This image is a view taken from Rines Hill looking down Water Street as it passes through the center of Augusta, Maine. The photo was taken in late-1947 or ’48 as the Chevrolet truck on the left hand side of the bridge behind a bus was an “Advanced Design” model introduced in June of that year. Augusta, must have been a beer drinking town – a Portsmouth Ale billboard is visible on this side of downtown and at the far end of the street a Ballantine Beer sign with its trade mark three rings can be seen above the buildings.
This ^^^ would likely have been early to mid 1961, as the Armory building, just behind the Space Needle's legs, has not started going through its facelift into the Center House, and the structural steel was just put up for the Coliseum, in the background of the photo.
Pretty neat. I don't believe the long, low building in front of the Needles legs is around any longer. Which, ironically looks very similar now that they have completely gutted it.
The gutting is inside that structure, even when they expanded back in the '90s. The low building, IIRC, was a pavilion that was not needed after the Fair. A lot of the smaller buildings were moved off-property; the Sermons from Science building ended up as a chapel at the Paine Field Navy Housing. I was there many times in the early '70s for movies.
