Peter Samuel, downtown Frederick
Memorializing the tannery: Save the smokestack!
Some will scoff that what's proposed so far is just a financial bonanza for a bunch of consultant nerds who'll poke around for months and find bits and pieces of stuff to put in a couple of museum cabinets and write reams of scholarly pages that few people will read. A cheap shot perhaps, but I submit: any serious mitigation plan for the Birely Tannery will look to save some significant physical component of the building. My eye is on the splendid brick smokestack that towers over rest of the Tannery buildng.
40 feet high, nicely tapered from 4ft at the base to 2.5ft at the top (my rough estimates) minimally decorated, it is a substantial and distinctive brick structure in its own right. It soars well above the roofline of the three level north wing.
The brick masonry is in excellent condition. It was built according to historical account around 1920 for an older coal furnace and steam engine as a replacement for an earlier rusted-out iron pipe stack.
Built separately from the rest of the tannery building on its own footing it should be readily movable by specialist movers to a new location. A perfect new place for it would be up on the Carroll Creek promenade immediately south of its present location, where it would stand proudly alongside the canal walkways as a focal point, a prominent landmark, its verticality matching the theme of Frederick's clustered spires, albeit with industrial rather than religious origins.
It would be a giant sculpture, a great visual talking point no one could miss. And an attractor of attention to the nerds' plaques and displays, something more in-your-face than easily overlooked stuff-to-read.
A second-best to saving the Tannery, to be sure, but it would be something tangible: a real monument.
Please consider this.
More at https://petersamuel.substack.com/p/demolition-to-begin-shortly-at-downtown/
Peter Samuel, downtown Frederick
Memorializing the tannery: Save the smokestack!
Some will scoff that what's proposed so far is just a financial bonanza for a bunch of consultant nerds who'll poke around for months and find bits and pieces of stuff to put in a couple of museum cabinets and write reams of scholarly pages that few people will read. A cheap shot perhaps, but I submit: any serious mitigation plan for the Birely Tannery will look to save some significant physical component of the building. My eye is on the splendid brick smokestack that towers over rest of the Tannery buildng.
40 feet high, nicely tapered from 4ft at the base to 2.5ft at the top (my rough estimates) minimally decorated, it is a substantial and distinctive brick structure in its own right. It soars well above the roofline of the three level north wing.
The brick masonry is in excellent condition. It was built according to historical account around 1920 for an older coal furnace and steam engine as a replacement for an earlier rusted-out iron pipe stack.
Built separately from the rest of the tannery building on its own footing it should be readily movable by specialist movers to a new location. A perfect new place for it would be up on the Carroll Creek promenade immediately south of its present location, where it would stand proudly alongside the canal walkways as a focal point, a prominent landmark, its verticality matching the theme of Frederick's clustered spires, albeit with industrial rather than religious origins.
It would be a giant sculpture, a great visual talking point no one could miss. And an attractor of attention to the nerds' plaques and displays, something more in-your-face than easily overlooked stuff-to-read.
A second-best to saving the Tannery, to be sure, but it would be something tangible: a real monument.
Please consider this.
More at https://petersamuel.substack.com/p/demolition-to-begin-shortly-at-downtown/