Sudden extraordinary uptick in visitors to Coolold….

The most visited post on my blog is the abandoned
leisure palace of Minnesota grain barons…

Going once, going twice…

Mrs. Prindle donated all the paneling, etc from one of
her rooms to MIA .

Coololdbuildingsmn readers may also recall an estate
sale in June (briefly featured here) where the people
were selling off pieces of the Bradstreet designed
interior piece by piece.

The sale was stopped, but the status of the house is
still unsettled.

Thanks for the advice about the Northwestern/Western
architect…there are indeed wonderful photos etc
of Bradstreet’s work there. Wish funding was
available to scan every issue to the net.

Your houseblog is great, and the work you are doing
on restoring your house, should inspire all owners
and admirers of coololdbuildings everywhere!

Good fun, thanks for sharing this one!

As you can probably tell from my blog, I and many others have fallen in love with
the Bardwell-Ferrant house, and I also tried to buy it. Did this couple have
any luck seeing the house? I suppose they could from the outside…but
even though the For Sale sign and lock box are still there…I’ve heard the
disappointing news that the house has been sold to an “investor.”

That could be another slumlord, who will treat it as rental income.

I’ve mentioned several tragedies regarding this house. You know it was
vandalized when foreclosed in August 2008, and fireplace mantles were
stolen, stained glass broken and some of the copper was removed.

I’ve also said that the house must be moved…and since I live in Minneapolis
and often see the house, I know it’s surrounded by public housing, drug
rehab houses…three of which are just a few feet away, and neighborhood gangs.
The property taxes are also outrageously high.

A young white couple…would be prey to the neighborhood thugs…they
could not live in the house in its current location no matter how much
they wanted to.

This demolition map really is a great resource…wish I knew who created it
and why it has not been updated since the end of August. I’ll also ad links
to the Minneapolis Heritage Preservation Commission’s “demo” memos
which Aaron Hanauer presented monthly since July along with
photos of the demolished.

Another planner, Brian Schaefer did a presentation of an “early warning”
system series of databases that had been developed by CURA which
included inspection citations, crime reports, etc. all the variables
would indicate which houses were in danger of becoming abandoned
and boarded before they did…guess you’d have to somehow combine
that data with the information the group who spent time at the
Hennepin County Recorder’s office gathered to get a list of
homeowners in danger of foreclosure.

It’s all about using all the data gathered by the City or available
from mortgage lenders to save houses from demolition.

But it just seems like these systems are either not available
to the public, or not updated and may or may not be used
for demo prevention internally by Inspections or CPED.

And would preservationists or neighborhood organizations
get good use of a database that would send out alerts
of houses in danger of becoming foreclosures or vacant,
boarded and possible demos? How would these groups
respond, or do they even have the resources to respond…
say for example if they could know when a Cool Old building
is in trouble, the moment it is instead of not finding out
until the backhoes are in the front yard?

Certainly the other faces on the building are characters…maybe wind
or weather inspired…also the Minneapolis City hall has such faces
or figures…some are mythical “Green Man” types others seem to
be based on real persons.