This morning I headed out in the fog a few blocks north to photograph another building coming down in the West End neighborhood. Not much was left of the large 30 unit apartment building that stood at the northeast corner of Cabanne and Goodfellow. The building had been constructed in 1924, and is one of literally dozens of similar type apartment buildings from the 1920's that have been lost over the last 15 years.
While many of these buildings were abandoned for decades and had deteriorated to the point where their floors and roof literally collapsed into the basement, this building was fully intact and occupied just a few years ago. See my earlier post focusing on Cabanne Avenue for some pre-demolition views of the building as well as my West End set on Flickr. Thanks to Doug Duckworth for the heads up about this demolition.
A photo from last year shows that demolition had started but
mysteriously stalled leaving the building in limbo for several months.
Oh well. This demolition is undoubtedly a necessary step towards cutting-edge new construction.
ReplyDeleteOr maybe this is the city creating another (particularly large) vacant lot.
In all seriousness, does anyone know why this happened?
This part of town needs its own Leon Strauss to create a DeBaliviere Place-type development.
ReplyDeleteDemo stopped, huh? Maybe another illegal operation, no? Got caught, had to pay the obligatory bri-er, fines, to get it finished? Big building, not cheap. Someone with fairly deep pockets, I'd say, and just enough "in" to finish the job.
ReplyDeleteOwned by Doug Hartmann, had a fire, neighborhood wanted it gone.
ReplyDeleteThere are several wonderful and relatively secure multifamily buildings to the immediate westerly city block. One needs to be boarded up and seems to have brick falling, but the others are in much better condition. If I had a few million this is where I would spend it, that and eastern Delmar around Goodfellow.
These neighborhoods need reinvestment if we're going to see a street car or any physical connection to the Central West End.