mental_floss magazine
SUBSCRIBE >
GIFT SUBSCRIPTIONS >
DIGITAL SUBSCRIPTIONS >
subscriber services >
What’s your town’s most infamous local eyesore?
More than any other place I’ve lived, Florida seems to be a magnet for weirdness. Yesterday, I wrote about the rediscovery of an “aborted suburb” on the outskirts of my hometown, and today I have another story of suburban development gone strange: a building down the street so ugly it’s long been known by Englewood locals as “Little Beirut.”
They started building it when I was a kid, in the late 80s. Fancifully dubbed “Vizcaya on the Bay,” it was to be two identical, glittering (by Englewood standards, at least) glass office buildings that were going to help kickstart the local economy by attracting businesses from larger towns nearby; they were to be so beautiful, the legend went, that no company could resist leasing office space there. And indeed, when the first building was finished, it was easily the most attractive commercial building in town. People started getting excited. Lease applications poured in. And construction on the second building began in earnest.
But then something happened. The concrete shell of the second building was erected, but then construction stopped — and never started again. There were rumors of shady finances, deals gone wrong, legal troubles. Whatever the problem, it went on for so long that eventually people gave up hope that the second building would ever be finished, and what had been the hoped-for architectural pride of Englewood quickly became the town’s most notorious eyesore — as it has been for the past 19 years.
Naturally, it became a site of great interest to my friends and I as teenagers — we’d run around its exposed concrete innards, checking out the newest graffiti tags and finding creepy/unsavory things like piles of used mattresses. Eventually, the town (wisely) erected a 10-foot fence around the dangerous building’s perimeter (there was really nothing to keep an inattentive kid from tumbling down the empty elevator shaft or impaling himself on a nest of rusting re-bar), and all but the most dedicated vandals kept their distance. The county’s been trying to demolish it for years, but miles of red tape have kept the moldering hulk standing. According to local paper, though, it looks like that’s about to change, and “Little Beirut” will face a stranger ending than I ever could’ve imagined: it’ll be sunk offshore to create a sorely-needed artificial reef. Where my friends and I once played, fish and crabs will hang out. Weird.
What’s your town’s most infamous local eyesore?
Comments (25)
Comment
When I went to college in Marshall, Texas the tallest building in town was “Hotel Marshall” which had been adandoned in the 50s, it was right in the middle of downtown where they had a big Christmas light thing every year. It was terrible, teenagers would sneak in and pull pranks.
I heard that they are starting to (or finished??) rebuilding it after 50 years. If that is true good for Marshall.
posted by Witty Nickname on 1-2-2008 at 8:20 am
Maybe the powers-that-be could lease it to the CSI: Miami production bunch. Looks like just the sort of place location managers seek… and if it falls down during a gag, more the benefit, except to the stunt folks inside.
posted by Doc on 1-2-2008 at 8:22 am
Not exactly my town, but in the area I live in there is a building whose top floor was burned about 5 years ago. Since that time, no repairs have been made. Driving by you can still see the hole in the building, all the fire damage and discoloration to the building’s exterior from the smoke. Oh, and it’s the tallest building in that part of town - kindof hyper-obvious.
posted by Jennifer on 1-2-2008 at 8:37 am
I don’t know that I’d call it the most infamous eyesore in San Antonio–we have many–but there’s a massively tall (for the area), gloomy grey, concrete condo monster looming over my boyfriend’s apartment complex and the nearby, lovely Huebner Oaks shopping center. The condos within go for almost $1 mill each . . . and only about 2 people have purchased them. Worst yet, I could swear the building used to be bright orange.
posted by nutmeag on 1-2-2008 at 8:38 am
Oops, I mean “worse yet.” I haven’t had my coffee today!
posted by nutmeag on 1-2-2008 at 8:40 am
In Alton, IL, we use to have this riverboat casino that was really elegant and nice looking. A couple of years back they decided to make things look better they painted the buildings and the boat, purple, orange, green, yellow, blue, and other various colors. It is the most hideous looking thing. Coming over the bridge from St. Louis, it looks like it sucked all of the life and color from the town.
posted by Grace on 1-2-2008 at 8:54 am
I don’t know if it was the official town eyesore, but there’s a house in my hometown in North Carolina that attracted a lot of attention. Dubbed “The Barbie House”, it was a roomy two-story plantation-style home that a local teacher decided to paint Pepto-pink. The shutters, roof trim, and brick foundation were a slightly darker shade to offset the atrocious choice of house-color. The front porch (including the steps) was the same color as the house, so it literally looked like the house was oozing onto the front lawn. The worst part? These were my next-door neighbors. They moved in when I was a freshman in high school, and for my entire high school career, I was known to live in “that brick house next to The Barbie House.” It was even featured in a local gazette about creative renovations, so everyone in at least a five county radius knew about it. Needless to say, I usually opted to go visit friends as opposed to them coming to see me.
posted by bas on 1-2-2008 at 9:03 am
The Boston-area equivalent is the Faces
night club (www.wickedlocal.com/cambridge/archive/x2081340087 because your comment system is too lame to support actual links), abandoned for decades just off Rte 2 near the Alewife mass-transit station. Apparently there are plans to get rid of it at last, but there have been plans before and I’ve heard that they have all failed due to environmental concerns. I won’t believe it until I see the wrecking crew.
BTW, that artificial-reef thing might not happen either. Recent studies have shown that previous artificial-reef efforts have actually created toxic dead zones instead, so people have cooled a bit on the idea.
posted by Platypus on 1-2-2008 at 9:08 am
Two offerings:
I lived right in between two small suburbs. One year, the local bowling alley decided to paint in bright primary circus colors, in stripes — except one wall which remained the pale, fading chipped Salmon color it was before. Someone got a brain and decided that a dark gray color might be more visually appealing — but that one nasty pink wall is still there.
Two. the other suburb that I lived in was trying to attract “young professionals” to live there, a project began to build an expansive, professionally designed golf course next to two new sets of luxury condos. Monetary problems, scandal, etc caused the golf course to fall through, leaving two new luxury condo developments on either side of a corn field with a single road leading to a dead end in the middle of it, lined with non-operational street lights.
Three: In Dublin, Ohio there is a giant field of concrete corn. I am not making this up.
posted by Ashley Keen on 1-2-2008 at 10:10 am
I agree that the completed-but-not lived-in Condo near Huebner Oaks in San Antonio is hideous. It is grey concrete on all but one side, which is pink. But I think the biggest eye sore in town is the Crossroads Mall. This mall is located at the intersection of two major freeways, which would seem like a good spot, but it is mostly abandoned and the anchor stores have been replaced with lesser stores likes of Hobby Lobby and Burlington Coat Factory. From the outside, the Burlington Coat Factory is the ugliest building I have ever seen. It is on stilts and has parking literally underneath the building, despite having ample alternative parking. The inside of the mall is so abandoned that it feels like exploring a ghost town, only to find that the ghost town has a surviving Bath and Body Works. This is like the alternative mall in Mallrats, if only that mall was 80 percent vacant.
posted by San Antonio Resident on 1-2-2008 at 10:38 am
There was (and probably still is) student housing on the U.C. San Diego campus called (not officially) “Little Beirut.” It had many of the same design features as the above “L.B.” but with one dubious distinction. Where the Florida version is a half finished, abandoned mass of concrete slabs, the San Diego version was a fully finished, occupied mass of concrete slabs. Doubtless it was were they housed the philosophy and liberal arts majors to help get them used to their future lives outside of college.
posted by Ego, Egoing, Egone on 1-2-2008 at 10:44 am
Dude, Englewood FL? I grew up in that town!
I always wondered what the deal was with that building…
posted by Jessica on 1-2-2008 at 11:15 am
In Baton Rouge, back in the mid 80’s, they were building a student dorm (I think) for the Jimmy Swaggart Ministries. It never got finished, due to some kind of sex scandal or nother. Bluebonnet Rd was out in the middle of nowhere back then, Jimmy was the only thing there. Now Bluebonnet is the middle of town, and that ugly unfinished building is smack dab.
posted by sneezy on 1-2-2008 at 11:22 am
I live in Detroit, and though most will say that the entire town is an eye sore, the most notorious is the old train station, Michigan Central Station. It is huge and is set off from most other tall buildings, so it is not hard to miss from the freeways. It has been abandoned for years and has been in many, many movies including Transformers.
posted by kmj44 on 1-2-2008 at 11:33 am
Thankfully the one building in my hometown that comes to mind in the category of eyesore is now gone; do a Google search on “zip feed tower”; there’s even a Wikipedia page honoring its eyesoreness. It was so ugly that it refused to fall over and go away.
The tower was once the tallest building in the state (which isn’t saying much). The site where it once stood is now home to a new office complex, which is much, much easier on the eyes.
posted by Dave on 1-2-2008 at 11:36 am
Faces is a good choice for Boston, where space is at such a premium that abandoned buildings tend to get demolished very quickly so something new can go up.
However, in the related sense of local eyesores, I give you Boston City Hall (check the Wikipedia article for its full brutality), the single ugliest public building in America, if not the world. How ugly is it? Although we live in Boston, my wife and I filed our marriage certificate in Cambridge, because we didn’t like the idea of our marriage certificate being filed in a building that appalling.
posted by Stewart on 1-2-2008 at 11:43 am
Stewart, I had never seen Boston City Hall before, but I just looked it up.
I think it’s fantastic! I did read that it’s confusing and hard to get around inside, which would be a big negative. But from the pictures, I think it looks awesome - kind of like the lego creation of a very talented, creative kid.
I can see how it would be a love it or hate it kind of thing, though.
posted by Molly on 1-2-2008 at 12:02 pm
Molly: You do kind of have to see it in person to get the full effect, I guess. For one thing, it’s planted in the middle of this vast, arid expanse of red brick (many of which are loose and/or rotting), and the combination of the flat and completely open plaza and the large buildings surrounding it makes the area basically a giant wind tunnel, especially on a dreary winter day like today. So when you’re trudging across this empty space into a biting icy wind and you see this monstrosity, it just doesn’t do anything to improve your mood.
The other problem is that I actually could see that it might be a cool-looking building if it had been better executed, but for whatever reason, the building’s finish just looks kind of cheap and slapdash. Honestly, the closer you get to it, the more it looks like a parking garage.
posted by Stewart on 1-2-2008 at 12:41 pm
I live in Fort Mill, SC. About 2 miles from Jim and Tammy Baker’s monument to the Lord, “PTL”. There downfall was triple booking a ‘timeshare hotel’ that was the centerpiece in their Christian theme park. As the Bakers fell, all work stapped on the twenty story hotel with the brick shell built, but only three floor finished. So now, almost 20 years later, this building still stands as by far the tallest building in town surrounded by a wasteland Christian theme and water park. Ohh, the pride to be the center of the PTL universe.
posted by Jay Spears on 1-2-2008 at 12:42 pm
In response to sneezy’s post… That thing is still standing?! I used to live just down Bluebonnet from it. I went to Swaggart’s private school across the street from it for much of my grade school and junior high education and even as kids we thought that something needed to be done with it. And now there’s a mall over by it for even more people to gaze in bewilderment at. Amazing!
posted by Fletch on 1-2-2008 at 1:00 pm
This post has inspired me to do something I’ve wanted to do for a long time.
There is this creepy 15 story apartment building at Allisonville Rd and Binford Blvd in Indianapolis, IN which seems to easily fit hundreds of renters in it. However, it’s been virtually empty since 2001 when the owners defaulted on their mortgage and it was sold off in a Sheriff’s auction.
It has outside doors that lead to nothing, gigantic empty parking garages, and creepy green glass windows which light up at night and give it this eerie glow.
posted by Lindsey on 1-2-2008 at 1:53 pm
did anyone go to siu-carbondale? hello, faner hall! it’s supposedly riot-proof, with half-floors and stairwells that don’t go to every floor (huh?) and little skinny unbreakable windows. the whole thing looks like a soviet-era concrete bunker. i’d post a link to it, but apparently, i’m not allowed, so look it up yourself.
posted by groanygirl on 1-2-2008 at 2:19 pm
Intel was gung-ho about building a new multi-story building in downtown Austin…then the 2000 tech-bust occurred, and they bailed on the project…just left this massive hulking shell of a building (concrete and rebar mostly)…it was finally imploded last year, I believe…this is the second time Intel has done this in Austin, i hope the next time they sniff around they are forced to move into an EXISTING building and remodel the interior as they see fit…or don’t come at all, that would be good too…
posted by donner on 1-2-2008 at 9:06 pm
I’m a freshman at the University of Notre Dame, and we have an absolute killer eyesore. Before I start, however, let me mention that the Notre Dame campus is absolutely gorgeous and well maintained. The campus is nothing but stone buildings, wide and spacious quads, and beautiful architecture. Except the Stepan Center. In a campus filled with gothic and classic architecture, it is a 1970’s futuristic geodesic dome. It stands out like a sore thumb. I want to cringe every time I go past it. Worse, it’s one large room far too large to have effective heating; and it’s mostly used for exams. For Christmas finals, you literally have to wear your coat inside. Not only that, the roof leaks and is patched in some places with duct tape. It’s odd; every other building on campus is well kept and beautiful. Rumor has it that even the family it’s named after wants it torn down.
posted by Graham on 1-2-2008 at 10:25 pm
okay, so this building isn’t vacant or anything, but i will forever maintain that it’s the ugliest building known to man. look up the university of pittsburgh school of information sciences on wikipedia to find a picture. when i went there, if i had a friend picking me up from class, i’d tell them to turn up bellefield ave. and look for the ugliest building they’d ever seen. no one ever got lost.
posted by lala on 1-7-2008 at 1:27 pm