It's about 1905, and we're in the middle of 7th Street, right at Pennsylvania Avenue, the commercial heart of the city. We're looking up 7th Street towards the north. Behind us to the left is the great Center Market, where everyone goes to buy fresh food, since grocery stores haven't been invented yet. The imposing Renaissance Revival building ahead on our left, built in 1885, houses A. Saks & Co., retailer of fine men's clothing. Andrew Saks began his dry goods business in Washington (not New York) and then expanded to New York early on. Out of view just to the left of the Saks store is S. Kann Sons & Co., retailer of fine women's and children's clothes ("Always the Best of Everything for the Least Money"). The two businesses had previously competed directly as clothing retailers. Then, in 1901, they reached an agreement: Kann's turned over all their men's merchandise to Saks, and Saks gave all their women's and children's stuff to Kann's. That way they could each comfortably make more money as complementary monopolies. Of course, this wasn't illegal at the time; it was just an expression of entrepreneurial verve or something...
On the right side of the street is the Fireman's Insurance Company building with its prominent, domed corner tower. The building, completed in 1882, exemplifies a "restrained" Queen Anne style, according to its listing in the Historic American Buildings Survey, because it lacks the ornamental richness and detailing usually associated with the style. The insurance company occupied the building continuously for nearly one hundred years.
Now we'll fast-forward to this shot I took in 1980 from a spot just south of Pennsylvania Avenue. A lot has changed. In addition to the flood of automobiles, the beautiful Saks building has vanished, leaving an empty lot in its place. In 1932, Kann's bought out their friendly non-competing rival and took over 15 of the block's old Victorian buildings, all built between 1885 and 1900, to create one giant department store. Then in 1959, they decided to erect gray aluminum siding across the whole expanse, to make it look modern, I suppose, or give the illusion it was a large, modern structure rather than a cobbled-together warren of much-older buildings. Whatever the rationale, it was a losing game. Downtown was beginning its lengthy and precipitous decline, and it would pull Kann's down with it. The company finally went out of business in 1975. The aluminum-clad building stood empty for another four years, as the Pennsylvania Avenue Development Corporation, which wanted to tear it down, fought with an assortment of preservationists who wanted to save it. Then, under very suspicious circumstances, the whole thing was gutted by a tremendous fire in April 1979. Frustrated firemen were severely hampered by the aluminum siding. Some photographs of the damage from the fire are in the Historic American Buildings Survey. The fire destroyed everything, thus leaving an empty lot for me to photograph the next year. A colorful semi trompe-l'oeil mural being painted on the wall of the building behind the Kann's site at least helps mask the barrenness.
On the right side of the street, you can catch only a sliver of the hideous pea-green paint that had been applied to the entire surface of the Fireman's Insurance Building by this date. Also unseen is the fact the building has lost its gilt dome. Perhaps it was so ugly I deliberately kept it out-of-frame; I don't remember.
The contemporary shot again shows lots of change. The empty Kann's lot, along with the small mural-clad buildings, have been replaced by the grandiose Market Square development, designed by Hartman-Cox and completed in 1991. The twin Market Square buildings, called "stentorian landmarks" by Benjamin Forgey in 1990, are consciously (or perhaps self-consciously) designed to contribute to a grand, ceremonial Pennsylvania Avenue, in contrast to the hurly-burly of the Victorian buildings that used to be there. On the other side of the street, the Fireman's building has been beautifully restored, all the green paint removed and the gold dome replaced.
Well this is a revelation about one of my earliest dislikes of "modern" architecture, although technically the gigantic Reynolds Wrap they smothered all those old buildings in hardly qualifies as such. Just like with that silly Mouse of Walt Dizzy's miscreation [as well as every other character save Goofy], I was instantly repulsed by my first sight of Kann's when I was 5. I don't forget at all the Eww Gross reaction I had to that thing - way before it was even called that - because it was so monstrously ugly and out of place with all of its neighbors, knowing nothing of What Lies Beneath that crap. I wouldn't be a bit surprised that some padc goons were responsible for the fire [curious how only the top part of that crappy cover is all burned; I saved pic #6 on LOC's site, which is the, um, best view of the destruction and everything that idiot outfit had wrapped in that dumb tin curtain]. The present-day 701/801 may be way too large - they must've been reaching for the bloated dimensions of that gross Federal Triangle - but their neoclassical styling is lightyears easier on the eyes than their immediate neighbor to the west. But happy happy that the old Fireman's building was shorn of that pea-vomit color and restored! Unfortunately behind it is yet another uncomplementary structure suffering from architectural elephantiasis, but so it goes in this unbalancing act between good oldfashioned beauties and modern-day fat chicks.
ReplyDelete