Demolition of that building

Yesterday, Dennis and I went down to the site of the former and present buildings of Temple De Hirsch Sinai in the Capital Hill neighborhood.  Today, poking around, I found some photos from special collection of the demolition of the old temple.  Taken by Art Siegal from UW Special Collections website

This is one of the earliest shots which show most of the whole building. The front part is still there.  I'm still wondering if they paid any attention to the cornerstone.

Reading Neil Harris' life cycle book, people living in buildings years later lose track of the cornerstone.  Dennis points out that really nobody at Mishkan Israel seem to care about the cornerstone of their oldbuilding.  People have other things to be concerned about.

Ruins of the old temple

Today, Dennis and I had a bonus lunch at La Raza.  Juan gave me gift certificate for the Changes auction.

Then we went downtown to Temple De Hirsch Sinai to take a look around.  I can see the letterboxing has really prepared us for this work.  They had built a temple with a cornerstone ceremony in 1907.  Then, on the same block they built some more buildings culminating with their major temple built in 1960 seating 1000 people.  They must have owned the whole block.  In Capital Hill, a very nice neighborhood.

So I wondered, where is this cornerstone from the first temple.  I wanted to go down there and poke around, show a little effort before asking questions.  Beautiful day today.  Somehow everything that we had scheduled got cancelled.  When we got there, we were surprised to find that the front part of the building including the steps and columns had been spared.  They still stood though the rest of the building was gone.  I felt that they were still considering the site as consecrated land.  So, my feeling is that the cornerstone with the materials in it are still there.  We looked and looked but could not find it.  Definitely gives me a starting point.

We agreed, that this building was much smaller than the Mishkan Israel building of 1896 in New Haven,.  We walked around the whole block looking for some other cornerstone looking things.  We found something suspicious in the locked parking lot.

Those darn cornerstones

What truly are the intentions of the cornerstone layers?  They all seem to have the silver trowel.  They all get current events, lists and activities dumped into the metal boxes that are put in hollowed part of the actual stone.  This Connecticut high school recovered their original box had been put in the cornerstone of their old building in 1884.  They knocked it down in 1968.  However, nobody could really remember where it was.  They had the workmen look out for it.  The stone itself got bulldozed but the box survived.

This what was in it:

Contents of the cornerstone are: a copy of the Holy Bible, the report of the State Board of Education, the school laws of Connecticut, the names of the teachers off all of the public and private schools in the vicinity, a United States silver dollar of 1884, a copy of the the Connecticut Courant dated Oct 29, 1764 (the first paper printed in Connecticut), also two copies of the paper dated April 17 and 18, 1884, the Saugatuck Journal of 1828, the Westport Advertiser of October and November 1867, the Westporter (the town paper) of March 25, 18756 and of April 19, 1884..  An almanac printed in 1789, a copy of the program at the laying of the cornerstone, a report of the activities of the cornerstone committee, a biographical sketch of Horace Staples, a list of the fire companies of the town, the by-laws of the Compo (fire) Engine company, the bylaws of the Temple Lodge, the names of the architects who drew the plans of the building, the names of the workmen employed in laying the foundation.

A report of the 17^th regiment, a Fairfield paper dated August 1883, a list of the officers and members of the Westport band, the names of the singers and speakers of the occasion, copies of each of the New York papers of that day, a dollar bill of 1860 of the old Saugatuck bank, passbook No. 1374 of the Westport bank, a photograph of Horace Staples, the Bridgeport Standard dated February 27, 1884, copy of the Boston News Letter (the first paper in American dated April 17, 1704, the Connecticut Almanac of 1884, the names of all the churches and clergy in the vicinity.

How big was the box anyway?  So much stuff?  What we they thinking?  Seriously what are they doing?  Are they expecting to teach some lessons to some dystopian future?  Little green men in space ships?  Do they want to validate their own civic activities and community to some future generation who may have forgotten all about them?

It's not a time capsule because there's no plan to recover it at a particular date.  And, as far as I can tell, there's no  recovery plan at all.  The only ay you can get it is to knock the building down or get things down to the foundation.

Neil Harris in his book looks at this rigorously.  But his buildings almost become sentient, not sure if I'm ready to go that far.

The picture above was a 1956 cornerstone laying on an alumni building at North Carolina State.  White men presiding.  But look there's always a silver trowel involved.

Another building ritual

Yesterday as I was thinking and working on consecrating buildings and cornerstones, this picture popped up in the Oregon Softball Twitter feed.  Which has nothing to do with my research projects.

But here's another building rite, a ground-breaking.  In this case for Sanders Stadium for Oregon Softball.  Purely ceremonial like cornerstone laying.  And with ceremonial objects; those shovels definitely decorative.  Don't recognize anybody in picture, maybe that's Oregon Coach Mike White in the middle.  Where's Becky Sisley?  Shouldn't she be there? 

In the twitter feed, there's a comment by AD Rob Mullens "We've fantasized about this day for a long time."  Really?  Not sure I believe that.  It seemed that the athletic department was fine with letting the women's softball team play in substandard facilities for years.  It wasn't that long ago before I got them to get rid of the port-a-potties.  There seemed to be no urgency at all to make a major move to improve Howe Field.

For the 1895 cornerstone laying for Mishkan Israel, they gave out ceremonial silver trowels to mark the occasion.  Don't know where any of those might be.  That also implies a mason's influence.

Howe Field is really all gone, they've left that small press box structure.

Cornerstones and Masons

This is a portion of a picture that I posted recently talking about the cornerstone laying of Temple De Hirsch in 1901.  Check out the symbol on the side of the stone.  Yup, it's a masonic symbol.  Freemasonry can produce a lot of controversy especially among people not familiar with the order.  My father, grandfather, great great grandfather and other relatives (even Maier Zunder) have all been members of masonic lodges at some time in their lives.  As an early adolescent I was a member of Job's daughters, loved all that great ritual.

The Masons had their roots as masons, bricklayers, it's a very old order.  But apparently, one thing they do (and maybe still do) is to do cornerstone laying ceremonies of public and religious buildings.  Even George Washington conducted a masonic cornerstone laying on the Capital though the box is unfound and contents unknown (according to Time Magazine).  So the masonic symbol really didn't have much to do with the fact that this building (which never was built at that location) was to be a Jewish synagogue as much as they may have participated in the ceremony.

Reading Jarvis "Time Capsules: A Cultural History", I realize that the boxes put into cornerstones are not time capsules because time capsules have specified dates in the future where they will be opened.  Not so with cornerstone layings.  Maybe more related to relics buried when building churches to consecrate the site.

Turns out there's one associated with Denny Hall, the oldest building at the University of Washington.  The original site of the university was in downtown Seattle.  When the current site was being developed, the contents of the cornerstone in the original building from 1861 was recovered and deposited in the current building.

So it all becomes more complicated.

Cornerstone - closer to home

I'm working on this time capsule/cornerstone project.  Motivated by the box that I think is still the cornerstone on the historic site of Mishkan Israel in New Haven (1896).  I have a clipping from another cornerstone time capule for B'nai Shalom also of New Haven, now longer in existence (1895).

But really, can't I look into things closer to home.  Like Seattle?  Hey, De Hirsch Sinai had a cornerstone/time capsule commemorated in the above photograph for a building that they never did build (1901).  Pretty close in time.

And, the contents are at UW Special Collections.  What say, I go down there and check out what they have?

The experience from participating in Prof. Pianko's Digital Jewish History class last spring will help me as I spent quite a bit of time in Special Collections.

Also I have to find out what others have written about this.