PARAPET NOT ON THE MARKET - CULTURAL CRIME IN PROGRESS TODAY

Submitted by Jeff Buster on Fri, 08/14/2009 - 07:29.

The parapet – which appears to be Indiana limestone - of the Carnegie Medical Building is the building's most dramatic element. 
If I were Krill Co. (Krill web site here) who appears to be at least the demo GC, or if I were B & B Wrecking (odd, this link has B & B with an address on Train Avenue while this link shows B and B on E 71st)  (B & B are the HoJo smashers) the demo contractor, I would have advertized the parapet elements in international architectural publications. 
You can’t get these anymore.   How would you like to have it surrounding your patio?  Cool.   Just takes money and interest.  Frankly, it's surprizing that Dr. Cosgrove, parapet of the Cleveland Clinic, didn't want it.
The parapet is the easiest part of the façade to rig off – man they should save it and sell it out of their wrecking yard.
If someone wants rigging supervision to remove this – contact me.
 
Please click on the 500kb image file listed below - wait for it to load - to see the design and joint details.  I especially like the vertical black shadow features in the two larger left hand crenellations.
 
Below is a collage of interior and exterior details of the Carnegie Building.  The images in the collage were graciously supplied by Cleveland/national Architect David Ellison.  Click on the 740Kb file in the "Attachments" list below - wait for it to load - if you want to view the details more clearly.

 

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carnegie-full-size-para.jpg493.78 KB
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Art deco portals

  Jeff, can you document the portal sculptures as well?  I know the interior also featured brass work...disgusting crime in progress.
 

aka Ohio College of Podiatric Medicine Building

Imcshane, will do.    Here is a link with a tax description of the interior.

 

 

Negative publicity for the CLINIC

Who dropped the ball

First off, thanks Jeff for informing of this disgraceful tragedy...that, should absolutely not be happening.  However, can someone post pictures of the entire exterior of the building.  What does the building (whole) look like?  What are it's overall dimensions?  Were is (was) it located?  How old is it?

Screaming fire while the fire is in progress does not stop the fire, especially if it were already public knowledge that the fire was going to be set? So, who allowed this to happened?  Why?  Who knew what when, and what specific action(s) were taken to prevent this? 

At the core of preservation is prevention.  And speaking of which, concerning the Breuer library here in Downtown Atlanta, the preventive (aggressive) strategy of preserving that site seems to be having a positive effect.  As I have recently been informed that the libray system director has turned the first floor into a gallery space for an orchestrated in-house exhibition and presentation, which celebrates (and informs) of the life and legacy of the buildings creator, Marcel Breuer.  This is certainly good news,  Although, because the long-term funding fo the site has not been recommitted, the building is still under threat.

Getting to this point was a lot of work, but the effort doesn't just increase the likelyhood of the preseration of the Breuer, it also ups the chances of saving other important sites; setting a precedence.

I'm here to support those who are dedicated, heart and soul, to the betterment of and preservatioin of civic life.  To that end, for the Breuer preservation effort, I created no less than 3 websites, which were used to keep the public informed and keep the beauracrats afraid.  There were many other key elements that I, with the guidance and support of others, helped to put in place.

Is this being done in Cleveland?

Who's willing to up the game, and shame the perpetrators into utter submission?

From the mash-up of images thus far posted of this building, it's apparent to me that this is a historical site of great importance.  So why is this place being bulldozed????

Did anyone think to---take the time to--contact the WMF or The National Trust?  Did anyone, architects or otherwise, draft a brief or alternative masterplan for the site?

Who's accountable for this?!?!?!?!

Demolition brain is a stubborn, terminal affliction that can only be remedied with the most sophisticated, potent medicine(s).  Which in part means, that the process of preserving this building should have occured--been kicked into high gear--months, if not years, ago.

 

 

Too many FOUL balls up in the air in NEO

Hello Max, 

 

You ask a most pertinent question: “Who dropped the Ball?”  
 
Of course we all dropped the ball, and those of us who recognize the value of the building – as differentiated from those who are ignorant of the value of the building – share more responsibility for failing to save it.
 
However, there are so many things going wrong in NEO simultaneously that it seems impossible to give each important cause the time it deserves.  Especially on a volunteer basis. 
 
Those who are paid – either through taxes or through philanthropies - to advocate for historic structures, the environment, good government, etc, are so beholden to their paychecks that they will not, can not, speak up.
 
Between rampant political corruption, ignorant leadership, citizen apathy, corporate greed, educational failure, racism, and screaming poverty – there are just too many balls up in the air here in NEO to field.  
 
So we let the Carnegie Medical Building preservation ball drop into the tall grass, and disappear - forever.
 
Sorry Max.  I let you down.
 
This is not our proudest moment.
 
Best,
jeffb
 

 

A lightening rod moment, that's what's in order

Hi Jeff,

This is a sad day in America.

In the course of my rally to save the Atlanta Breuer, I got called everything under the sun.  I even had architects who were pretending to be my friend--pretending to be advocates for preservation--turn around and stab me in the back; slandering my name all along the way.  Just ask Susan Miller, she got to witness some of it, up close and personal.  The local paper painted me as the lone, crazed, fanatical liberal; the "angry black man" drunk on nostalgia, detached from reality.  And in a public hearing of the county commissioners, one of the commissioners, a black female no less, called me a demon from hell.

But you know what? I don't give a flying fuck.

I stood up to all those crummy bastards, not because I was some veteran activist (because I'm totally not) but because I was so outraged and offended, that for a while I completely lost my mind.  I gave up being who I had been before, and became a totally different animal.

All I knew was that come hell or high water, that building was going to stand.  It was a moment in my life where I came to understood what Dr. King meant when he said "if a man hasn't found something to die for, he's not fit to live."

Yet would I have literally given my life for that building?  I can't say for sure.  However, I clearly demonstrated [in action] that I was willing to sacrafice my own career as an artist, putting invaluable friendships on the line; doing what I had to do to make it abundantly clear that I was not going to sit down and shut up.  I made up my mind, at what point I'm not entirely sure, that I was going to do whatever I had to do "by any means necessary" as Malcolm X used to say.

I made up my mind.

The American Revolution, the women rights movement, the civil rights movement, and all other movements were not won by half-ass attempts.  Those people upped their game and went for broke.

And for naysayers who say architecture isn't as important as civil rights, I beg to differ.  For instance, what would the people of Paris do if some French politician got in kahootz with a business owner, deciding to demolish the I.M. Pei Pyramid of the Louvre?  And how would the people of Berlin respond to an attempt to demolish the Bauhaus school located there?  Of course the responses would vary widely, but I can promise you one thing, at the end of the day, those sites would be left standing!  And not just internationally significant sites like those, but ordinary sites too.

Europeans tend not to demolish things.  For in the Western world, demolition brain is by and large an American phenomena.

I think you are courageous for claiming your part (however small) in allowing this criminal event to go down; literally.  And, I don't even live there, but I too feel in part to blame.

As an American, an event like this is very humiliating...a horrific failure, which signals to the brain-dead, power-elite, and the slack-ass citizenry, that  it's okay to fuck-up a good thing.  An event like this scars the psyche--tearing the collective soul apart--sending out a message to our youth  that their (our) place in history has no lasting value...nothing matters...you and I are garbage.

Cleveland needs a lightening rod moment, something to jolt the core of consciousness.

I'm so hurt.

aptly

 put.

This destruction just makes

This destruction just makes me feel so very sad.  I find it difficult to believe that Cleveland Clinic would be so destructive of archetectural history.  I saw this story about a month ago and I thought there was a group that was trying to save the building...don't remember the name...they must have lost.  But, this is sad.  I hope the Cleveland Clinic makes a lot of money with there new construction.  Too bad they didn't see the value in preserving historical archetecture.