Comparing 1962 Santa Clara to 2010, part three
Last time, we were looking down Monroe towards an old church. This set of pictures was taken a couple of blocks away. As before, they show what changed from 1962 to 2010.
Welcome back to 1962. Here, the photographer was standing on Benton, looking towards Washington. The building in the distance beyond a stop sign seems to be under construction. All land beyond it seems to be bare.
You can't see it in this picture, but at far left beyond those trees, there's a Wells Fargo bank. More on that later.
Now it's the summer of 2010. That building is now complete, and it's some kind of finance office for SCU now. There is no longer a stop sign on Benton and what was Washington street running in front of that building is now just an unmarked driveway.
To the right of that, there are a bunch of new trees and a green utility cabinet. Beyond a line of shrubs, someone has parked a mobile storage container unit. This is part of a parking lot for the condos which largely replaced that which was downtown Santa Clara. You'd never know that a house ever stood here.
It looks like the electric and other utility lines stop far in the distance and now go underground instead of continuing up this block on poles. It also seems every street light was relocated in some way.
At far left, you can just make out the roof line of Wells Fargo. This branch was also there in 1962, but it was hidden from the camera by a much younger and shorter group of trees. I'll cover just that bank in a future post. Very little has changed on the bank's corner in 50 years.
September 7, 2011: This post has an update.