Last week six residents adjacent to the historic 1800s White Bros. Livery and Boarding Stable at 428-430 Jersey Street were evacuated from their homes, and the city contracted to demolish this unique and treasured structure under emergency provisions in city law. Among those displaced are two elderly citizens taken refuge at the Holiday Inn, and one elderly woman whose family was forced to place her indefinitely in a nursing home. Their two-bedroom home was purchased specifically to allow for them to care for her at home, thereby not having to place her in a nursing home to begin with. All neighbors have had to shoulder the financial hardship of this displacement with no help from Robert Freudenheim, the building’s owner, or the city. The city informed them the displacement would be 10 or 11 days; the contractor has now stated the demolition could take three weeks or more.

The recent history of this building is a sad, but all too usual case of demolition by neglect facilitated by a callous and irresponsible property owner. Despite the fact that a portion of the building fell some years ago and destroyed a neighbor’s patio, inspectors and the city appear to have done little or nothing in two decades to hold Mr. Freudenheim responsible for maintaining this property and protecting his neighbors from the catastrophic potential of his neglect. The city and Mr. Freudenheim have been aware of dangerous structural deterioration for months and gave no warning to neighbors. Bricks first began falling on April 7, which left more than 60 days to explore alternatives to wholesale demolition.

The last property to suffer similar neglect at his hands was the once grand and prestigious Lenox Hotel on North Street. That property was repossessed by the bank, and the amount owed at the time exceeded the property’s value. Neighbors were shouldered with the burden of pressuring the city and county to act responsibly when that building’s future and the safety of the community was similarly imperiled.

Though we were assured that demolition would commence on Monday, June 16, and only after steps were to be taken to protect the homes of adjacent properties and other engineering assessments could be made, demolition unexpectedly commenced last Friday at 3pm, just before a planned press conference and rally. This is not the first time that a demolition has commenced at 3pm on a Friday in this city, and one is reasonably led to the conclusion that the practice is designed to prevent intervention by city officials and concerned citizens at a time of day when officials are difficult to reach, and glaring procedural problems concerning public safety and community opposition cannot be addressed.

The demolition contractor commenced demolition, repeatedly citing that the building posed an immediate danger of collapse. Meanwhile, while wrecking equipment assaulted the east wall of the livery, the demolition contractor’s employees were casually coming and going from inside the “unstable” structure. Are we really to believe that a building claimed to be in imminent danger of collapse, being assaulted by heavy equipment, is indeed so when many workmen simultaneously and repeatedly enter and exit the building?

Nina Freudenheim’s Art Gallery has an exhibit currently on display, ironically entitled “Picture Nothing.” Despite the much publicized and valuable art and property holdings of the Freudenheims, we the taxpayers will be stuck with the nearly $300,000 demolition expense. The city will attempt to recoup that sum from a shadowy corporate entity. The last building owned by Robert Freudenheim and demolished at city expense was 7 Wadsworth, in historic Allentown, and that bill has yet to be repaid by Freudenheim. That demolition was commenced after an indigent man was found frozen to death in the unsecured, vacant structure.

So, nothing is exactly what hundreds of us in the Kleinhans and Cottage District neighborhoods, and the tens of thousands who visit the Buffalo Garden Walk each year, are left to imagine. Nothing in the way of responsible governance from the mayor and city officials, nothing in the way of face-to-face meetings by city officials with community members, nothing in the way of compensating and protecting displaced neighbors, and nothing on the site of a long-treasured, irreplaceable, historic structure.

Correction: We will be looking at a vacant lot, prone to more ongoing neglect and a magnet for criminal activity, which will remain in the unresponsive ownership of one Robert Freudenheim. Not a pretty picture.

Images of the livery can be seen at www.savethelivery.com.

Paul Morgan
Cottage District Resident

Check out Artvoice's video coverage of the Livery collapse and reactions from the neighborhood here.