Know the Enemy: Chicago Demolition Companies
by admin
Although it was never my intention to have this blog focus on building demolitions, one could be excused for thinking otherwise after reading my recent posts. With that in mind, I thought it might be a good idea to have a look at the demolition companies that do most of the teardown work in Chicago. After all, they have provided such wonderful photo opportunities while smashing Chicago’s built history to pieces.
Brandenberg, based in Chicago but with offices throughout the rust belt, describes itself as the nation’s largest demolitions firm. A quick glance at their website backs this up this claim with an impressive catalog of some of the enormous projects they’ve tackled, including the dismantling of Bethlehem Steel in Pennsylvania and U.S. Steel Southworks here in Chicago. Looking at their gallery of photos can be a sobering experience as you realize how many fantastic structures in Chicago are now gone.
For some reason, National Wrecking Company have decided not to label the photos in their website photo gallery, but a few Chicago structures can be identified. Omega Demolition is almost as vague on their website (they have a list of their larger projects but few photos), but since they are involved in the demolition of the old Cook County Hospital buildings they are certainly worth mentioning. The new website of N.F. Demolition is also short on details, but they deserve to be noted for their work at tearing down Sportsman’s Park in Cicero and their slogan “Wrecking a New Millennium”, which could be interpreted a couple of different ways. There is also Robinette Demolition, who’s featured projects include the gutting of the old South Water Market so they could be be converted into condos.
D.M.D. Sevices is a smaller local company that has been serving Chicagoland since 1987. One of their recent projects has been the demolition work at Washburne Trade School. Their website is kind of blah, but they do have a nice picture gallery to show off their larger projects. I’m not sure where the Seminary they tore down was located, but I was amused by the photo with the caption “Out With the Old, In With the New”, showing a huge seminary (or “seminar”, as they sometimes spell it) being torn down to be replaced by a park.
Thanks to “y” (see the comments for this post) for reminding me about Heneghan Wrecking, who have done a huge amount of work in Chicago including the complete demolition of four city blocks to accommodate the expansion of McCormick Place and tearing down 18 structures that were part of what (I think) was a paper mill at 949 North Elston. I missed getting into that complex before it came down, much to my regret. The “Total Demolition” section of their website shows off some of their other major projects with photo and video galleries.
Midwest Wrecking has been working in Chicago since 1952, and they have the long client list to prove it. Their website photo galleries aren’t much to look at, but they do include a shot of their work at the historic Chicago Coliseum, which was demolished in 1982. I like how all of the demolition photos are labeled with the date ‘completed’, as if a structure isn’t truly finished until it is torn down–demolition as natural part of the life cycle of buildings.
My sister reminded me about Elgin-based American Demolition Corporation, who’s slogan is “Breaking into the Future”. They recently redesigned their site, which unfortunately resulted in the removal of some videos and a few other features that I liked, though I suppose I’m not their target market. Their gallery still includes a few photo sets of their larger projects, and the header image is an animated GIF depicting the demolition of the Lakeside VA Hospital. Nice touch.
Of course, calling a demolition company “The Enemy” is just a joke. They may be doing the actual tear down work, but weak preservation policies and lack of vision are the real culprit behind the thoughtless demolition of grand historic structures. These contractors are just doing a job, and a complex one at at that, as Brandenberg’s website points out rather defensively (…performed by highly skilled personnel with state of the art equipment…”) And to be honest there are plenty of ugly, stupid and useless buildings that should be torn down. Who mourns the loss of the Robert Taylor Homes?
Watching a building come down can be a fascinating experience, allowing for the rare opportunity to see the skeleton of a structure, to find out how it was put together. The people behind implosionworld.com understand this and have created a great website of “building implosion porn”, for lack of a better phrase. Their website has a huge photo and video gallery showing a dizzying array of structures being blown up, including a couple of industrial structures in Chicagoland. If seeing images of so many fantastic structures getting destroyed becomes too difficult, you can always console yourself by taking your anger out on their Implosion Toy.
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This article was last updated 10/30/09, and I will continue to update this article as new information come to my attention.
Thanks for doing the work here, I’ve been curious about this stuff myself, but too afraid to look. I have that book “Rubble” but I’m too upset about all these recent teardowns to read it right now. And I’d like to look at the U.S. Steel photos, but I just read a book about their closing…
Don’t forget about Heneghan Wrecking, http://www.heneghanwrecking.com. They also seem to be everywhere with their motto “We make space.”
“y”: Thanks for the reminder, I cannot believe I forget about them. The post has just been edited to include Heneghan.
The culture of demolition work is fascinating, although it can be heart wrenching. But I agree–demolition folks are not “the enemy” so much as the system that keeps feeding them buildings is. (Then again, there are always gems like the Daley I connected Three Oaks Wrecking, who took down the Chicago Stock Exchange…. Sounds like they were a fun bunch…. Eek….)
But of course, it’s hard not to be mad at slogans like “We make space” (uhh, wtf). Here in St. Louis, a company named Spirtas used to get a lot of the big contracts, and they did some offensive things, like letting off balloons at implosions of major, wonderful historic buildings (Like when they blew up the last historic office buildings on the Gateway Mall, one of which had been taken against the will of the owners). And they are a fan of putting up tasteless signs. They wrote something like “SHOW’S OVER FOREVER” on the marquee when they wrecked the exquisite Ambassador Building in Downtown StL, which had an old theater. Apparently, they even let the poor Ambassador’s curtain stay up pretty much until it fell down, even as the building around it disappeared. I mean… cmon, guys!
In St. Louis, we have:
1) A stock of mostly 2-3 story buildings, which can be torn down entirely by hand with little or no use of machines if necessary
2) Possibly the highest ratio of bricks to people of any city in the nation
3) The second highest rate of abandonment in the nation (Second only to Buffalo!)
4) Very high unemployment
…all of which combines to make things interesting. Demolition here has developed a strange and hearty, somewhat hidden culture of its own.
Demolition of small buildings is some of the least skilled work around for an un- or under-employed person. The City gives out demo company licenses very freely, but does not have enough contracts to meet the needs of all the companies, so at any given time there are a lot of out-of-work demo guys who have no moneymaking skills besides ripping down walls. They know how to bring down walls, and how to palletize bricks, and they know that they can get $20 for a pallet at a brickyard (which the brick dealer will then turn around and sell to a buyer in a wealthier city with shittier brick making history). Hence, brick rustling.
Brick rustlers use ice picks, axes, and the like to ravage buildings, leaving floors, roofs, and interior walls to dangle until they fall or are demolished legitimately. Sometimes they just take a wall or a portion of a wall, but in sparsely populated or sparsely policed areas, it’s common for them to take all four exterior walls of a building. It has gotten to be quite the problem, partially because the cops don’t take it seriously at all. Just a couple days ago, I learned of seven new condemnations on ONE BLOCK due to rustling damage. When those condemnations are carried out, the block will only have one building left on it! Brick rustlers will sometimes even set a building on fire and return for the bricks the next day, after the flames have separated the wood from the brick for them.
And if you’re a really advanced brick rustler, you graduate to the field of stealing and selling architectural antiquities (ornament, stained glass, railings, etc)! Yay! One of StL’s greatest strengths as a city is its outstanding, outstanding historic built environment, and it saddens me to watch it get peddled, bit by bit, to wealthier cities.
But there are also cool things about having such a high number of wreckers here. They have their own subculture going, which is awesome. There is an area near my home where a lot of them live and own junk shops. Wrecking is great for junking, incidentally—a friend of mine who does demo on and off for a living has one of the most fancily and quirkily furnished homes I’ve ever seen, and he gets it all for free from teardowns! Compliment him on something and he will likely offer it to you, since he can get another one. He has even admitted to throwing out dirty dishes on occasion instead of washing them, since he can always get more free dishes right away. I have never met a scrappier or more resourceful person.
A lot of this is sort of random, but uhh… um……. At any rate, there you have it! We are not the teardown capital like Chicago used to be, but demolition here is still weird, frequent, and fucked up.
Thanks for the great comment Claire, you should have a blog. Oh wait, you do! And I just added it to my ever-expanding links section:
http://curiousfeet.wordpress.com/
Three Oaks Wrecking were very sloppy when taking down the Stock Exchange. Everyone knows Richard Nickel died because of a collapse at the demolition site, but there were several other near misses where debris almost fell on pedestrians.
I believe the seminary that’s pictured on one of the sites is the old Niles College, on the corner of Harlem and Touhy Avenues.