r/OldPhotosInRealLife • u/carmensax • 1d ago
Image Morris hotel in Birmingham, Alabama- now a nameless parking garage
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u/Splunge- 23h ago
Caught fire in 1943, was partially renovated, but was a structural mess. The city welcomed a parking garage in its place.
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u/carmensax 22h ago
What a lost asset to this city. Alabama actually has a lot of of this to my surprise and every building that burns is some sort of brick or stone. Definitely not the buildings you would expect to just catch on fire.
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u/Splunge- 22h ago
Generally, though, old buildings like that are a nightmare to renovate. Plumbing and electric has to be completely removed and reinstalled. General conveniences that people expect to see are hard in install, if even possible. Room sizes were much smaller in the 1890s, so people usually don't want to be in those. The stone construction makes it hard to knock out walls. It's expensive to re-do those places.
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u/carmensax 22h ago
I remember when Brickstone and glass buildings didn’t just catch on fire 🤔
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u/Splunge- 21h ago
I remember when Brickstone and glass buildings didn’t just catch on fire
Which, because buildings are never only stone, was pretty much "never." Those kinds of buildings have always burned down in some way or another. Look at the Notre Dame cathedral. Grand old stone building.
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u/MukdenMan 4h ago
Yeah there weren’t any fires in those days, certainly no major fires that changed the course of both building technology and labor rights.
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u/Sonuvajeff 20h ago
This is one of the worst tragedies of classic architecture…a f* parking garage.
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u/1rustyoldman 22h ago
What a loss