Well, this is pretty bad, isn't it? On the other hand, at least we don't live in Beijing...Went down to Capitol Mall to get the scale of this, because it's hard to photograph - it's so...encompassing, ubiquitous, but so hard to see right in front of your face. Nevertheless, feeling closer than ever before.
Bad freakin' air. BAD. Which it is all the time - we're in the Top 10 worst in the country, in the WORST air basin this side of Mexico City - but it's never THIS bad.
While I was driving down the mall (get out of the car, you kidding?), I shot the new skyscraper that's going up at 500 N Street, with its bookend "peak" to match the US Bank building. The blue just added to the - what, granite? - panels on the side give it a vaguely Southwestern feel I'm not sure I like, but the building looks interesting, at least. Kinda. I will miss all the white lights on it during construction, though...
I've got a couple of other recent shots to show you: one is of the now-scraped-clean SW corner of 20th and Capitol, where once stood Rex Cycles and that body shop I can't remember the name of. Originally, it was an old livery, more than 100 years old. Not pretty, but still a livery of sorts - for mechanical horses.
But now it's gone. Mike Heller's development company bought the block, or a portion thereof, and scraped the sucker out of history. Bye-bye. Heller's MARRS Building across the street has been a great success, with six or seven terrific new businesses in it, including NewsBeat and great burritos and pizza and Peet's and Solomon Dubnick. And more of the same is FINE with me. But I do wish that old building could have been...acknowledged somehow. So, I will: Here it is, before and after...
1 comment:
So far as I can tell, it was never a livery stable. From the research I have done, it was built between 1895 and 1915, and the building originally held a Chinese laundry and a veterinary practice (maybe they had horses?) and sometime in the 1920s they cut out the corner to provide a service station.
I'm not too worried about acknowledging the building. I'm more worried about the ongoing trend of proactive demolition of old buildings (even occupied and active ones, as this one was) before even submitting plans for their replacement.
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