Demolition Starts in Earnest
Initial demolition of the hotel began during the last week of September 2005, when excavators ripped away the attached two-story section at the rear of the hotel (which contained the Mayflower Ballroom). This section was chosen as the starting point because it allowed crews more room to bring in the equipment needed to demolish the 10-story main portion of the hotel.
Workers erected plywood barrier walls along Seventh Street and Wabash Avenue to keep passers-by away from the hotel during demolition preparations. This was done in part because of fears that portions of the exterior were in danger of collapse. These fears were not totally without merit, as a portion of the brick façade on the east side of the hotel had broken loose in July 2005, falling to the roof of the Mayflower Ballroom.
The neighboring Bement-Rea Building (which housed a noted local tavern, T's Lounge, until its closure at the end of October 2005) and former Fort Harrison Savings & Loan were demolished along with the Terre Haute House, although some (but not all) historically significant items were removed from the buildings prior to their demise.
Read more about this topic: Terre Haute House
Famous quotes containing the words starts and/or earnest:
“There seems to be no stopping drug frenzy once it takes hold of a nation. What starts with an innocuous HUGS, NOT DRUGS bumper sticker soon leads to wild talk of shooting dealers and making urine tests a condition for employment—anywhere.”
—Barbara Ehrenreich (b. 1941)
“The New Hampshire girls who came to Lowell were descendants of the sturdy backwoodsmen who settled that State scarcely a hundred years before.... They were earnest and capable; ready to undertake anything that was worth doing. My dreamy, indolent nature was shamed into activity among them. They gave me a larger, firmer ideal of womanhood.”
—Lucy Larcom (1824–1893)