It’s showtime! The long-awaited demolition of Jamestown Mall has begun. It doesn’t really come as much of a surprise. I had just visited back in August of this year, and there wasn’t much to see except tall weeds and other signs of dilapidation. I felt really bad when I saw an interview with a woman…
Tag: Demolition
Down By The River and the South Side, Peoria, August 2023
The public housing down by the river, which I first spotted way back in December of 2008, are finally being demolished. I had discovered they were built when Peoria demolished the red light district where Richard Pryor had grown up. The new buildings going up are nice, and they even feature the latest navy blue…
Grain Elevators, South of Peoria
These massive grain elevators south of Peoria along the Illinois River are slated for demolition–or maybe they aren’t. They’ll probably sit around for a long time until they’re finally, or completely, demolished.
Steel, Long Gone, Youngstown
As I mentioned before, the glow from the furnaces in Youngstown could be seen at night in Akron, around fifty miles away. Perhaps more than anything that fact sums up the giant crucible that was one of the greatest industrial powerhouses in America for one hundred years. And it’s all gone now, except for a…
In Search of the Sidaway Bridge and John D. Rockefeller, Cleveland
Sometimes I go searching for something and I don’t find it, but the journey becomes interesting (and a little scary) in of itself. In this case, I went looking for the Sidaway Bridge, further up one of the tributaries of the Cuyahoga River, after reading about it online, and besides being fascinated by its structure,…
Other Fall Updates, Fires, Demolitions, Etc.
It finally happened, the Mullanphy Emigrant Home, which I last looked at back in June of this year, caught on fire and burned to the ground on the night of September 14th. There is certainly no grand conspiracy, but simply the fact that overnight lows reached 50 degrees, and a squatter’s fire probably spread out…
Malt Kiln Demolition Work, Lemp Brewery
Sadly, due to the original design of the Lemp Brewery’s malt kiln, which was built in two building campaigns, one in the 1870s, and the other in the 1880s, which I wrote about in St. Louis Magazine, there will have to be necessary demolition of a third of the 1880s expansion. Essentially, William J. Lemp…
Former City Hall and the Wayne County Building, Detroit
Keen observers might have wondered what that Second Empire building in the foreground of that historic photo of the Penobscot Building was. That tower and Mansard roof belonged to the former city hall of Detroit, ignominiously demolished against the wishes of a majority of citizens in 1961. Designed by James Anderson, it opened in 1871….
Former Packard Plant, Detroit
A visit to the former Packard automobile plant is de rigueur for any architectural historian or any lover of abandoned buildings. While Packard closed in 1956, the complex was never truly abandoned, as far as I could find, until 1999. As so often has happened, a manufacturing plant with an august history was relegated to…
Celtic Meadows, Nearing Completion
I’ve looked at the former John F. Kennedy High School before, then during demolition, and then last year as initial site grading had begun. We were surprised that by mid 2023 that the subdivision was largely completed. I’m intrigued by the conversion of large institutional parcels being subdivided into smaller plots of land. Certainly many…