Tuesday, June 15, 2010

Little by Little, Bit by Bit

It's not often that I can present something that hasn't been seen in upwards of 25 years but today, I can!

Went for a nice walk yesterday at lunch (which introduced me to MORE historic buildings for you to see and hear about this summer) and I got to see this: the exposed (mostly) facade of the old Stix, Baer & Fuller building where the demo of the Washington Avenue skybridge is nearly complete. I think that's moved along quite nicely considering that back on May 21, it looked more like this: Looks to me like the job is somewhere between 60 and 70 percent complete. (I think the projected completion date is sometime next week. They just might make it!)

The one thing that concerns me is the condition of the facade. I'd read somewhere that they weren't anticipating that the bridge had done much damage to the front as it was more supported by the street pillars, not the Stix building. I don't know though. This looks pretty messed up to me.
For the most part, they were able to leave the original cornice and window moldings intact, but ... there are definitely spots where it was not very loved during the original construction of the bridge. Luckily, the greatest level of the ornamentation of this building is concentrated at the higher and roofline level! It doesn't appear at least that they did much mucking with that, thank God!

And you know that I just couldn't NOT share a photo featuring the welder's sparks. It looked so cool from the street. This piece was GONE when I came in this morning, too!


2 comments:

Karen Anne said...

That looks so much better. When did we forget how to build beautiful office buildings?

NV said...

Karen Anne-- I know! It's been SO great to watch it ocme down and watch the old building's front resurface.