historic queen anne style dana hotel (1891) replaced with dana hotel and spa (version 2.0)

having recently visited the dana hotel and spa (i.e., dana hotel 2.0) a few weeks ago, it brought back many memories of  the salvage work i did on the site nearly 8 years ago, when urban remains was in its infancy.

the original dana hotel (built as the erie hotel) was designed by architects normand s. patton and reynolds fisher, a firm noted for buildings in the queen anne and classical revival styles.

the hotel was one of the oldest, continually-operated hotels still standing in chicago. the dana hotel was constructed in 1891 at 666 n. state street in downtown chicago.

at the time (2006) it was considered "unfit" for restoration because of a number of factors, including, but not limited to the following: there was significant decay in wood structural members, it contained no elevators, the footprint was too small to accommodate modern day rooms and the front facade was considered to difficult to "stabilize." of course, this "inspection" was financed by the developers who had acquired the property.

shortly thereafter, the fences went up and the wrecking ball arrived on site. the fate of this queene anne hotel, containing richly ornate richardsonian romanesque design elements, was sealed.

i worked with heneghan wrecking, who won the bid to secure demolishing the structure in the summer of 2006. during that time, i did manage to salvage some of the remaining interior elements, along with hardware and other "smalls" in each of the rooms, but the hotel was really run down, with vagrants and vandals visiting on a daily basis.

what i found most irritating after reviewing my images was not having the chance to carefully salvage the exterior elements with little to no damage from the wrecking ball or backhoe.

my relationship with heneghan was in its early stages, so the prevailing attitude at the time was to come back after the facade was brought down and "collect what you can."

this was especially frustrating because the heavily ornamented carved limestone entrance way could have easily been saved in its entirety with very little delay or imposition towards the wrecking process.

i reluctantly rummaged for days through the pile, pulling pieces that had survived the destruction. i collected what i could and brought it back to my small shop on paulina street.

in the end, i had to make do with with the fragments belonging to more important "systems," that not only would have been better portrayed in a more complete and displayable manner and scale, but in the greater scheme of things could have been saved given the right set of circumstances, that at the time, were not set into place.

since that time, there have been only a few other instances where i had to rummage through a large pile of debris to collect ornament, which in no way gives me satisfaction.

it just reminds me that i may have had the opportunity to get involved and carefully remove the ornament from a given structure prior to demolition leaving behind scattered fragment that are almost always damaged to some extent.