An East End landmark with a history that dates to at least the early 1900s was razed Friday morning after a structural engineer had recommended immediate demolition.
A crew from Hazex Construction started the demolition of the building at 1401 Powell St. at 7 a.m. Two hours later, the company’s excavator rumbled atop a massive pile of rubble that used to be the building that housed most recently a dance hall and more than a century ago, the Silverman Dry Goods Co.
By supper time, the rubble was gone and an empty lot, strewn with bricks, remained. And by Monday evening, Logan Hazelwood, of Hazex, said the lot would be covered with hay and seeded.
Owner Melodie Shrader watched Friday morning as the heavy equipment seemingly took bite after bite of the building. She lamented that it didn’t have to be this way.
She said the back of the building was structurally deficient but contended it could have been temporarily stabilized so that a plan to save some of the structure could be put in place. The front of the building had been solid as a rock, she said.
Shrader said she had been “on the verge of giving” the building to Audubon Kids Zone, which is across Letcher Street from it. She said the deed work had been completed and it was ready to be signed.
According to Assistant City Manager Dylan Ward, Shrader hired a contractor to tarp the roof prior to a forecasted rain, but when the contractor got on a ladder, he saw that the roof had caved in and city of Henderson officials were notified.
On Wednesday afternoon, the city put out a short press release that said “the intersection of Powell Street and Letcher Street has been closed until further notice due to the partial collapse of a structure. The closure will remain in effect until the building can be assessed by a structural engineer.”
On Thursday, engineers from Morley, an engineering, architectural and surveying firm from Owensboro, compiled an inspection report that said “… we believe this building to be at risk of potential further collapse and strongly recommend this building be condemned as uninhabitable and demolished as soon as possible.”
Morley engineer Corey Smith noted a partial roof collapse in the back of the building and wrote there were several areas of instability, including:
- A lack of adequate roof diaphragm support, as created by the collapse
- Unstable penthouse framing near the area of collapse
- Deteriorated wood roof members in other portions of the building
- Noticeable instability of the existing masonry wall in multiple areas of the structure
Now as the owner of the vacant lot, Shrader said she was unsure if she will still give the property to AKZ, noting the demolition—which she paid for—is expensive and she’d not had time to think about next steps in the leadup to it.
“I don’t know now,” she said. “All this happened in 48 hours.”
Shrader said she’d been able to get some stored items out of the building before it was demolished, most notably the U.S. Army fatigues of her late husband, Horace Shrader, who died three years ago.
“They let me get some things out yesterday,” she said Friday morning. “But I wasn’t able to get everything out.”
She said the plan had been to name the building in her husband’s honor after it was given to AKZ.
Despite her sadness, Shrader emphasized that every city employee she dealt with “have shown so much kindness and respect.”
Still, she was perplexed that a building with so much history could be lost so quickly. In addition to owning and running Silverman Dry Goods Co., the Silvermans were instrumental in building the first synagogue in Henderson on Center Street, she said.
She said the building could have easily been accepted on the registry of historic buildings, and with that designation, the new owners could have received tax credits to restore it.
But officials deemed the risk too great.
“It can take years to build an organization or a building, but it only takes a moment to destroy it,” Shrader said.
***
According to the website Historic Henderson (https://historichenderson.com) run by Daniel Lehman, a Henderson Police Department lieutenant and a local historian, the building played many roles in the East End community through the years. Here’s the website’s entry for 1401 Powell St.:
“The building at 1401 Powell Street was constructed in 1913 by contractors Stewart & McMullin for the Silverman Dry Goods Co., owned and operated by Maurice (Morris) Silverman (1867-1938) who had operated a store at this same location since at least 1907. In 1917, Silverman sold the store to Philip Fine, of Evansville, IN, who renamed the business Philip Fine Dry Goods Company. The Philip Fine Dry Goods Company went out of business in 1921, and it appears to have been purchased back by Morris Silverman before being sold to S. H. Grusin in 1922 who opened Grusin Department Store. Grusin’s later sold to J. H. Witt. Grusin’s operated until 1935 when it went out of business and the building was occupied by Bob’s Market, Owner R. D. Burdon, and Goebel Miller Ball (grocer). Grusin’s department store reopened here in 1941 under the management of Paul Witt. After Grusin’s department store, it later became Chapman Furniture Company and the Dance Hall.
Despite all the different businesses to occupy this building over the years, the name Silverman Dry Goods Co is still slightly visible as a ghost sign on the building and gives tribute to its first tenant.”
