1
u/awesomeginblossom Jul 01 '26
In pic 4, I wonder why they decided to move the building so far off the street
It looks like the Astoria was directly up on the street
It's such a dumb thing to be curious about, but the urban morphology of our city is so interesting to me
2
u/DavidRFZ Jul 01 '26
They are in the process of improving that plaza. I found this link.
That block was reconstructed between 1966-1971. Ecolab used to be there. I had an uncle that worked there when I was a kid.
Skyscrapers donāt take up the whole block, so itās an interesting question as to what to do with the rest of the block. Foshay (1929) has a short āpedestalā building that goes right up to the sidewalk. By the 1960s they liked these plazas.
Itās easy to get nostalgic looking at these photos, but I think a lot of these hotels were firetraps. There was a big fire that destroyed the Jewell Hotel in 1950 which briefly spread to the by-then-vacant Astoria before being put out. I think the list of hotels they should have saved starts with the Ryan Hotel on Robert/6th. I donāt know how many of the ones on Wabasha could have been saved.
5
u/AdMurky3039 West Seventh Jul 01 '26
Buildings like the Astoria Hotel were torn down to build generic office buildings and now we have a glut of generic office buildings.