The Athens Flea Market, 1951

In a previous post on the Pláka district of Athens, I described how the flea market has changed over the decades, becoming much more gentrified. The market is in the Monastiraki (Greek: Μοναστηράκι = little monastery) neighborhood just to the north of Pláka. To check if my memory was correct about the character of the flea market decades ago, I scanned some of the family's 1950s black and white film negatives.

In the early 1950s, Greece was just emerging from the brutal civil war, and the country was desperately poor. US aid was pouring in, but people were still impoverished (except for war profiteers - that is an especially ugly story).*  A flea market like this was the place to raise a bit of cash, barter some odd metal scrap for some clothing, or buy an old steel bedstead.

More treasures for sale. I recall that you often saw Greek men hanging around, seemingly without work. I also remember many crippled veterans in the post-war era.

This is a Kodachrome slide from 1953 converted to monochrome.

A tourist in the market. Notice, he is wearing a suit. Even at leisure in those days, gents often wore suits. Sixty years later, we have become a nation of swine.

This is the view of the Agora with the Theseion temple in the distance. The train below is the original metro, the Athens-Piraeus Electric Railway (Greek: Η.Σ.Α.Π. - Ηλεκτρικοί Σιδηρόδρομοι Αθηνών-Πειραιώς, Ilektrikoi Sidirodromoi Athinon - Pireos). The rail line from Piraeus to Theseion was inaugurated in February 1869 as a steam train. The route was extended to Omonoia Square and electrified in 1904, making this one of the world's oldest metros.

This may be the end of Athenas Street where it meets Omonoia Square. I remember policemen with their white gloves directing traffic from the round pedestals. Later, sometime in the 1950s, the municipal government installed traffic signals throughout Athens. 

1906 street scene, single panel from a stereo card

• Title: Street scene, Athens, Greece
• Creator(s): Keystone View Company., 
• Date Created/Published: Meadville, Pa. ; St. Louis, Mo. ; San Francisco, Cal. ; Toronto, Can. ; New York, N.Y. ; London, England : Keystone View Company, Manufacturers and Publishers, 1906. Copyright 1906
• Medium: 1 photograph : print on card mount ; mount 9 x 18 cm (stereograph format)
• Summary: Stereograph showing outdoor market with street vendors and their merchandise.
• Reproduction Number: LC-DIG-stereo-1s25683 (digital file from original) LC-USZ62-65909 (b&w film copy neg. of right half stereo)
• Rights Advisory: No known restrictions on publication.
  
• Call Number: STEREO FOREIGN GEOG FILE - Greece--Athens [item] [P&P]
• Repository: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/pp.print

Back to the Pláka District: here is the Temple of the Winds. The 1800s houses were still authentic and unrestored then.

Finally, here is the Odeon of Herodes Atticus, on the south flanks of the Acropolis. Workmen are setting up chairs for a concert. The theater was built in 161 AD by a wealthy Athenian, Herodes Atticus, and is still in use for the annual Athens Festival. The seats are rock hard (really!) - take a cushion. Notice the view of the city in the background.  It looks like a village.

Technical note: Most of these negatives are Ansco Ultra Speed film. Fortunately, we saved them all these years. My dad exposed the film with his Canon rangefinder camera (possibly a model IIB) with a 50 mm ƒ/1.9 Serenar lens. This was a Japanese post-war replica of the German Leica IIIC camera and the Leica 5 cm ƒ/2 Summitar lens. The Serenar lens was not as good optically but still capable of fine work. The edges of the frames are a bit soft. The negatives were scratched and dirty, but I did not retouch. I scanned them on a Plustek 7600i 35mm scanner using Silverfast Ai software. A couple of the negatives were so thin, I would never have tried to print optically through an enlarger, but the Silverfast was able to extract a surprising amount of picture information. Black and white film is an amazingly archival storage material. Will we be able to read our digital files in 65 years?

* For a detailed description of the terrible World War II years, see:

Mazower, Mark, 1995.  Inside Hitler's Greece, The Experience of Occupation, 1941-44. Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 437 p.

Many of Greece's elite collaborated with the Nazis and became wealthy. And in Thessaloniki, many Greeks willingly let the Nazis deport Jewish merchants and profited by taking over their businesses and property. It was vile and shameful.
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For 2013 revisit to the Plaka area, please click here.
For a description of the Leica cameras that we used over the years, please click here.

Gorgeous View, Haphazard Town: Porto Empedocle, Sicily

Porto Empedocle is a seaport in southern Sicily. Most tourists in the area do not bother with the Port because their destination is the famous Valle dei Templi (Valley of the Temples or in Sicilian: Vaddi di li Tempri), an astonishing ancient Greek archaeological site in nearby Agrigento. On a recent road trip around Sicily, the coast highway E931 took me right through Porto Empedocle, and it looked too interesting to not stop.

The town is the terminus for ferry boats that go to the islands of Linosa and Lampedusa. Lampedusa, only 110 km from the coast of Tunisia, was in the news in 2011 because thousands of escapees from Libya and Tunisia were quarantined there in refugee camps. Remote Linosa was once a penal colony for Mafia chieftains and thugs. In the 1930s, dictator Benito Mussolini almost succeeded in eradicating the Mafia by executing hundreds (thousands) and banishing hundreds to prison camps on Linosa. But the American forces in 1943 enlisted the Mafia to help overthrow the Germans, put the Mafia back in power in rural towns all over Sicily, and the rest is history (Duncan, P. 1994. Sicily: A Traveller's Guide, John Murray Publishers Ltd.).

The town is built on two levels. The port and lower town are on the coastal plain, while the upper town is about 100 m higher on a limestone ridge. The lower town is a warren of twisty lanes with haphazard multi-floor apartments. Some may be late 1800s-vintage, but most look like dumpy post-World War II units, with an occasional modern monstrosity. The photographs above were taken from the Via Mare road that runs along the ridge.

Up on the ridge, all of the apartment blocks look to be post-1960s. The town has been known for its sulfur mines since antiquity. Do all these people work at the sulfur factory?

We saw some children playing, but the streets were pretty quiet mid-day on a Saturday. A supermarket tucked into the basement of one of these apartments was busy.

The streets reminded me of people's housing blocks I saw in the old Soviet Union, except here there were more private cars and the general maintenance condition was better.

Do not let me discourage you: Sicily is a spectacular tourist destination, and the people are very friendly.  The history spans the Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Greeks, Romans, Moors, and Normans.

Photographs taken with a Panasonic G1 digital camera. These look different then my previous Panasonic images because I processed the raw files with Photo Ninja. This is an amazing software that extracts subtle details from the files - highly recommended!

Mississippi Basin Model construction and instruments

Regular readers may remember my earlier posts about the Mississippi Basin Model from early 2010, July 2010, and Dec. 2010. This was the most comprehensive hydraulic model ever built, meaning it covered the largest land extent of any model. The Corps of Engineers also built a Chesapeake Bay Model and one of San Francisco Bay. The Chesapeake model only had a full operational life of three years and is now gone.  But the San Francisco model still exists and is open to visitors in a warehouse in Sausalito.

Building a model like this is a complex project requiring precise scaling and ultra-precise shaping of the terrain. I found some photographs that help explain how a scale physical hydraulic model like this is constructed.

In the first photograph, metal templates that show the topography have been laid out across the soil at specified intervals. The templates usually have vertical exaggeration, such as 1:10, meaning vertical distance is scaled 10 times greater than the horizontal scale. Then the soil is moved and shaped to approximately match the templates.

At the Mississippi Basin Model, the original earth work, excavating canals, and installing piping was performed by German prisoners of war.  The Germans were repatriated in 1946, and civilian employees completed the rest of the model.  The template method of shaping the terrain was used between 1946 and approximately 1953. But the expansive soil in the area required a shift to the contour method of construction (not shown in these photographs).

In the second photograph, the workers are carefully pouring concrete and shaping the surface to exactly match the top of the templates. This is painstaking work requiring years of experience. The labor, time, and space requirements underscore why building physical models is so expensive.

This is an electronic water-level follower, meaning an instrument to measure water level. Notice that electronic circuits means vacuum tubes!

Finally, here is one of the Stevens chart recorders that plots the water level over time. As the paper drum turns, an ink pens moves up and down on the guide rails.

This is a January, 2010, photograph of one of the controls rooms at the Basin Model. Since then, all the Stevens recorders have been removed, probably stolen.

Historical black and white photographs courtesy of the Coastal and Hydraulics Laboratory, Engineer Research and Development Center, US Army Corps of Engineers.

Village in the city: Pláka, Athens, Greece

The Acropolis hill has been occupied since Neolithic times. For millennia, people lived around the base of the hill because it was blessed with natural springs. But when visiting Athens today, other than the Acropolis and various other classical remains such as the Agora, most of what we see is a modern city. The first post-Turkish-era king of the modern state, King Otto, brought in his Bavarian architects to design an elegant European capital city with a palace (now the Parliament), parks, and broad boulevards. Greece and Athens suffered terribly during World War II and in the brutal Civil War that followed. But much of what we see today was the result of frantic uncontrolled urban expansion that followed the end of the Civil War in 1949. Beautiful old mansions and municipal buildings were torn down and replaced with concrete boxes. Now they look like mass-produced, tired 1960s concrete boxes.

First some geography. The Acropolis is the limestone hill in the middle of the view. This is a photograph taken from Lycabettus Hill facing west at sunset. The port city of Piraeus is in the upper right, and ferry boats and container ships are in the roadstead off the port. The big temple on the Acropolis is the Parthenon.  Look at the base of the limestone bluff below the Parthenon, and you can see a cluster of small houses. This is known as the Pláka district (Greek: Πλάκα). The uppermost houses are the Ano Plaka or upper Plaka. This area has been inhabited for centuries, and this is all that remains of medieval Athens.

Now let's reverse positions.  This is the view east from the base of the Acropolis towards the Lycabettus hill. The post-World War II city fills the entire valley now.

This is the view from the Acropolis in 1900. The royal palace (now parliament building) is in the distance, and the city spreads out in the foreground. I scanned this from the left side of a stereo card. The only printed information stated, "Webster & Albee, Rochester, NY."

Walking in the warren of lanes in Ano Pláka, you almost think you are in a village (if you ignore the din of the traffic in the distance).  On a sunny day, the area has an island look.

Most of the houses have been restored since the 1960s, when this was a hippy haven and pretty grungy.

Cats love it up here, especially on a warm sunny day.

There is a lot more graffiti now, worse then I ever remember it. This is one consequence of the Greek economic crisis.

There is also widespread disgust with the priesthood, but, to its credit, the church runs many soup kitchens and helps the hungry and poor.  (The priest above is carrying a bag of Euros).

There are still some dilapidated lots in Pláka, just waiting for a rich American to bring funds and start restoring. Ever hear the term, "money pit?"

As you descend into the Kato (lower) Pláka, you enter the popular tourist area, rife with restaurants and souvenir shops.

This is the Temple of the Winds, in which a water clock once measured the time. The Acropolis is in the distance.

Finally, the Athens flea market is worth a visit. In the 1950s, I remember this being filled with vendors of car parts, mufflers, old clothes, toys, used tools, and junk in general. It has been gentrified, and many of the stores sell pseudo-designer clothes, souvenirs, and miscellaneous modern junk. I did find a music store with a good collection of Maria Callas CDs.  We will explore the flea market in more detail later.

The equally colorful Central Market is only a 10-minute walk away towards Omonia Square.

Best wishes for a prosperous 2013 to all readers!

Railroad in Markópoulo, Attika, Greece

Markópoulo (Greek: Μαρκόπουλο Μεσογαίας) is a market and farming town in Attica, east of Athens. For many years, it was a bustling market center that retained its small-town look, although it was only an hour or so drive from Athens. But recently, developers built houses and condominium apartments, some out in the olive fields. As usual, I am mystified; who are the potential customers? Today, Athens Elefthérios Venizélos International Airport is only a few kilometers away and the area is slowly becoming more commercial.

Quite by accident, I came across the historic railroad station. The Attica Railway (Greek: Σιδηρόδρομοι Αττικής) once linked Markópoulo with other rail lines near Kifissia (and connection with northern Greece) and with the town of Lavrion. The track was 1,000 mm (3 ft 3 3⁄8 in) (metric gauge). Since prehistoric times, silver was mined in Lavrion.  This silver once funded the classical Athenian society and construction of monumental temples like the Parthenon (but note, the mines were worked by slaves; democracy did not extend to everyone). In the late-1800s, Greek and French companies mined lead, manganese and cadmium, leading to construction of this rail line in the late-1880s.

The handsome old railroad station was last used in 1957 and fell into bad repair, but the municipality restored it in the late 1980s. According to Wikipedia, passenger service was discontinued in 1957 due to political lobbying by private bus companies.

This locomotive sits forlorn and unhappy, but it was once a proud representative of the railroad system.

The rail cars are in poor shape, and one suffered a fire.

This is the fifth post on Greek railroads. If you are interested in the topic, here are previous articles:

Peloponnese railroad Corinthos station

Kalavryta narrow-gauge line

Station in Milies, Pelion, Greece

Pireaus, Athens, and Peleponnese railroad

Photographs taken with a Panasonic G1 digital camera with Lumix 20mm f/1.7 lens. I thank my sister, who loaned me her car for this excursion.

St. Mary's Catholic Church, Vicksburg, Mississippi

St. Mary's Catholic Church is at the corner of Main and 2nd North Streets, in the historic part of Vicksburg east of the Courthouse and south of Old Jackson Road.

As you can see, this building is relatively modern (1923). Did this structure replace an older church? Possibly a reader can provide information.

St. Mary's operates a large parish hall, which resembles an old hangar.

What interested me most about the property was the old rectory, an 1800s wood structure on a flat lot south of the church.  To me, it looks like an old schoolhouse, but the priest told me that the schoolhouse was demolished many years ago, and the white building was the rectory.

It is a handsome old building, and I wish they could restore it.

This is the view from the church property looking east along Jackson Street. Did the lower garden once have an orchard or vegetable garden? In the early 1900s, many schools grew their own food - how times have changed. Can you imagine a contemporary student working in the fields?

Update January 2018: the rectory has been demolished. I do not know the exact date. That is sad.

Photographs taken with a Panasonic G1 digital camera, tripod-mounted.