A 129-year-old Dallas building came down in pieces as a wrecking ball crashed through the sandstone façade Sunday.
According to our partners at The Dallas Morning News, the building at 1611 Main Street was razed to make way for an expansion of The Joule, a trendy Dallas hotel.
The Dallas Morning News reports the upscale retail shop Forty Five Ten will eventually occupy the space and the building next door.
Not everyone is excited for the future development. Historian Farris Rookstool III said we are wiping away Dallas history one building at a time.
"This whole area down here is part of my family history and to see a building, I believe was built in 1885, come completely down as one of the last historic structures in Downtown Dallas just basically knocked over with no effort to preserve it, is truly a dark day in Dallas history," Rookstool said.
The building was not protected by a historic designation, but is captured in some of the Dallas’ most notable historic events including in the background of President John Kennedy’s motorcade as it made its way down Main Street, according to Rookstool.
“The sad thing is that once those buildings are gone when people look at a historic photograph they won’t have any frame of reference of where the history actually occurred,” Rookstool said.
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Others watched in awe as the building came crashing down.
"It was amazing to see a wrecking ball going into a building," said Nigel David, who watched 1611 be demolished. "You see a wrecking ball, I don’t know how much they weigh, but it goes straight into the building and brings down a whole bunch of bricks and the crowd goes wild. There was a whole chain of people standing on the other side waiting to watch the building come down."
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