Flat Iron flattened
City razes historic buildingBy JILL SCHRAMM, Staff Writer jschramm@minotdailynews.com
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Minot man lived in Flat Iron Building 71 years ago
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Al Francis of Minot remembers the Flat Iron Building very well.
"I lived there 71 years ago," said Francis, who watched the demolition Wednesday afternoon of the old building from a site on the south side of Central Avenue.
"I lived there with my dad when I went to high school," Francis said. He attended Minot High School at what is now Central Campus.
Francis said there were apartments in the building. He said there also was a
confectionary store in the building and recalled a bar and other businesses there too.
"I'm glad someone is taking some interest in it," Francis said, as a few other people joined him nearby to watch the demolition.
Eloise Ogden
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» More photos on CUMinot's Flat Iron Building turned to rubble Wednesday as contractors proceeded to remove the downtown landmark.
The demolition brought a sigh of relief to city fathers and others who feared the dilapidated building at the corner of Central and Broadway might fall down on its own. Concerned about safety, the Minot City Council bought the building in July 2007 with the intent to remove it.
The building has had more than a year's reprieve, but on Wednesday morning, Keller Paving began knocking down the walls.
Codi Keller, 10, took the day off from school to watch.
"It's cool," she said as she stood across the street with her mother. Her brother was running one of the excavators, and Codi didn't envy his job. It looked more scary than fun, she said.
Justin Walter also came by to watch the demolition. He remarked on the history wrapped up in the old building.
"I'll miss it," he said.
The Flat Iron Building was part of a district listed on the National Registry of Historic Places, although local historians credited the building with little significance of its own.
Named for its unusual shape, the Flat Iron Building has a twin at the other end of Central Avenue downtown. The Niess Impressions building shares the same shape.
The value of the Flat Iron Building has been more sentimental than historical. Records show the building dates back to sometime before 1914. Over the years it housed a variety of specialty shops, restaurants and a bar.
One of the better known businesses in the 1940s was the Sweet Shop, a restaurant and candy store run by Greek brothers. The building also housed an accordion and guitar shop during that era.
Dean Caldwell of Minot said there were a number of very small apartments on the north side that shared a bathroom at the end of the hall. He recalls being on hand one day in the 1960s when a tenant came in to pay his $15 monthly rent to H.H. Fisher, who owned the property for many years.
The story over the years was that Fisher won the building in a poker game. Deed records show Fisher acquired the property in 1945 from Provident Life Insurance.
Fisher's son, Jerry, of Minot said he can't vouch for the poker game story, but he does have memories from junior high and high school of tagging along with the custodian who maintained the various properties that his father owned. He would help out when the custodian cleaned or worked on the boiler in the Flat Iron Building.
Hardy Lieberg, a city alderman, remembers walking past the Flat Iron Building on his way to school as a kid in the late 1940s. The Sweet Shop and P.W. Miller, a war surplus store, stand out in his mind. He also recalls the apartment dwellers' laundry hanging on ropes at the back of the building.
At that time, he said, the Broadway viaduct hadn't been built and two roads split off from Broadway, one going past the Flat Iron Building to the Soo Line Depot and the other west toward Second Avenue.
Lieberg said Wednesday's demolition was inevitable given the condition of the building.
"It will be something to see it torn down but it's got to go," he said.
Jerry Lyon of Minot, who was a partner in Skinny Ski and Racquet Shop in the building in the early 1980s, also said the structure has out-lived its usefulness.
Although the building already was showing its age in the 1980s, Lyon said it provided a good location for the ski and tennis shop.
The shop was open only evenings during the week, but on one of those evenings, Lyon recalled, the police dropped by. The Last Chance Book Store had been robbed at gunpoint, and police wanted to know if they had seen anything suspicious.
The Last Chance Bookstore, an adult bookstore, was the last tenant to leave the Flat Iron Building. The city forced the business to relocate from downtown. It moved to Broadway and changed its name to Risques.
The building most recently had been used for storage before the city bought it for $16,127 from Dennis Long, who had owned it about 10 years.
Like many of the old buildings downtown, the lower level of the Flat Iron Building extends under the street. That had raised talk that demolishing the building would collapse Central Avenue. City officials responded that the demolition would pose no danger to the road.
The city had to develop a demolition strategy that was both safe and cost effective. The first time it called for bids, the price was $326,381. The city rewrote the bid specifications to reduce the cost. This past summer, the city accepted a bid of $109,800 from Keller Paving and gave the company until Nov. 15 to get the job done.
Long had been interested in restoring the building but had lacked the money. Once on the demolition list, though, a group called Creative Restoration Co. offered to shore up the building and eventually renovate it, possibly into apartments.
The group fought for several months to call attention to the Flat Iron and were successful in getting the building listed as one of Preservation North Dakota's top three most endangered buildings.
Unable to sway the city council toward its plans, Creative Restoration had talked of instead building a replica on the site or saving bricks to fashion a memorial. However, Deb Carroll, spokeswoman for the group, said this week that there are no plans at this time for any type of project.
Contractors will leave the building foundation, add clay fill and seed the area. The city plans to install a hand rail along Central Avenue to tie into the handrail along the southeast corner of the Broadway viaduct.
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vanbee
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11-13-08 5:34 PM
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As kids, back in the 80s, we used to explore the basement of that building looking for wierd stuff. This was back when everyone was SURE there were devil-worshipping cults all over town. My friends and I thought that we were coing to run into a full on Satanic ritual down there, but all we found was trash! Oh, the memories! Too bad nobody had the cash to restore it. That was a cool buliding.
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