Thomas Breen photos
Yale has begun demolishing a former Chapel Street pawn shop that the university bought last year as part of a nearly $4 million deal.
Three demolition contractors were busy working behind 1142 Chapel St. Friday afternoon as the sun shown down through the spaces where the two story building’s roof and interior floors once were.
While the building’s rapid demolition is all but invisible from the street, where its manufactured stone facade is still intact, surrounded by a dark mesh wall of fencing, a view from the parking garage just south of the building reveals just how much of the structure has already been removed.
The back and front (below) of 1142 Chapel St.
At a recent Historic District Commission, a Yale representative said that the university does not currently have any plans for what will replace the ultimately demolished site on a stretch of Chapel Street and York Street largely owned by Yale.
The university bought the 1923-built structure along with the nearby mixed-use building at 166 York St. last June for $3.8 million from a holding company owned by Pike International’s Shmully Hecht. The building had been in structural disrepair since 1992 when a fire left city firefighter Tom Kelly with a traumatic brain injury when he fell through an uncovered 30-foot airshaft.
On Oct. 22, city Building Official Jim Turcio issued an emergency demolition order on the property after a structural engineer’s report revealed that the roof had partially collapsed, a fire-damaged bearing wall on the right side was buckling, and the original floors were rotted through and several deteriorated.
A university spokesperson did not respond to an email request for comment by the publication time of this article.
HDC Chair Trina Learned and Commissioners Doug Royalty and Susan Godshall.
In a Dec. 19 letter sent to City Plan Director Aïcha Woods and Yale Lead Planner Jeromy Powers, city Historic District Commission Chair Trina Learned lamented the imminent loss of the structure.
“1142 is in the Chapel Street National Register Historic District,” she wrote.
“The nearly century old building has dignified cast-stone architectural details, a human two-story scale, and faces the recently refurbished Graduate Hotel. The fire compromised the roof, but the street façade – the interface with the neighborhood — remains intact and seemingly in good condition. The loss of 1142 Chapel Street will create a significant void in the streetscape and diminish the entire neighborhood’s historic character.”
Learned called on the university to preserve the facade, even if the rest of the building had to go. She also questioned Yale’s lack of an apparent plan for the property.
“Destroying historic structures for the purpose of land-banking should be vigorously discouraged,” she wrote.
Click here to read the full letter.
Hopefully this whole block eventually will be razed and replaced with a gigantic 15-story Yale building.
Yale is growing. The city greatly benefits from the job creation, and from the revenue coming from taxpaying ground floor/retail spaces plus PILOT on any academic uses.
Containing Yale's next expansion to one downtown block with a 15-story building is better than having it buy up 5 blocks of Dixwell or Dwight that are filled with 3-story buildings.