A Good One

Terre Haute

Three recent conversations, ended with the same farewell. The 92-year-old retired physician, the door to door meat salesman and an Amish youngster agreed separately that I should "Have a good one."

As if taking this ubiquitous well wishing literally, I went downtown to the Oktoberfest for lunch. The Oberlandler Club moved the event to a new location on Cherry Street opposite Hulman Center this year but the menu was unchanged. A heaping plate of hot kraut with German Potato Salad, Weiner Schnitzel and Rye bread and an apple strudel dessert sent me home to sit and ponder just what the doctor, the peddler and the farmer meant.

But before that, I noticed the new Multi-modal Transportation Facility rising, as pictured above, on the north side of Cherry Street between 7th and 8th. Even taking into account that the nature of parking garages is to have sloping floors and that there is a 6 foot drop between 7th and 8th streets at Cherry - the Multi-modal seems askew. I am glad to take this picture with my camera phone at a time during the construction before the darkened windows will hide the stairwells behind the arches. There's something eerily familiar about the new Multi-modal Transportation Facility. ... I wonder if the architect had M.C. Escher's Ascending/Descending Stairs in mind.

I vowed to take a sack of marbles into the new building when it is complete and to drop a few to see which ways they roll.

7th and Cherry

At 7th and Cherry Streets, just one block north of the THH Hilton, the Multi-Modal Transportation Facility rises. I am told that long distance and local buses will meet there at a new parking garage. It will overlay the site of a small office where I applied for my first driving license on the north side of Cherry Street west of 8th Street 52 years ago. I remember parallel parking perfectly for the test on Cherry and that it was not yet a one way street. (Other pictures from that day)

between storms on the last Saturday in August

this is the way the new construction downtown looked:

From the old South Seventh Street Bus Stop, the new Terre Haute House Hilton exterior looks almost done - just hang a sign out above the corner, sweep the sidewalk and it's good to go. I haven't heard anything new about when the interior will be ready - Halloween is a good guess. (Other pictures)

status report mid-May 2007

The new Hilton Gardens Terre Haute House has reached its full height and is visible over the rooftops of the south side of Wabash Avenue and looking east. The yellow insulation board will be covered with brick.

new THH grows downtown

 

from the old South 7th Street bus stop perspective.

for comparison 

3rd floor

The Wabash Avenue side of the New Hilton Garden Terre Haute House begins to take shape. The temperature is in single digits causing me to view progress through the window of the top floor of the city parking building in the 600 block on Wabash Avenue. The red brick of the Hulman & Company is the background. It looks like the Hilton is 3 stories high now. It will rise to 6.   

shadows and light

From the WTHI-TV tower, the Hilton Gardens Terre Haute House constructions site -  

Wabash Avenue from 8th (at bottom) to 7th. Yes, the tall buildings that remain on the south side cast their shadows on Wabash Avenue and the edge of the construction site but the Hilton Gardens THH is taking form and casting its own shadow onto north 7th Street. It begins to look real. 

looking at the construction from the tower camera of WTHI

  

skyline

If that is the term to use for a small city like Terre Haute, I'll call it a skyline and note that it is about to change. The Hilton Garden Terre Haute House at 7th and Wabash rises and will soon threaten the flight path of our beloved crows coming home from the outlying corn fields to roost at the top of the bank building.