move

(skip)Even I have trouble remembering the name of the blog I set up when it become obvious that the Terre Haute House was to be razed, rememberhearingthis.blogspot.com . It was a poor name and I didn't see how to change it. I'll leave it there and move all the posts to this new one. It has an address that corresponds to the topic: 700Wabash.blogspot.com

If you know your way around Terre Haute, 700 Wabash addresses the northeast corner of 7th Street and Wabash Avenue. If you know your way around the internet, blogspot.com is a free, easy place to set up the style of web page known as a blog.(next)

Demo Thanksgiving Eve

(skip) As you can see from the WTHI-TV Tower Camera, the Bement-Rae building and the attached Ft. Harrison Savings and Loan building are gone. This shows the progress of the Terre Haute demo.
 

 The stone eagle above the Ft. Harrison Savings and Loan door maintained a certain elegance even though the building itself had gone to seed. Although it is rumored that the Hulman Family kept the eagle, there has been no public notice. I wonder where the eagle will end up now that its roost has been razed.
 
(next... from the bus stop)

to date

(skip) I took some pictures of downtown Terre Haute from the Sycamore Building in October of 2001. This is what the Terre Haute House looked like on that day.
 
(next... DEMO Thanksgiving Eve)

Used Bricks

(skip)
 
 Could these be the bricks that will be sold for charity?
(next... From Sycamore Building 10/2001 )

The sunny side of the street

(skip) Sunny Saturday downtown. The low building that was the Marine Room is cleared away and some of the exterior walls are removed to expose the east and north side. The sun still puts the south side in a pretty light.
 
(next... Used Bricks)

Saturday Progress

(skip)
  WTHI-TV Tower Camera, while I perform mundane Saturday morning tasks like locating and delivering grandson's missing basketball shoes in time for the Boy's Club League games, trained a recording eye on the demolition site. The white box is the top of the Link-Belt crane cab and although it looks like it is on the top floor of the Bement-Rae building, it is on the ground swinging the wrecking ball from its giant boom. There's not much left of the smaller building.
 (next... Sunny Side of the Street )

Oasis

(skip to next)

 
On a cold day like this as I circle the Terre Haute House looking for just the right view of the demolition, wind penetrating my light clothing, I'm reminded of cold weather walks to the Terre Haute House Coffee Shop from ISU for a snack or a coffee. If you are dressed for a 70 or 50 or 30 degree day, even a three block walk at 50, 30 or 10 is something you want to shorten, yet we never ran because we knew better than to break a sweat.

I was off curriculum in the mid 60s learning to program the IBM 1620 that was in the basement of the administration building. It was a room full of computer with a 6 figure price that could not keep up with a calculator you could buy today at Dollar General but we thought it was great and would work at learning its nuances late into the night. A program laboriously encoded on thick paper punch cards was fed into the 1620 for compilation into machine code before we could test our logic then we studied or waited. Sometimes the wait was more than an hour and a trip to the Terre Haute House Coffee Shop would seem to be in order.

There was much to talk about, we were both looking into a computer filled future our fathers could not imagine but for the moment, we were grimly looking ahead to the Terre Haute House sign on the north side of the building and silently imagining the relief from biting cold we would attain within.



 
 
When we passed the lanterns and the hall and entered the north side lobby door, we avoided a half block outdoor walk to the Coffee Shop entrance by walking through the lobby. The hotel folks stayed at their stations. We didn't bother them nor they us. Cheery lights warmed the wainscoting and oil portraits of champion standard bred horses graced those walls. Sometimes I was moved to study the furnishings and the ornaments here but I was suddenly on a mission.

I broke the silence: "Order me something, I gotta go pee."

"Whaddayawant?"

"Anything."

My friend smiled and entered the Coffee Shop.

 
 I walked down the stairs past the barber shop and into the tiled mens room and faced the blank wall above the urinal. Was that a smirk or a smile my friend had given me as we walked through the lobby? What did I just say? Did I really tell him to order me anything? I had just opened myself to a good practical joke by a known practical joker with a twisted sense of humor.

I washed and dried my hands and prepared myself to be not surprised and climbed the stairs to slide into a booth opposite my friend and his steaming cup of coffee. I waited for him to speak but he didn't.



On the smooth table was a short glass of water for each of us with those cylindrical shaped ice cubes available only at the Terre Haute House. The water was drawn from their own well somewhere on the property and it was worth a trip just for the cool clear ice water you got there. I didn't miss it until it was gone.

The functional Coffee Shop and its night crew were a contrast to the elegance of the lobby. The waitresses seemed old but efficient. One skinny one had a self administrated tattooed JR with the J reversed fading on her forearm but she was pleasant enough with her curled gray hair and, I think, a utility apron of some kind and a uniform of indeterminate pastel shade. She placed before me, a large saucer with a single banana upon it.

I straightened and looked into her face. "What's this!?"

She checked her order book. "Sir, it's a banana," she stated confidently.

"There must be some mistake, I wanted that fried," said I with an equally confident tone. I had never seen nor tasted fried furit - just heard of it somewhere.

The waitress took the plate and moved toward the kitchen where an overweight cook with very black eyebrows and a prominent nose mole busied herself attending to a revolving wheel half full of green order slips behind a steel and glass partition.

I had never heard the cook speak before I heard her say, "I AIN'T FRYIN' NO GAWDDAMND BANANA!"

We hid our laughter and I ordered more traditional fare.


 
 
Friday lunch I could see the big crane alternate between the Terre Haute House and the Bement-Rae building keeping smaller scoopers and truckers at both buildings busy.

Next.... (Saturday Progress from the WTHI-TV tower cam)...

CHANGES AT THE CROSSROADS

 When I moved away from Terre Haute, IN to begin my career, the Terre Haute House was a 40 year old hotel. Two blocks north from my high school and two south of my college, ten stories high and almost a half block square, it was the biggest single building in my environment. Except for the Sandwich Shop, which was one of my haunts, and the lobby, which we walked through in winter to stay out of the weather, the Terre Haute House was for special events. When rich relatives, the kind that didn't crowd into our house for sleeping, came to town, they stayed at the Terre Haute House rather than one of the motels on Highways 40 or 41. One aunt said she liked the security of interior hallways and the convenience to downtown shopping.
 Not long after I left, most retailing relocated to the south near the ill planned intersection of US 41 and I 70. The Terre Haute House was closed, most of downtown was closed and some of the places that were still open for business were a little shabby. From a distance and in just the right light, the old Terre Haute House shows beauty.

 But the hotel was crumbling. Brick facing, after years of neglect, was falling to the ground.
 Not just the Hotel but the rest of the block (save the Indiana State regional office building at the opposite corner) is owned by the Hulman family and the three properties are joined together as one. The above picture shows the front of the former Ft. Harrison Savings and loan building, vacant, and the Bement-Rae Building which housed a corner cocktail lounge and not much else. Bement-Rae seemed a solid building badly in need of restoration and the tiny savings and loan building with its large skylight at rear and high arched window in front was as charming as the Terre Haute House was grand.
Ostensibly to sort out and validate any proposals to restore and rebuild the property, the city government took a fixed term option on the property and gave all proposals a public hearing. There were charts and drawings and columns of figures but in the end, all proposals were deemed insufficiently funded.
Not long after the city's option expired, Gregory Gibson bought the property from the Hulmans and announced that demolition would start soon.

 The stone eagle was saved.
 They brought a lot of heavy equipment to the site.
 The early demolition seemed to focus on salvage. This picture shows a crew trying to remove the engraved stone that marked MCMXXVII TERRE HAVTE HAVSE MCM XXVII. Parts of the stone parapet are also stacked and kept separate from the rubble.
 Then they began banging the wrecking ball against the north wing of the hotel.
 spare wrecking balls
 Big news will be announced at a 10:30 meeting at Hulman's Clabber Girl Museum. It was rumored last night and printed in the morning paper. The press conference gives more details. The mayor, the owner and the builder answer questions.
 Here's how the demolition project looks from 4 blocks away and 500 feet up. WTHI-TV shares this view over the internet at www.wthitv.com/towercam.asp
 Meanwhile, they swing the ball to knock off the walls and then drop the ball onto the floors systematically removing rows and columns of rooms.
 Progress as of the date and time marked at the bottom by WTHI
 These rails and balls will probably be recycled and become part of the Hilton Garden Terre Haute House.
 Part of the old and future name plate.
 Workmen gather, clean and stack facing bricks from the Terre Haute House for sale for ten dollars each. Proceeds will go to Hospice.
 This much undone so far. (Current picture from WTHI-TV Tower Cam available here.)


Next.... (remembering the THH as a winter oasis) .....