>I walked away feeling betrayed by one of our very own.  This architect has
>been instrumental in the preservation of Chattanooga structures as well as
>structures in Chicago, New York and Boston. He is lifelong resident of our
>city and knows first hand of the destruction of entire neighborhoods that
>would been on the National Register today.  Chattanooga is keenly aware of
>the price it paid in the sixties for its downtown urban developement.  More
>than one of our "would be" landmarks lays buried in the Summit landfill
>because it was ugly at the wrong time.

Very interesting.  We have a parallel situation here with the modern
building I alluded to in a post a couple weeks back that is threatened with
demolition by the county commissioners.  The newspaper article that I
cited, the efforts of several speakers at the county commissioners' budget
public hearing, some quiet lobbying of commissioners by some of their
respected acquaintences sympathetic to our cause, and an excellent article
on the issue in the free weekly socially-conscious events calendar and
reviews newspaper resulted in the commissioners voting to hold demolition
of the building for 6-months in order for proponents of preservation to
present a rehabilitation and re-use proposal.  We can't ask for anything
more than the opportunity to make our best case, so we are very pleased,
and appreciative of their open-mindedness and willingness to consider our
request.

The interesting aspect of the situation, in counterpoint to your
experience, is two local architects here that have done numerous projects
for the county (one might say that they are almost the anointed designers
for the county), and who also have been active in the preservation field in
both their architectural practices and in serving on my commission and the
board of the local non-profit advocacy organization, both refused
commissions to prepare architectural documents for the demolition of the
structure.  Of course I have no illusions that the county won't be able to
find someone to do the drawings, but I am very proud and pleased at the
principled refusal by these two to do damage to a significant, if currently
out of fashion, piece of landmark architecture.

I figure this building, which was built in 1949 and is 49 years old, is
about two to five years (and an effectively zippy paint job using colors
with a contemporary appeal on the metal components) away from becoming sexy
again.  We're doing our best to keep it standing until then.  It's a three
story building with horizontal ribbon windows, buff-colored brick veneer
and now tan-colored metal elements (rendering it a big beige box) with
really cool steel tracks encircling it above the upper two bands of windows
for a window-washing trolley.  It surely was a real eye-opener around these
parts in 1949, that has been totally depreciated by the onslaught of really
poor shlocky knock-offs constructed in the two decades following.

_______________________________________________
Dan Becker,  Executive Director       "Conformists die, but
Raleigh Historic                                 heretics live on forever"
Districts Commission                                   -- Elbert Hubbard

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