As often as I drive thru downtown Benton Harbor going to the Benton Harbor Regional airport I realized that it had been a long time since I had actually walked around the downtown area. So today, being a great blue sky day, meaning lots of sunshine, I decided to walk down town and photograph the streets and buildings. By the time the walkabout was completed I had taken several hundred shots.
Since I am not that good of a photographer it takes me at least 100 shots to get a “good” one, least ways that’s the way it seems. I sorted the pictures into folders labeled Arts District, looking down 5th St., looking down Main St., Round About #1 and Round About #2, and last Territorial St & road.
Between 1970 and 1985 thousands of jobs were lost in the Benton Harbor area due to closing or downsizing of local manufacturing plants. Retail activity downtown evaporated. The Liberty Theater and the Vincent Hotel were closed in 1975. The Fidelity Building, onetime business hub of the city, was closed in 1976. The Orchards Mall, situated on Pipestone Road near I-94, opened in 1979 and delivered a final blow to downtown retail business. Various efforts to revitalize the downtown area are still in progress.
With the exception of the area around the newer Whirlpool Campus and the “Arts” district the majority of down town Benton Harbor is rather deserted and run down. The new Whirlpool Campus on Riverview Drive opened in April of 2012 and was designed to consolidate 15 Whirlpool properties into three centralized campuses. Those being the Administrative Center, Technology Center, and Riverview Campus.
The new three buildings of the Riverview Campus cost 70 millions dollars, contains over 245, 000 sq/ ft on about 12 acres and can house approximately 1,100 employees. Of those 1,100 employees it has been said that a good number of them actually work from home remotely.
Here are a few pictures of main street coming in from St.
