Watch a block of Lexington history disappear
Journalists tell people things they don’t know. They provide a forum for public discussion. They hold up a mirror to society. And they chronicle the present so that, years later, people can know the past and perhaps learn something from it.
A fine example of that last role can be seen in a powerful multimedia presentation put together by Herald-Leader photojournalist David Stephenson. Click here to watch it.
The presentation is a collection of photographs, time-lapse images, videos and audio man-on-the-street interviews. It chronicles this summer’s demolition of the block where developer Dudley Webb plans to build the 35-story CentrePointe complex, which is to include a four-star hotel, luxury condos, offices and restaurants.
Most of the 15 buildlings on the block were more than 100 years old. The most notable among them was called Morton’s Row. It dated to 1826 and was one of the oldest commercial buildings left in downtown Lexington. You can read more about the block’s history by clicking here.
I’ve written a lot about CentrePointe. If you’ve followed the debate, you know I think the block needed redeveloping, but that Webb missed a great opportunity to give Lexington a more valuable and more exciting project than the gigantic, generic CentrePointe tower. Looking at the renderings, it could just as easily be in suburban New Jersey as downtown Lexington.
A development with good, contemporary architecture could have woven in some of the historic fabric from Morton’s Row, the Dame building and perhaps a few more of the old structures to create a place that skillfully used Lexington’s rich past to point toward the future. That sort of development is being done by innovative cities all over the country — and all around the world. If you do much traveling, you’ve seen them for yourself.
When people ask me now what I think about CentrePointe — and I think they’re looking for a short answer — I quote this comment Urban County Councilman Don Blevins Jr. made during a council meeting July 2:
“My fear is that a large four-star hotel with huge condominums on top of it is going to fail. I hope I’m wrong. I hope they’re wildly successful and the downtown is vibrant and we sell all those condos and the hotel is full from here to eternity. But what if I’m right? What we’d have is essentially a vertical Lexington Mall right in the heart of downtown.”
But even if CentrePointe is successful, the gain will have come with a loss that was so unnecessary.
CentrePointe illustrates one of Lexington’s biggest failings in the past few decades. At mid-20th Century, Lexington had one of the nation’s best collections of antebellum architecture and some of the prettiest countryside God has created. We let too many of those buildings be torn down, and we were too careless in paving over a lot of bluegrass countryside to create suburban Anywhere, USA.
Growth is good. But the once-popular Lexington bumper sticker is only partially correct. Some growth is good; some growth is cancer.
I can’t help but think that if journalists in previous decades had had the technology and skill that David Stephenson and his colleagues have today, we would never have allowed this summer’s complete demolition of the block bounded by Main, Upper, Limestone and Vine streets.
Can you imagine being able to watch a wrecking machine destroy such former Lexington landmarks as Union Station? The Post Office that stood across from it on Main Street? Ingelside manor? At the time each of them was demolished, some people thought it was a good idea.
Click on the link above and watch 182 years of Lexington history disappear on the screen in five minutes and 10 seconds. Maybe whatever comes next on that block will be good for Lexington. But however good it may turn out to be, it will have come with a price worth remembering.
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September 19th, 2008 at 6:59 pm
Not only can I imagine watching the destruction of the Union Station, the old U.S. Court House and Post Office and Ingleside, but I did watch the demolition of The Q&C Station on S. Broadway, the Lyndhurst mansion, and the Woodland Auditorium, I have also watched the renovation of the Loudon House mansion, Elly Villa and Parker Place while wondering why such places as the Higgins mansion, Bell Place and the Lyric have gone untouched for years. I also notice the disproportionate number of these landmarks that are or have been in the control of the local/Federal government. I could say that both the public and the private sectors are to blame, the public sector having a greater culpability, but that would be for this set of examples only. Actually, both are equally responsible for the situation and should be held accountable.
September 20th, 2008 at 2:10 pm
tom, who cares what you think. one thing journalists are not supposed to do is beat people over the head with their lame opinions over and over. the herald leader stinks at accuarte reporting. there are better sources for accurate news-reporting. how about ed lane’s assessment of TIF recently in the hamburg journal. how refreshing to finally get some facts about the realities of the situation. maybe you ought to interview those outside of your liberal classroom.
i actually like david stephenson’s video. it is a fairly objective photojournalism.
September 21st, 2008 at 12:35 pm
Freddy, who cares what you think??? Obviously there are quite a few people who care what Tom thinks because he is the one that is employed by the paper to write about what he thinks, not you. He does provide you with a forum to express your thoughts however. Ed Lane is not someone to get an objective opinion from about development in Lexington. He wasted almost half an hour the other night at a council meeting arguing over the definition of “building” in the proposed revisions to the smoking ordinance when the lawyers, the national center on smoking laws, and plain logic made it very clear what was meant and that the new terminology did not change the existing intent of the legislation.
Before my hard earned tax dollars get spent on such a ridiculously oversized, overepriced and out of scale monument to the Webb brothers, I want someone that supports BloatedPointe and the TIF funding to tell me not only where the money is coming from, but more importantly, exactly who is it that is going to come stay in the $400 a night rooms that are necessary the project to succeed at all, and why would they be coming here to stay in such an expensive hotel? I need to also remind any potential respondents that the Webbs have stated repeatedly the World Equestrian Gaes are not their driving motivation for completion, not to mention that would only provide some guests for two weeks at best. What happens the rest of the time?
September 21st, 2008 at 8:05 pm
[...] Tom Eblen’s take on the video above [...]
September 22nd, 2008 at 2:07 pm
How do you preserve history without stifling growth? How do you grow a city to meet its needs without destroying what made the city great? These are questions that you and many other people against this project either ignore or answer in very general terms. Instead of addressing the real economic considerations of projects you wrap yourself in colorful, overly sentimental phrases like “watch 182 years of Lexington history disappear on the screen in five minutes and 10 seconds”.
How much did you write about this block prior to the Webb’s announcement of the CentrePointe project? What other distressed buildings are you fighting to save now before the wrecking ball shows up? And fighting does not mean just writing an article on what people should do, it means actually finding a way to make an old building support itself and add value to the city.
I think it is great that people like you and groups like Preserve Lexington have been so vocal about this project. But when I look deeper and ask what else are they fighting for its pretty much nothing. You and Preserve Lexington seem to have one goal in mind and that is to stop the development of that block. There are many other buildings and blocks in and around downtown that need help but so far no one seems to care.