After 60-plus years of wear and tear, as well as decades of fond memories from hundreds of Sig Fijis who lived in the house at 20 West, the decision was made to demolish the structure in October 2018. The chapter by then had purchased the old adjacent Chi Omega house next door at 2 West Ferncliff Place, and our Brothers moved over in August 2018 to their "new" house (although originally built in 1879.)
I have wanted to capture the "final" days of 20 West before the demolition began on October 8, 2018, and below are several photos. The demo took several days to complete...
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| This is one of the final photos I took of 20 West before it was demolished. This was taken on Sunday, October 7, 2018, soon after sunrise as the sun was rising from the east and profiling so well the beautiful mansion. |
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| Here's just another view of 20 West, the morning before the demolition began. |
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| Among the many cool features of the old house was the water drainage system from the front porch. Here, you can see the drainage spouts. |
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| Before the demo began, we had a professional contractor remove the Black Diamond from the front porch. We have it preserved in the new chapter house. The Black Diamond was originally placed there by Devon Ratchford '95 (now deceased) when he was an undergraduate. Because it was never stepped on by a Fiji, it held up perfectly for about 25 years! |
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| This was taken just after dawn on October 8, 2018, before the demo began. |
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| On the morning of October 8, 2018, it was pretty weird to see the demo equipment that had arrived to begin the work. |
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| The equipment was poised to begin attacking the back door of the Tenement. |
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| Before the work got underway, we were intrigued as to whether anything was behind the cornerstone of the Tenement, originally added on to the mansion in 1955. We didn't know. |
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| The demo contractors delicately dismantled the cornerstone to see if anything was encapsulated. |
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| The cornerstone was removed. It's been preserved intact. |
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| Behind the cornerstone was a lead box. We were surprised and excited, but had no clue as to what it contained. |
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| Anticipation... |
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| Doc Prescott '77 and Doug Myser '77 pulled up their chairs to witness history unfolding. |
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| Inside the lead box we found a Springfield News-Sun newspaper from 1955. |
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| We also found an old Wittenberg yearbook and what appeared to be remnants of a Phi Gamma Delta flag. If you look carefully at this photo, you will see the Greek letters still preserved after 60-plus years. And look above the Phi Greek letter, and you will see the Sigma Greek letter. Amazingly, all that remained of the flag were the Greek letters. How poignant was that... |
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| The demolition then continued. I took one last photo of the front steps...a place I personally loved and had sat there myriad times, thousands of hours, over 40 years. Tough to see that go... |
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| Then they attacked the front steps. Sigh... |
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| After only a few hours, the entire house was down! |
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| The contractors saved us an entire pallet of bricks from the old mansion. We have them stored in the new chapter house. We will make them available to Sigma Graduate Brothers at a later date. |
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| It only took them four days to eliminate 113 years of history, but here is a photo of the leveled property. |
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| Here's another view of the now-vacant lot, with our "new" house at 2 West Ferncliff Place in the background.
I don't know how well this will work, but here is one of two
videos sent to me by Undergraduate Brothers who filmed some of the final
moments of the demolition. Both sad and incredible to witness...
Here's another final video of the 20 West house crumbling...
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Skip Buckley '80
Perge!
