The end of the line appears imminent for Pryor Brown. The struggles to save the building have been well documented and I’ll not add much to that, here. It was just over a year ago that Josh Flory reported that a demolition permit had been requested and I wrote about a “discouraging day for the city.” A few days later Jack Neely wrote an excellent article asking the question, “Can a Parking Garage Be Historic?” The short answer is, “yes.”
The action followed a request a couple of months earlier by the owners of the building for $300,000 dollars to help save the building that they portrayed as extremely historic and central to Knoxville’s history. The request was denied because the same owners had, for twenty years, allowed the building to deteriorate, and the feeling was public money shouldn’t be allocated for their lack of maintenance. Fast forward a few weeks and the same owners declared the building a worthless, dangerous place that had to be destroyed in the interest of public safety.
Initially the owners issued a vague statement about building a tower on the spot when it became “economically feasible.” Given that a tower hasn’t been built in Knoxville in over thirty years, that doesn’t seem likely for the near future. Last Friday Josh Flory noted, via Twitter, the activity on the site – windows were being removed – and reported the window removal was in preparation for demolition, currently set to begin September 29. The owners have requested street closures. Mr. Flory quoted Bill Lyons as stating that the city is “very disappointed” with the demolition plans, but has no legal standing to stop it.
So, if not a tower, what are the plans? Surface parking, of course. The same cancer that has destroyed large swaths of downtown will, apparently, continue to do so. As has been noted before, this will make an entire city block an empty, striped ocean of parking spaces. And this is not an obscure block, miles from other useful property. It sits beside the Bijou Theatre and the Federal Courthouse. It is only two blocks from Market Square. It lines our “great street.”
It’s ironic that four blocks away, on the north end of downtown, a new garage is being constructed as this one is being torn down. As a hundred-year-old building is demolished, a new building with a similar purpose is constructed. Sure, the newer structure offers more to its urban environment than an old out-dated building, right? Actually, the older building lines the street with retail on both sides that front the street. The new one? Not so much. It’s funny what gets characterized as progress, sometimes.
Yesterday, I walked to the garage to see the missing glass and to take a couple of final photographs before I photograph yet another downtown demolition. When I arrived I was startled to realize that the garage was completely open. Both entrances sat wide open. Not so much as a “Do Not Enter” sign discouraged entry. Having never been inside, I accepted the invitation. Not only will I never have another chance to see what’s inside, the views from the upper floors will disappear with the destruction of the building and I love seeing the city from different perspectives.
The inside of the garage is littered with the debris of years of neglect and pending demolition. An abandoned, crashed truck abuts a concrete wall which appears to have been its demise. Putrid odors present themselves sporadically. A gaping hole in the ceiling testifies to the poor condition of the building. The glass, above the ground floor is, indeed, missing. The floors seem solid enough.
The former retail spaces were similarly open. The remains of businesses still cover the floors: old printers, travel brochures offering trips to the most exotic places. Three retail or office spaces lined the Church Street side of the building. A small office space faces Market Street, but clearly more could easily have been added without significantly altering the building – the doors and windows are already in place.
For me, time and experience have altered the way I see buildings such as this one. Just a few years ago I, likely, would have been one of the voices declaring the building an eyesore. That was before I toured buildings like the Armature and White Lily. When Knox Heritage and David Dewhirst made those tours available, I had a difficult time imagining how these shells of buildings could be anything more than an impediment to progress. I simply could not picture people living in those spaces. Now one is full and the other is almost ready. Both are beautiful and contributing to the tax rolls.
So, I’ve seen what can be done to buildings that might appear ugly and hopeless. This one, honestly looks a lot better than many others. The only point at which hope for a useful future is lost for a building is the point at which it is demolished and, sadly, we continue to do just that in Knoxville. Most recently, downtown, two buildings were destroyed by St. John’s Episcopal Church because they needed an additional entrance to the building. A year later it sits empty. It’s an old story. Just this past week another demolition permit was taken for the hundred-year-old Broadway Sound building, just up Broadway.
I’m not sure what will stop the destruction. Historic overlays help, but aren’t a complete answer. The mayor’s proposed sixty day waiting period for demolition offers a small step, but not an ultimate answer. We are told that, legally, nothing can be done to stop the transformation of usable, sometimes historic, buildings into surface parking or other empty space.
Maybe we need to alter that legal equation. Maybe it’s time that the public good is given as much consideration as property rights, and laws are written to reflect that. How about astronomical taxes on surface parking lots? In too many situations we have allowed narrow self interest or at times extremely misguided, if not delusional, ideas result in the destruction of our diminishing building stock. Parking already dominates the center city when you include both garages and surface parking lots. If the trend continues unabated there will be no reason left for people to want to utilize those parking spaces.