Post by Fed Up on Sept 13, 2006 13:19:12 GMT -5
newstranscript.gmnews.com/news/2005/0720/Front_Page/006.html
Demolition may be spark for real preservation law
Landmark home razed to make way for office building
BY CLARE MARIE CELANO
News Transcript Staff Writer
July 20, 2005
FREEHOLD — The landscape of South Street has been irrevocably altered with the razing of the John Wesley Bartleson mansion. Some will call this progress — others will call it a shame.
The Bartleson home, which was built in 1836, appeared to have been painstakingly crafted with architectural details that many men surely took hours and hours to create. It only took two men with large machines to level the structure.
At the end of the morning, a pile of rubble holds the memories of the Bartleson home, which was built before the Civil War.
The home will be replaced by an office building across the street from the St. Rose of Lima School.
The demolition of the home began at about 8:30 a.m. last Wednesday. Todd Bernstein, who owned the home with Steve Kontos, was in attendance to supervise the operation.
The first strike to the building took place at its back when a giant excavator began to chew and gnaw at the gray and burgundy structure bit by bit. A bulldozer scooped up and moved the falling pieces of the mansion out of the way.
By 9:40 a.m., much of the building’s back structure was gone. By 9:54 a.m., the front porch took a giant hit — it was all it needed to become a shapeless mass of black tar and wooden sticks.
The landmark structure, one of the few remaining pre-Civil War buildings in the borough, was quickly becoming a giant pile of rubble, making its own historical statement as the machine chewed and crushed up almost 200 years of memories and life events.
Orange dust and gray fog consumed the site with each giant strike of the excavator as it jostled the interior of the second floor until it gave out and fell.
Motorists and pedestrians slowed down to watch the disappearance of what had been a valuable and revered piece of the fabric of Freehold Borough.
By 10:33 a.m. the building, just a shell now, felt the last giant hit of the excavator as it took the right side out and crumbled the home to the ground.
By 10:37 a.m., the John Wesley Bartleson mansion was gone forever.
Jayne Carr, the executive director of the Freehold Center Partnership, snapped photos as she watched the machines do their work. She said it was like watching a demolition derby.
“Your heart races; you feel scared, you know,” she commented.
Carr described the razing of the home as “the death of a building” and “controlled euthanasia.”
“I think of the people who lived and worked in the building throughout all those years, and it saddens me,” she said.
Borough Councilman Kevin Coyne, a member of the town’s Historic Preser-vation Advisory Committee, said, “We knew it was coming. We fought it and we lost.” Coyne said it was “very sad” to see the home go.
“I still think it was the wrong decision. We just didn’t have any ordinance to prevent it. As I’ve said repeatedly, I only hope that this is our Penn Station and that this will be the catalyst to a genuine historic preservation ordinance — one that would have prevented this from taking place,” he said.
In the near future, a 39,000-square-foot office building will sit on the property at 83 South St. Bernstein said the new building will provide office space and bring people into the borough to frequent its shops and restaurants.
“This is something that, once done, will change Freehold Borough. People will see us investing so much money and this will bring more businesses to the borough,” Bernstein said of the $5 million project.
Wayne Mason, a member of the Historic Preservation Advisory Commit-tee, said the borough needs “to give the Planning Board the tools they need to prevent this type of foolish destruction. Every time we lose a building like this we begin to look like every other place.”
Mason said it was a “sad day for Freehold” and that he “felt sorry for all the people who had to witness the building being torn apart and thrown into the trash.”
Coyne said members of the advisory committee expected to present a proposal for a historic preservation ordinance to the Borough Council on July 18.
“A town of our size with our historic value is almost alone in that it has no real ordinance to protect its historical buildings. We are a real anomaly and the fact that we have nothing in place needs to be changed,” he said.
Demolition may be spark for real preservation law
Landmark home razed to make way for office building
BY CLARE MARIE CELANO
News Transcript Staff Writer
July 20, 2005
FREEHOLD — The landscape of South Street has been irrevocably altered with the razing of the John Wesley Bartleson mansion. Some will call this progress — others will call it a shame.
The Bartleson home, which was built in 1836, appeared to have been painstakingly crafted with architectural details that many men surely took hours and hours to create. It only took two men with large machines to level the structure.
At the end of the morning, a pile of rubble holds the memories of the Bartleson home, which was built before the Civil War.
The home will be replaced by an office building across the street from the St. Rose of Lima School.
The demolition of the home began at about 8:30 a.m. last Wednesday. Todd Bernstein, who owned the home with Steve Kontos, was in attendance to supervise the operation.
The first strike to the building took place at its back when a giant excavator began to chew and gnaw at the gray and burgundy structure bit by bit. A bulldozer scooped up and moved the falling pieces of the mansion out of the way.
By 9:40 a.m., much of the building’s back structure was gone. By 9:54 a.m., the front porch took a giant hit — it was all it needed to become a shapeless mass of black tar and wooden sticks.
The landmark structure, one of the few remaining pre-Civil War buildings in the borough, was quickly becoming a giant pile of rubble, making its own historical statement as the machine chewed and crushed up almost 200 years of memories and life events.
Orange dust and gray fog consumed the site with each giant strike of the excavator as it jostled the interior of the second floor until it gave out and fell.
Motorists and pedestrians slowed down to watch the disappearance of what had been a valuable and revered piece of the fabric of Freehold Borough.
By 10:33 a.m. the building, just a shell now, felt the last giant hit of the excavator as it took the right side out and crumbled the home to the ground.
By 10:37 a.m., the John Wesley Bartleson mansion was gone forever.
Jayne Carr, the executive director of the Freehold Center Partnership, snapped photos as she watched the machines do their work. She said it was like watching a demolition derby.
“Your heart races; you feel scared, you know,” she commented.
Carr described the razing of the home as “the death of a building” and “controlled euthanasia.”
“I think of the people who lived and worked in the building throughout all those years, and it saddens me,” she said.
Borough Councilman Kevin Coyne, a member of the town’s Historic Preser-vation Advisory Committee, said, “We knew it was coming. We fought it and we lost.” Coyne said it was “very sad” to see the home go.
“I still think it was the wrong decision. We just didn’t have any ordinance to prevent it. As I’ve said repeatedly, I only hope that this is our Penn Station and that this will be the catalyst to a genuine historic preservation ordinance — one that would have prevented this from taking place,” he said.
In the near future, a 39,000-square-foot office building will sit on the property at 83 South St. Bernstein said the new building will provide office space and bring people into the borough to frequent its shops and restaurants.
“This is something that, once done, will change Freehold Borough. People will see us investing so much money and this will bring more businesses to the borough,” Bernstein said of the $5 million project.
Wayne Mason, a member of the Historic Preservation Advisory Commit-tee, said the borough needs “to give the Planning Board the tools they need to prevent this type of foolish destruction. Every time we lose a building like this we begin to look like every other place.”
Mason said it was a “sad day for Freehold” and that he “felt sorry for all the people who had to witness the building being torn apart and thrown into the trash.”
Coyne said members of the advisory committee expected to present a proposal for a historic preservation ordinance to the Borough Council on July 18.
“A town of our size with our historic value is almost alone in that it has no real ordinance to protect its historical buildings. We are a real anomaly and the fact that we have nothing in place needs to be changed,” he said.
