From the Roundtable: Building demolition waiting period could clash with owner’s rights

Very few communities have evaded the demolition of historic buildings. Sometimes they’re deemed historic before the destruction, but most often the distinction is made sometime later when a sense of historic perspective settles in.

For reference, a thoughtful person occasionally assembles a set of old building and street scene photographs of a particular community and then tries to replicate the spot from which they were taken and create a contemporary image.

These books typically put the vintage scene on the left side facing the current view which is on the right side. I can become addicted to these books, spending quite a bit of time savoring the contrasting images. Occasionally, one of the buildings in the vintage scene is still around. Such a book unfortunately has yet to be created about our community.

I recently found one of these “yesterday and today” collections about Springfield, Ill. Even in that community of special historic interest, the views make my point about the destruction of various architecturally irreplaceable structures. The demolition crimes they still talk about in Lincoln’s hometown include tearing down the Orpheum Theatre in 1962 and the implosion of the Abraham Lincoln Hotel sixteen years later. Looking at pictures of both structures, I can see why.

The reasons behind demolitions vary but over the years, Columbia has brought down quite a few buildings many of us now wish were still standing. Dozens of houses are not with us anymore because they were in the path of progress, especially around the university campus and adjacent to the periodically enlarged central business district. The most recent significant loss in the eyes of many was the Civil War-era Guitar home on Range Line Street in Columbia’s north side.

That’s the reason why the Columbia Historic Preservation Commission wants a waiting period triggered whenever a developer takes out a permit to demolish. Current talk is about a 10-day moratorium, which seems to be hardly enough time for any sort of meaningful historical documentation and evaluation. Allowing at least 30 days seems more reasonable to me.

However, there’s a much greater legal concern here for me. The denial of a demolition permit potentially could constitute a “taking” of property. As much as I favor preserving structures one would class as historically significant, let’s have a “time out” to evaluate how such a review would clash with the property owner’s right to develop a piece of land as he or she would like to.

I believe the greatest recent demolition crime came in July 2004 when Stephens College tore down the R.E. Sappington and Wife Memorial Chapel built in the 1890s. How dare they destroy a structure that was one of the cornerstones of the institution’s magnificent heritage of buildings and eliminate a significant part of the faade on the south side of their quad!

The old building groaned for weeks that summer as it resisted the violent entreaties of headache balls and other instruments of architectural vandalism. A couple of photographs taken in 1900 should remind us of this wonderful, sturdy old building that the college and the community should have had the will to preserve rather than disintegrate into the landfill because we were collectively too lazy to come up with a plan to preserve it.

Here’s the vintage view; regrettably, part of the same scene today would be just a patch of grass.