Sunday, May. 02, 2010

Jim McKee: Why rush?

Jim McKee: Why the rush to tear down the Industrial Arts Building?
Sunday, May 2, 2010

The older I get, the more it seems the tangible remnants of the past are disappearing too fast. The stately Lincoln Hotel was replaced by a tower; Baldwin Terrace and the Metropolitan Apartments are now parking lots.

Although change may be desirable and inevitable, when virgin prairie is plowed under or a historic building is razed, nothing can bring them back.

I fully realize not all old buildings can or should be saved. The old county courthouse had simply outlived its usefulness, for example, but it hasn't been too many years since there was support for razing Nebraska Wesleyan's Old Main, the old Post Office/Federal Building/Old City Hall, Whittier Junior High School, William Jennings Bryan's Fairview and even trying to turn the Ferguson Mansion across from the Capitol into a parking lot.

In 1913, the Legislature was debating whether Sunday baseball should be permitted, the wisdom of moving the downtown campus of the University of Nebraska to the Agriculture Campus and changing the enforcement of the death penalty from hanging to electrocution.

The Legislature did authorize $108,000 for land purchase and construction of an "agricultural-horticultural building" on the state fairgrounds, three times the largest previous appropriation. Omaha architect Burd Miller was chosen to design that building and the State Arsenal near the fairgrounds' entrance on 17th Street.

The resulting Ag Hall was a trapezoidal, masonry, 90,000-square-foot structure with an open balcony on all sides and its longest dimension defined by the parallel railroad tracks to the south. A unique feature was the huge, continuous skylight, one of the things said to make the building "the best agricultural-horticultural building to be found on any state fairgrounds in the United States."

In 1948, the structure became the Industrial Arts Building with the completion of a new Ag Hall. It was the venue I clearly recall with the man selling knives so sharp you could slice a penny like butter; buy a vacuum that would suck up flour; or see a demonstration of a Salad Master that would slice, dice and make mountains of coleslaw in seconds.

When the fair wasn't in session, the building was used as an assembly point for Lincoln Standard Aircraft after World War I and a shipping point for the air-liftable Cushman Scooter during WWII.

Now it appears that as part of the University's Innovation Campus, the Industrial Arts Building is doomed. If an economical use can't be found, there is no justification for saving it. But such an open, well-built structure would seem far more adaptable than the 4-H Building or State Arsenal, which will be saved.

The Industrial Arts Building has been compared structurally to Omaha's 1890 Union Pacific Depot at 615 S. Ninth St., adjacent to the ConAgra Campus and Old Market, which has been repurposed as the Harriman Centralized Dispatch Center, the "largest railroad command center in the world."

So why the rush to raze the Industrial Arts Building? The roughly two-acre footprint represents only about 1 percent of the fairgrounds area. Do we really need a tabula rasa immediately? Does our landfill really need those tons of masonry and steel right now? Does the July 1 deadline realistically give any interested parties enough time to come up with offers?

If you would like to learn more, Google "save the iab" or let the university know your thoughts by writing the president, chancellor or a regent.

When progress comes at the expense of destroying something that can never be replaced, I vote for acting slowly. Sometimes it just seems that some of my favorite memories are disappearing too fast.

Historian Jim McKee, who still writes with a fountain pen, invites comments or questions. Write to him in care of the Journal Star or at jim@leebooksellers.com.

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