I took the photo above sometime in 1983– probably in the Spring. This is a view looking north on Halsted around Jackson Blvd.

A couple interesting points about this shot: the Greek Islands restaurant had just moved to their new location at Halsted and Adams, and they were in the process of painting a new mural on their building and water tower. There was previously a mural for a Danny Boy / Texaco station (see here for an interesting article about Dan Terzakis, the Danny Boy mogul) on the wall, so the interim message turned out kind of funny.

That mural and water tower weren’t touched again until the past couple of years, when they sandblasted the Greek Islands mural. The water tower still has the 1983 paint job.

Here’s a view of (almost) the same spot in January 2010:

It’s interesting to see the changes that took place in 25-plus years: the streetlamps are upgraded; there are trees on the sidewalks; the transient hotels (the “New Jackson” is on the right) are gone, as is the Currency Exchange. Roditys Restaurant, on the left side of the street, is still there and doing grand business.

Some technical notes: the original photo was shot with a Pentax K1000 on Tri-X film. I was a student at UIC at the time, and I developed and printed this photo myself. I scanned the print for this blog entry. The 2010 shot was taken with my Canon PowerShot A720IS digital camera.