Keeping Building Facades

This post is a follow up to my previous Keeping History from November 14, 2008. In that post I spoke about how the definition of historic (or what is deemed as historic) is directly tied to location and surroundings. With that comes the value of preserving what you can, and how you apply the historic notion to development. The Packard Building is a fine example of keeping something questionably historic in greater terms, but certainly worthy to be deemed historic based on the added value stemming from maintaining the character of a neighborhood.

I was walking by the project site the other day, so grabbed a few images showing the construction progress. From what I can tell, a fair amount of the below-grade work is complete. Soon we will start seeing the new structure rise behind the saved facade. It's a great time to view the site, as the old building facade seems to be balanced on not very much. Probably a bad time for an earthquake.

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On a sunny day the sun pierces through the openings where the windows once resided. On any day you can look through the openings and see the crane lowering and rising with rebar and concrete.

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