decrepit building of the week

I've had my eye on these four buildings for a while, which I suppose is odd because they're easy to miss. With exception to the third one down, they look fairly unremarkable. One thing I go back and forth with is how buildings here for some reason or another have been radically altered for no particularly good reason. You see this most often in downtown -- alot of businesses only have any real income potential from the bottom floor and so property owners have taken heart to completely forgetting the rest of the building to the point of bricking/concreting/removing all detail on the upper floors. I've never understood this but it is what it is.. These commercial buildings are actually victorian. Two italiante, a romanesque, and a queen anne to be exact. Look a little closer.

This one right here I'm particularly interested in. Mostly because it still retains the majority of its detail with exception to the bricked in windows and paint scheme. It has a high style victorian look that I just adore. I have dreams of buying this building and doing a complete restoration. I'd live in the top floor of course..

The corner building is the queen anne. Don't see it? Note the steel girders running along the clipped edge. That was the previous home of a turret my friends. The windows have been possibly shortened and the entire building is covered in concrete (stucco?), further obscuring the original detail underneath. This would be an awesome project, but I wouldn't want to think what it would cost to restore this one properly. The turret alone would be ridiculously expensive to recreate.

Here's an old picture I found from the public library archives (aultman collection). If you look lower right you'll see the buildings in question. Well you mostly see the corner turret building, but you get the idea. How times have changed.