Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 13, 1994 TAG: 9403130041
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: GREG EDWARDS STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
And the dust and bricks flew Saturday morning in downtown Roanoke as demolition of the outer shell of the Hotel Earle got under way before a small crowd of spectators.
At 10:22 a.m., a steel battering ram fitted to the end of a crane punched through the west side of the hotel's top story, showering debris onto the ground floor and sending a brown cloud into the street.
It was the beginning of the final chapter for the colorful 80-room hotel that offered pleasurable lodging to many in years past but which stood, both literally and figuratively, in the shadow of Hotel Roanoke just across the Norfolk and Western Railway tracks.
Built in the first decade of this century, the hotel had fallen on hard times by the 1950s and 1960s, when the Earle - formerly known as Big Lick Hotel - was raided two or three times a month for illegal whiskey sales and prostitution.
The building, on the corner of Williamson Road and Salem Avenue, was gutted by fire on Aug. 23, 1991. It had become a haven for winos and street people before it burned, and its only paying tenant was a shoe shop that fronted on Williamson Road.
The Earle's owners, magazine publisher Richard Wells and real estate developer David Saunders of Market Towne Properties Inc., had planned to remodel it into an office building with retail shops on the ground floor, similar to their development at the west end of the block.
"I feel great," Saunders said Saturday as he watched the ram chip away at the top of the building. "I wish I could sit here and tell you there's a spot in my heart aching, but there's not," he said.
Saunders and Wells had been under pressure from the city to demolish the building but had to wait for permission from the federal government.
The hotel opened in 1909 as the Shenandoah Hotel and consisted of two buildings, built a year apart and separated by an eight-foot alley.
Before demolishing the Earle, the developers had to make sure that the tax status as historic structures would remain in effect on the remaining buildings of their market project, which front on Campbell Avenue.
Saunders said development of the 27,000-square-foot remaining building should begin within four months. The site of the Earle will become private parking for tenants of that building.
Herbert Brown, 73, watched the demolition and recalled how a corner of the Earle once housed a good bar and restaurant. Next to the bar, he said, was a fine gymnasium where he once liked to watch prize fighters work out.
Another spectator, Pat Cabiness, who works at a restaurant on the City Market, was outside the Earle for a less nostalgic reason. A friend, Gary Bailey, was running the crane that was tearing at the building, and he had invited her to come and watch.
Saunders said the demolition work, which is expected to take a couple of weeks, was costing his company into six figures. The demolition contractor is Alan L. Amons Demolition and Contracting of Roanoke.
Although the four-brick-thick walls were stubbornly resisting the battering ram's blows, Saunders said the building was structurally unsound and could never have been remodeled.
His experiences with the building taught him a lesson in life, Saunders said. He said he's afraid he'll be remembered for the Hotel Earle rather than for the improvements he and Wells made at the other end of the block, which have been featured twice in Southern Living magazine.
"But like I say, there are no tears," he said.
by CNB