Can you believe this building was bulldozed?
I don’t even like to drive down to San Antonio anymore, for half the reason I enjoyed it was seeing the Adams Extract building all alone on the prairie, commanding a strong presence with its post-war industrial optimism. It must have been demolished sometime after 2003, because if I had been living here while it happened I certainly would have made a stink, at least a supine complaint in the form of a blog post. That was a landmark, whether the executives of Adams Extract believed so or not. If anyone is familiar with the story of this building’s final sentencing, I am very curious to learn more.
That being said, Austin’s overall architectural “value system” is an example of this city’s subtle but profound hypocrisy when it comes to urban identity. Politicians and locals submit the Capital View corridor restrictions as counter evidence, since the law regulates building heights in order to keep architectural greatness within view. I am convinced that the law is a smokescreen which actually seeks to reinforce conservative ideas.
Some of the corridors, like #4 from the dome to the French Legation, are symbolic in intent and largely pointless. After all, #4 links Austin’s “greatest” building to Austin’s oldest building — the French Legation having been completed when Austin was 3 years old, in 1841. Anyone who is from Austin can tell you that you can’t see the French Legation from the Capitol, nor can you see anything from the French Legation — it is a short building, no taller than a large McMansion; live oak trees tower over it. When it was built, the parcel of land it sits on was the highest in the general area, but even so, it does not have the topological prominence of, say, Portland’s Pittock Mansion. And #4 is effectively submerged by the other two corridor views that exist from Interstate 35.
Let’s not forget that the State Capitol is a beautiful building, but its beauty isn’t solely determined by how great it looks from afar. The regulations should have been set up to focus on a few wide corridors, perhaps with real AVENUES leading up to the building. Very Haussmanian I know, but trying to enact corridors that radiate out in vectors while the street grid is square helps exacerbate the parking lot and ugly building conundrum that much of downtown currently faces.
In an ironic twist, one of the corridors is meant to protect the view from a building that no longer exists and was also demolished without fanfare. Several buildings, in fact. Actually, an entire college campus. Concordia University’s campus was simply razed in favor of a suburban alternative off of 620, 20 miles northwest of its original site. It wasn’t an architectural marvel, but the main buildings were worth preserving.
Question to nobody: does the parking garage and midrise that has replaced Concordia inherit the special “view”? The view that seems to consist solely of the hospital across the street?
Either way, I still feel bad for the loss of the Adams Extract building. Maybe if it had been in one of the Capital View corridors it would have survived, with a sea of parking lots to protect it for eternity.
The Adams building was very close to where I grew up, went to school and played baseball as a kid. Add that to the various family trips we would take south on I-35, and it was a huge part of my childhood. Imagine, a single building being that memorable solely based on being in my line of sight for so many experiences in my youth.
A friend from high school’s mother was of the Adams family. In 2004, she moved to Seattle (Bainbridge), and I assume they did it after selling their shares of the company. By the end of that summer there were bulldozers everywhere and the property was a plot of dirt.
I agree about Adams Extract — a great mid-century structure, but the cheap shot at the CVCs is unwarranted. The Capitol is, in fact, visible from the front porch of the French Legation, and it provides context to its location in the city. There was never a CVC to Concordia (in fact, all CVCs are specifically tied to publicly-held land) — there was one to the old Mueller Airport, but the enforcement provisions of that specific corridor were removed to allow for the redevelopment of the Mueller site that you see today.
You should also keep in mind the rationale behind the CVCs was to designate a number of views as opposed to placing a hard cap on height across all of downtown. I’d argue that a hard cap would have been better in producing the urban density many now seek, but it was vigorously fought off by the development community at the time. This is the mentality that produces what is now the tallest structure in Austin (The Austonian) across Congress Avenue from a surface parking lot created when the site was scrpaed of all structures (no CVC restrictions).
Let’s keep it all in perspective.
No, it was not a cheap shot. You are right about the capitol dome being visible from the front porch (one side of it at least, or more distantly if you want to look across the porch) but I find that to be one of those silly pointless axes of inflated Texas ego. There is no boulevard connecting these two structures. All it does is make the visitors of the French legation see it in exactly one spot.
There are many reasons why the CVC’s are largely symbolic at best and detrimental at worse — it keeps Austin in an architectural impasse that is only now starting to diminish. It keeps Austin a city of great monumental architecture and rather lousy vernacular architecture. We have the UT Tower, the Capitol, and I’d argue Seaholm and the Pennybacker Bridge. Then we have a handful of notable buildings, and then the rest makes you wonder what kind of one horse town this was as recently as 1960.