Farewell Facade

From the scaffolding, he yelled down to me. “The city is making us remove the facade, it started falling off.”

Happened right before the New Year holiday, as Dislocations readers know.

Caution tape was used to safeguard pedestrians but it seemed that every night, somebody tore it away and every morning, somebody from the city re-taped the scene in front of the store.

Before Saturday, guys came to put up scaffolding.

Then on this cold, windy Saturday morning—above street level, the gusts had to be frigid—they were removing the facade. They seemed to be cracking it with a hammer, then yanking it off, shard by shard. They placed the shards in thick plastic trunks. Hard, careful and cold work.

The facade had seen better days. I haven’t done the research, but my guess is that the facade was from the 1950s. It has that mid-century, post-WWII art deco glitz and from what I could tell, it seemed to be thick glass, like a cobalt. I imagine it was back before Malls dominated Jersey shopping, when people—even from the outlying, suburban towns—came to a downtown city to shop at nice stores. Obviously, I support the facade removal—I guess that was the only choice, there seems to be no other way to ensure public safety. But I’m going to miss that blue. The tar paper like surface that lay underneath the cobalt facade is pretty depressing. It’s damn unsightly, an ugly reminder of what used to be there. Guess we better get used to it. I can imagine somebody knocking down the building and erecting some new edifice before they install a more aesthetically pleasing facade. But I can’t imagine any sort of investment like that in the current economy, but I could be wrong. Construction seems a constant in this town.

Removing the facade eliminated the 50s era retro feel of downtown, replacing it with look reminiscent of another era—the urban decay of 70s & 80s. The price of safety? Architectural Preservation!