April, 2004 - Page 1

Posted May 17, 2004

Spring is here, summer is coming soon, and work at the Ormsby House has entered high gear. The month started with Seventh Street being closed again so loads of steel studs could be delivered.

The studs were soon moved into the storage yard in the old parking lot. This is the same lot that holds the graveyard, where scrap metal that hasn’t been hauled off is kept.

The beginning of the month is also when they finally started the scaffolding on the south side of the tower. The east, west and north sides had been scaffolded for months, but the south was left bare until now.

It didn’t take them long to get the scaffolding in place.

The false gable on the north side had been stripped long ago, but the southern one remained. At least until this month.

Once the scaffolding was up, it too was stripped down to the steel frame.

While the south side was getting its scaffolding up, its northern cousin was wasting no time in having work done. The hotel hallways used to end in a door that opened onto an inset balcony. Now the openings are being framed up to provide a window at each end of the hallway instead. The false gable is also being molded into shape, ditching the triangular look for a rectangle with a cap.

That “rectangle with a cap” idea looks a little familiar. You only need to look across the street, at the recently-remodeled State Legislature building, to see a similar one.

There’s more.