I had almost forgotten the voice out of the past: “I want to report an architectural crime,” Deep Throat rasped.
x“Sounds like you’re still a pack-a-day man,” I replied.
“Do you want the story or not?” he asked, stifling a cough.
“OK, hit me with it.”
“Mid-South Wrecking is taking down the old Bell building at the corner of Third and Church. The yellow brick Beaux Arts-style building.”
“That’s not exactly news. Everybody in town is waiting breathlessly for the 57 asphalt parking spaces,” I said impatiently.
His voice sunk to a whisper. “They’re smashing up all the glazed terra cotta ornament. I heard that some people in the architectural antiques business tried to buy it as salvage but were told ‘No dice.’ Check it out.” He hung up.
I put in a call to Bill Merry Jr. at Garden Park Antiques, a firm that specializes in salvaged iron and terra cotta architectural elements. Merry confirmed that his company had approached the foreman at the demolition site about the possibility of saving the ornament and that he was turned down. “When we were there, we saw a whole pile of the ornament already busted up,” said Merry. “I guess it’s easier to just smash it all up and put it in a landfill.”
Merry estimated that the ornament on the old Bell building is worth at least $10,000 to $20,000 wholesale, but he noted that Nashville’s demolition companies rarely save such materials. “In the North and the East there are demolition companies that specialize in the salvage of architectural antiques,” Merry said. “We get most of our stuff from places like Philadelphia, Chicago, St. Louis.”
“So in Nashville I can buy a piece of Chicago, but not a piece of Nashville?” I asked.
“That’s about it,” Merry replied.
With some phone work, I discovered that the building was constructed in 1916 by what was then Southern Bell. It replaced the old headquarters of the Cumberland Telephone Company, which Bell had absorbed. This year BellSouth put the building on the market. It was purchased by Central Parking.
I also learned that architect Ron Gobbell and real estate agent Vicki Saito had, with a private client, approached Central Parking about the possible sale of the building for conversion into apartments. “The building was structurally very sound,” Gobbell said. “Look at how much trouble they’re having tearing it down. And it had a lot of things most old buildings don’t.... But we just didn’t have the time to put the deal together.”
Gobbell found it ironic that there has been so little protest about the demolition of the Southern Bell building. “Nashville beats its brains out on Second Avenue, renovating buildings with a lot of drawbacks to modern conversion,” he said. “And when the city has an ideal candidate for rehab, we tear it down.”
We also smash up the white-glazed floral roundels, the Roman sheaves of wheat, the egg-and-dart cornice. Then we shovel it up, cart it off, and dump it.
Officials with Mid-South Wrecking could not be reached for comment.
