nouvelle.

8. Je n’ai pas porté attention…

9. Dear Shawn,

   I realize some of these anecdotes are long and meandering, but, its one way on carrying on our history to those that were not alive at the time.

   One reason cigarette machines were removed was that children could operate them and get smokes unobserved.

   Kids used to help themselves to money found in milk bottles when milk still came in horse-drawn wagons or sleighs.

   Most housewives, a term long gone, used milk tickets purchased in bulk from the milkman ( another term long gone, like motorman on a streetcar ) to prevent milk money theft.

   Here is an example of a shoe X Ray machine from the all pervasive Internet.

   http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/museum/artifacts/archives/002457.asp