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All day yesterday I was feeling such a sense of loss after the Wirt Dexter fire, tht I felt that I needed to get down to the site and take some shots before it was completely gone. I left work a bit early, and my timing couldn’t have been better. I arrived just as they were beginning the demolition of the rear wall, and spent the next two hours taking pictures and talking to people. Walking around and assessing the damage is absolutely heart breaking. It really is a total loss. I could see where the structure had massive cracks which weren’t there before, and there simply is nothing to save, other than perhaps some ornamentation on the front facade. To follow are some of the 200+ images I shot last night, these and several more are on my flickr. (I also found this vintage shot taken in 1965 on flickr.)
This first shot is of the water tower, which they were in the process of pulling down as I had to leave last night.
Remembering yesterdays post, I tried to duplicate the angle for this shot. Note the sign, Charcoal _roiled Steaks.
I wanted to duplicate the angle for this one as well, but this is as close as the police would let me get.
The south wall.
The rear wall was what was most interesting to me. I found the vertical support beams that Sullivan designed to be quite unique, and what I feel was a precursor to a curtain wall in that the wall was “hung” on the vertical supports. Albeit with the supports on the outside, but still the same concept.
This is about 45 minutes after the shot above. The raised a large “hopper” to help prevent debris from falling on the “L” tracks below. It didn’t do much good, debris was still falling.
Back to the front, they were still spraying water into the building, and there was still steam rising from the ashes 26 hours after the fire began.
As I mentioned at the beginning of my post, these and more can be found in a special set on my flickr.
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