Cupples Warehouse #7: The Future?

As already seen on the Preservation Research Office's post, the saving of exterior walls has occurred throughout the country. My experience with the saving of curtain walls, even when the rest of the building has been torn down, was in Washinton, DC in the 900 block of F Street NW. Above, you can witness what is essentially a completely free standing brick facade ten stories tall, supported by nothing but steel bracing, as the type proposed for Cupples #7. It begs the question of course, this was only temporary, right? Wrong, it was in this state for at least four years, so the sustainability of these bracings is considerable. Below, you can see the finished product: a brand new building built behind the historic facades with the bracing removed.

And heck, you can even have brick walls floating in mid-air as you can see the in photograph below. Yes, the two small building facades are no longer touching the earth, but are held in place by steel bracing.

The finished product is aesthetically pleasing, and the walls are now anchored to the ground and ready for tenants. Amazing.

Below are more buildings whose front facades were retained after the buildings behind them were torn down. Again, you can see how excavations behind the facades are possible for the new foundations of the building that will rise behind the old storefronts.

Fast forward, and the buildings are complete, and instead of what was once a wide open space, we have a densely built-up block, with the original alley still in place, as it has been for two hundred years.

Even without steel bracing, brick has shown resiliency throughout history; take the Basilica of Constantine and Maxentius in Rome. Despite numerous earthquakes, a complete collapse of the vaulted roof, centuries of neglect and exposure to rain, the building still stands largely intact.

Likewise, in response to those who believe that taxpayers' money (which hasn't been confirmed yet anyway) should not be used to shore up the Cupples Warehouse, I point to the Coliseum. Damaged by earthquakes, the popes spent considerable taxpayer money to stabilize the building, understanding that some buildings are too important to fail, as demonstrated by the brick buttresses built on the ends of the outer wall of the arena. While I'm not claiming the Cupples Warehouses are as famous as the Coliseum, I believe that the cost of temporary steel buttressing can be justified in the return on the investment, both economically and culturally, when the building is renovated one day.

September 11th

On September 11, 2001, I was living in Washington, DC, attending grad school at George Washington University. My apartment was in Foggy Bottom, six blocks from the White House. I hate to admit it, but I slept through history that morning; due to my own screw-up, I didn't have a part-time job my third semester at GWU, and as most of my friends know, I liked to sleep in back in the day when I didn't have classes until the afternoon.

I was awoken by the phone ringing, which I didn't answer, but then my father's voice came over the answering machine (remember those?), simply saying, "You're mom's worried sick; give us a call as soon as you get this."

I was totally confused; what was there to worry about on a Tuesday morning? I got up, groggily turned on the TV and was confronted with live footage of smoke and flames pouring out of the Pentagon. My first reaction was shock, obviously, and realized immediately why my parents were concerned about my safety, despite living about five miles from National Airport and two miles from the Pentagon. Honestly, I thought it was just a terrible accident, as National Airport has one of the most dangerous approaches in the US, and tragedy had struck a plane before due to the perils of the short runways that end in the Potomac River. I picked up the phone and called my father to tell him I was alright, of course. What he told me after he answered the phone left me flabbergasted and confused.

"It wasn't an accident, Chris. They flew two planes into the World Trade Center; they're both gone."

"What do you mean they're both gone?" I exclaimed, "there's no way an airplane could do that." I had believed, ironically just as Osama bin Laden had, that only the tops of the towers would have broken off, leaving two stumps. My father and I talked for a bit more, and then I got off the phone so he could call my mother and let her know I was alright. I ran up on the roof of my eight-story apartment building, and saw the sickening sight of smoke rising up from the Pentagon two miles away, over the roofs of the neighboring buildings. I stayed glued to the TV the rest of the day, until I met up with some friends that evening in Arlington to get some hamburgers and watch the news, which of course had co-opted every other show on the television that night. We debated whether we should go drive by the Pentagon, which was only a mile away from the restaurant. Was that morbid? Was that insensitive? We didn't want to be voyeurs to a scene where almost two hundred people had just been murdered, but we ultimately decided that we felt we needed to say our respects, even if it was only fleeting.

As we merged into traffic on I-66, which loops around the southside of the Pentagon, we witnessed what to this day was one of the most heart-wrenching scenes I have ever seen. Framed by a red and orange sunset, black smoke billowed up from the still burning Pentagon, as large flood lights lit up the site of the impact. It was hard to believe I was really seeing what was in front of me, that a plane full of people had slammed into a building only two miles away from where I lived.

Fast forward to this year, and Osama bin Laden was gunned down in Pakistan, living a comfortable if confined life with computers chock full of Western pornography. My father walked by the TV while I was watching a clip the Special Forces had found of bin Laden watching himself on TV.

"What's he doing, watching himself on TV?" my father asked.

"Yeah," I replied.

"Sick."

What I will never forget were the children killed in Arlington that day. While most of the victims that day were adults, several Washington, DC school children were on the plane that crashed into the Pentagon. Their names were Rodney Dickens, Asia Cottom, and Bernard Brown and they were accompanied by their teachers James Debeunere, Sarah Clark, and Hilda Taylor, as well as two National Geographic employees, Ann Judge and Joe Ferguson. The three children, who came from some of the poorest and most troubled parts of DC, had won a trip to the Channel Islands through National Geographic. I am not sure, but it probably was the first time they had ever flown on an airplane. While three thousand people died that day, I still find myself coming back to thinking about these three children and how disgusting their murder was. I mean, it's one thing to fly an airplane into a building, which is terrible enough, but how depraved does a person have to be to do it with the knowledge that children were sitting on the plane behind him?

I hope on this day that all of my readers think about that terrible day ten years ago, and think how that day can inspire you to work on making the world a place where murder and terror no longer exist. I know in my own city, fraught with murder, pain and outright chaos at times, that goal is worth fighting for.

New Steeple, Washington, DC

The steeple had collapsed decades ago, so five years ago, the church had a new steeple fabricated--in one piece. It was brought into DC on a flatbed and hoisted into place. I wish some of St. Louis's felled historic steeples could once again rise above their neighborhoods.

7th Street Office Building, Washington, DC

I always loved walking by this building with its prominent turret; I never actually saw anything move in there, unfortunately.

Taft Bridge, Rock Creek Valley, Washington, DC

The Taft Bridge, the largest non-reinforced concrete bridge in the world, gracefully spans the Rock Creek Valley taking Connecticut Avenue from the oldest portion of the city to the early 20th Century streetcar suburb of Woodley Park. Along with its sturdier companion, the Duke Ellington Bridge, the Taft Bridge creates one of the most beautiful spots in the world, elegantly combining nature with sensitive man-made construction.

The sunsets are spectacular from the bridge looking toward the Omni Shoreham Hotel. I used to come across this bridge late at night sometimes when I lived in Adams Morgan, and it was just dark enough to see the stars, something basically impossible in the rest of DC.
See it from the air here.

Henderson Castle, Washington, DC

The builder of Meridian Hill Park, Mary Henderson lived in a castle across 16th--well, a Romanesque Revival castle, that is.It was demolished after years as a boarding house and speakeasy, and all that is left is the massive retaining wall that stretched around the property, holding back the earth of the hill upon which the entire area sits.See the site as it is today from the air here, and read about the castle's history here.

Meridian Hill Park, Washington, DC

Meridian Hill Park, isolated from the hustle and bustle of 16th St NW, is a gem waiting behind the concrete walls along the Street. Read about the park here. The upper portion is a French garden.

Yes, that's Joan of Arc, surmounting the dramatic overlook out over the city.The park was one of the first places in the world to use decorative, aggregate concrete. It took years to complete, but turned out amazingly.The lower part then moves into an Italian style garden, with dramatic cascades and stepped fountains.









Influenced by chateau gardens in France, and the Villa d'Este in Italy, it is being restored and taken back from the criminals and drug dealers who had taken over the park.

See it from the air here. The name comes from a senator's wife's efforts to rename 16th Street the Avenue of the Presidents (which is was for one, unpopular year) and have the Prime Meridian moved from Greenwich, England to 16th Street in Washington, DC. That failed too. The park is built just outside the original plan L'Enfant envisioned for the city, and takes advantage of the steep terrain that rises up north of Florida Avenue.

14th Street NW, Washington, DC

The evening of the day of Martin Luther King's assassination saw the largest riots in Washington, DC's history. Beginning at 14th and U St NW, the rioters quickly spread up and down 14th Street, destroying everything in their path. Above, is the Marion Berry government center, built on one of the destroyed corners.Little did the rioters know that they were engaging in urban renewal, allowing luxury condos to spring up in the ruins of the burnt out buildings 35 years after the riots.However, real, independent and small time business has sprung up along 14th, allowing for a rebirth. In buildings that are brightly colored but also some with the burn marks still showing from their neighbors' fiery demise forty years ago, life has returned to 14th St. I loved the above row of stores: a kitchen and bath store, a nursery, a stationary store and a funky gift store.Salvadorans have also contributed, with the wonderful El Paraiso restaurant. While it's a little rough around the edges, it still is a stable anchor on its block.Swan Auto Sales is a good example of the old 14th Street; it most likely sprang up in the place of a burned out building. I'm surprised no luxury condos have been built there yet.The side streets feature beautiful, rehabbed houses that once were workers cottages but now probably cost close to $700-800K. Read about the riots, and their effects, at this vetted Wikipedia article. See it from the air here, and see if you can spot any vacant lots along 14th Street, products of the riots; they're rapidly disappearing, forty years after their destruction.

You Call This a Chinatown? Washington, DC

Chinatown in Washington, DC, really doesn't exist anymore except for a couple of low-quality holdouts from the 1960's. In its place rose what is basically an outdoor, urban shopping mall, where you can go from Starbucks to Fuddruckers by simply crossing H Street.Even more absurdly, all businesses are required to have their names written in Chinese, and in one famous newspaper article, the reporter had a native Mandarin speaker translate the signs. My favorite was Hooters, whose sign read "Owl Restaurant" in Chinese.Gentrification has definitely arrived when Starbucks is having to get its name translated into Chinese, and there aren't any Chinese people to be seen.I will say, however, that the architecture is fantastic, sprinkling Italianate rowhouses with in-fill of luxury condo towers.The Chinese inhabitants mainly moved to the suburbs as first crime and then gentrification took turns decimating the community.