On my most recent trip back to Kansas City, I noticed that one of my favorite Kansas City landmarks is coming down. I forgot to pack the camera, but fortunately Maltoodle braved the snow recently to capture the dramatic image here.
The American Ice building hasn't held any actual ice for many years. Word has it barbecue baron Ollie Gates who owns the land has plans for commercial development in the area. And Bog knows that's much needed and long overdue in a part of town that has long been overlooked by developers. (Further scuttlebutt and some fine pictures here.)
All the same, I'm having trouble fending off nostalgia for the old brick pile. The American Ice building used to greet me every morning just after the 6:06 newscast when I'd step outside to grab the Kansas City Star from the loading dock. At least every other month I'd make a trip to the community recycling center that sat on the west side to drop off a load of gin bottles, egg cartons and cardboard boxes. A snap I took of it in '04 has also served as the wallpaper on every computer I've used over the last four years, a kind of anchor in the whirl of digital flotsam in which I seem all too often to abide.
The American Ice building was also reminder of the turn-of-the-20th, corrupt-expansive, meat-packing-City-Beautiful Kansas City that has been slowly crumbling away, as these things often do, especially in a city as demolition-happy as is the City of Fountains. It's probably a sign of my age but I realize that I've come to associate Kansas City with demolished architecture: the Mill Creek Viaduct, the Trolley Barn Neighborhood, Twin Oaks, the Mission Center Mall. If the paranoids are right, they may even aim the ball at Union Station some day.
There is a new crop of turn-of-the-21st, hocked-to-the-eyeballs, glass-euphoric new architecture sprouting in Kansas City (the Sprint Center, the Nelson's Bloch addition) but so far I'm having trouble warming to it the way I did to the old ice house.
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