Longmont Then and Now #11: Main Street in the 50s

It's the inaugural Longmont ArtWalk of 2008 this evening - a good time to revisit Main Street once again, this time with a postcard picture from the 1950's:


This picture is also on display at the Longmont Museum where its caption on the wall slightly erroneously places it during the the following decade:

"Main Street Bustling With Action During the 1960's"

but the key indicator here is the grand Farmer's National Bank building which is still standing in this picture up a little on the left, at the NW corner of 4th and Main. If you've been following along in here, you may have read that this bank was torn down in 1959, admittedly at the end of that year. But it's likely that the postcard is from a few years earlier. Notice that the Main Street diagonal parking shown here in the 1950's is gone in the next decade.

Car experts - is that a Hudson (light blue, parked in isolation in front of Brown's Shoes) on the left? Any idea on the year and model?

Main Street, from close to the same point, on May 16,2008:


Main Street will be blocked off tonight (no car traffic), businesses are staying open and making all their preparations, and the weather is shaping up to be great. Have a good Art Walk!

A summary of the informal "Longmont: Then and Now" series so far:

• #1; Farmers National Bank
• #2: Main Street Looking North
• #3: Main Street, 1915
• #4: Coffman Street, 1909
• #5: The Imperial Hotel and Main Street, 1909
• #6: Main Street, mid-1960s
• #7: Odd Fellows Building, 1907-2007
• #8: Longmont Public Library
• #9: Longmont Hospital
• #10: City Hall