Tuesday, November 20, 2007

New City YMCA... demolished.

green.  YELLOW!!

What a shame to have to start off a blog this way!

But I can't help it; something special's been lost, and I'm compelled to document.

This was the New City YMCA, a circa-1981 building on Halsted just south of Clybourn, west of downtown, just north of infamous Cabrini-Green.

New City Y

Not much of a building, but oh, those bricks, those glossy glazed bricks!! 9 shades of rainbow-colored glazed bliss. They're tearing it down right now. There's not much left, just a few partial walls and a huge pile of debris.

New City Y rubble


Links:
- YMCA That Served Cabrini-Green Residents to Close
- Redevelopment Planned for New City YMCA

6 comments:

Jennifer said...

Any word on where the bricks are going? I hope not just to a landfill.

Michael R. Allen said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Michael R. Allen said...

Hopefully some wrecker salvaged those bricks; my guess is that those were custom glaze shades.

Robert Powers said...

Some of the bricks were being palletized, so yeah, somebody wanted them.

Others wound up in the rubble heap. I snagged a few blue ones this afternoon and hope to get the sunset colors tomorrow morning. The green's all gone, far as I can tell.

A sign on the site says that 90% of the building will be recycled, but doesn't elaborate.

Doug Duckworth said...

Why recycle what already works?

Anonymous said...

The bricks were taken to Heneghan Wrecking. Try calling them, they sell bricks.