Allan Appel Photo
The scene on Tuesday morning.
There’s a little more sky and lot less history at the corner of River and Ferry Streets. That’s because the century-old gatehouse at the Brewery Square Apartments is now a pile of rubble.
With the interior bricks and beams knocked down Monday, and the walls remaining, a big yellow backhoe went to work Tuesday morning.
Beneath a bright sun its operator was knocking down the remaining walls and gathering the bricks into a central pile of rubble behind the construction fence.
Preservationists’ attempts to save the gatehouse failed. The Historic District Commission did not authorize a tear-down in November. But that was circumvented when the building department issued an emergency teardown order, given the imminent threat of collapse and threat to public safety.
Read more about the episode here.
The demolition — and a pending one across the Quinnipiac River — have sparked conversation about how to avoid allowing property owners to destroy historic buildings through “demolition by neglect.”
Mayor Toni Harp said this week on WNHH FM’s “Mayor Monday” program that one solution might be to make fines so costly for leaving blight unattended that demolition by neglect would no longer make financial sense.
Courtesy Robert Greenberg
Back in the old days.