A court square mainstay disappears as plans to build a new Native American Museum take shape
Old clay bricks bearing the thumbprints of workers who pulled them partially wet from molds more than a hundred years ago tumbled across South Madison Street early Friday morning as demolition of the former Leonard’s department store on the court square began.
The crew from Cain, Inc. had started to take down the front of the building, but when it approached the building’s corner at South Madison and West Jefferson, the outer wall that ran along South Madison gave way.
“It actually came down a little faster than we planned,” said Luke Eaton, general manager of Cain, Inc.
South Madison had already been blocked off with large metal bins and a retaining fence protecting the buildings on the opposite side of South Madison. Those features mostly contained the materials as they fell to the ground.
As demolition continues, Eaton said Cain will begin collecting all the unbroken clay bricks, which will be cleaned and repurposed.
Eaton showed the bricks, each of which was unique, bearing creases and folds in the clay, with many also dented in the spot where a worker’s thumb would have left a print as he removed it from the mold to stack it as part of the walls.
Mayor Jimmy Cockroft said previously that depending upon the amount and quality of the recovered brick, the city may buy it back for inclusion in construction of the planned Native American Museum, which is expected to take the place of the buildings currently being demolished.
Originally, the city had planned to do extensive structural work on the Leonard’s building and repurpose it for the museum, but those plans were scrapped when the roof of the two adjacent buildings collapsed in February.
A couple of months later, the adjacent SBS Home Store building also suffered a roof collapse toward the back of the building. Three employees working that day were spared injury as they worked toward the front of the building, though the air pressure from the collapse blew the glass of the front picture windows out onto the sidewalk and street of the court square.
SBS is in the process of relocating its business to two storefronts diagonally across the square from their original location.
