815 Business Loop 70 East

Stephen Bybee
Columbia, MO
June, 2011

We are leaving the historic brick buildings and romanticized winter views of downtown Columbia and moving to the Business Loop this week and will be exploring a few structures up and down the loop during my next few posts. This decision was made in response to last week’s fire in one of the oldest buildings on the Loop. The unique structure in this photo lies directly across the street from the area of the fire, a continuously connected building classically known as “Tiger Town”. From 1999-2001, and then again from 2011-2013 I found myself drawn to Columbia’s Business Loop to photograph what remained of this historic and locally important business corridor. My areas of focus at this time included Tiger Town, vestiges of neon at the east end of the Loop, and a few random buildings in the middle of the Loop. Tiger Town is a building I have photographed several times, always with some degree of danger and difficulty. I have always been fascinated with the variety expressed in its rooflines and in its siding choices. I think that now much of that variety has been homogenized by a more uniform siding application. Across the four lanes of traffic from Tiger Town is this humble but curious building. This photograph was taken during June of 2011, right around the time that photographers refer to as The Blue Hour…a time of warm and lingering twilight that occurs just after sunset. The building at the time was the storefront for a loan company and now enjoys success as the home of Crazy Good Burritos. I can’t remember what was in here before 2011, but I have vague memories of a franchised sandwich shop being here sometime in the late 90s.