(no subject)
They're tearing down Connolly Tower, which I grew up opposite. It's lain idle and forlorn, a granite monument to futility, for months. Since the last occupants moved out I've been particularly struck by the sight of the satellite dishes which still studded the side of the building long after they'd ceased functioning; still inclined uselessly towards a silent sky, like the unheeded prayers of the damned.
Because of the proximity of nearby houses and apartments, they've been compelled to demolish the tower in installments, rather than with a cathartic explosion. It's somehow apt that an edifice which formed such a prominent part of the landscape of my childhood should be stripped away to nothingness, layer by layer. The interior of the building is now exposed to the elements, with the wallpapered remnants of the flats within forming a kind of concrete patchwork quilt. There's something deeply undignified about the sight of these skeletal remnants of the walls which must have enclosed so many thousands of domestic dramas, triumphs and tragedies over the three decades for which the building stood. It's almost a kind of sneering intrusiveness which is hard to articulate.
Because of the proximity of nearby houses and apartments, they've been compelled to demolish the tower in installments, rather than with a cathartic explosion. It's somehow apt that an edifice which formed such a prominent part of the landscape of my childhood should be stripped away to nothingness, layer by layer. The interior of the building is now exposed to the elements, with the wallpapered remnants of the flats within forming a kind of concrete patchwork quilt. There's something deeply undignified about the sight of these skeletal remnants of the walls which must have enclosed so many thousands of domestic dramas, triumphs and tragedies over the three decades for which the building stood. It's almost a kind of sneering intrusiveness which is hard to articulate.