Getting Clocked
November 9th, 2007 at 9:54 pm
The majestic old Denison High School building — one of North Texas’ most historic structures — has finally been demolished. We’ve chronicled the rush by city leaders in Denison to tear down the beautiful structure that dates to 1913 to make way for redevelopment. A group of Denison residents valiantly fought the demolition. (You can read our previous coverage here and here. You can see a video of the old building, via YouTube, here.)
Activists’ last-ditch efforts to save the structure — including an offer to buy the building from the city — were refused. A demolition crew flattened the last remnants of the high school in mid-October. All that remains on the site is the detritus of the Mission Revival structure and, oddly, the white clock tower.
Before the wrecking ball took its final swings, the Denison city council decided it wanted to preserve the wonderfully detailed clock tower as a memorial to the old building. It’s not clear why the council got sentimental about the clock tower when they easily could have saved the whole structure.
The city purchased the clock from the demolition crew for $38,000 (typically in demolitions, the crew gets to sell off the remnants). Before the final demolition, a large crane removed the clock tower and carefully placed it in a fenced-off corner of the lot, where it sits.
The word in Denison is that the city plans to build a new library on the site in the Mission Revival style. The old clock tower may be part of the new building. Why would the city tear down one historic Mission Revival building only to replace it with, um, another Mission Revival? We’ll put that question to Denison city leaders early next week.
November 18th, 2007 at 8:23 am
The Denison Public Library Board of Directors is currently interviewing architects for the planning of a $10 billion, 30,000 sq ft, Silver LEED certified new library on this site. Two firms were interviewed at a public presentation on Friday, Nov. 16 ( Leo A Daly and Komatsu). Both firms showed sketches indicating the entire block to be used for the library building and park, and more city acquisition needed across the boulevard for parking.
Although Mayor Brady has earlier mentioned coming back with mission-revival styling for the new building, the preliminary sketches shown last Friday did not indicate this. One did show the clocktower atop a central grand entry to a one story library, while another placed the clocktower atop columns in the garden apart from the library building.
Three other architects are to be interviewed later this month. Although open to the public, there was no press coverage of the event. Thank you for following this story, good luck getting a response to that question.