Looks like demolition has begun on the old Children’s Home Cottages on Fifth Street. This has been in the plans for decades; the State has wanted to use this land for office buildings since the 80s or 90s. But it wasn’t until this March that the State gave the go-ahead to get the demolition done. Furniture and trash has been removed from the buildings, and I’ve heard that fire department training has been occurring here, hence the boarded up roofs.

I expect by the end of the summer all this will be gone. I hope they save the old stone gymnasium. It’s the oldest building on the site and it dates back to the stone orphanage that used to be here. Then construction will probably start in the next couple of years on the new office buildings, if funding for them gets approved.

I said that this has been in the plans for decades. All the land from the Capitol Building to the DMV is owned by the State, and they’ve wanted to unify all this space into one large Capitol Complex for a long time. I dug up some of the old maps the State has created over the years, different visions of what it might look like when it’s finished. This demolition is just one piece of this larger plan. But it’s a significant one, since it means they’re actually doing work on the ground instead of just on paper.

1988

1989

2002

Click here to read the article I wrote detailing the history of this place, along with memories from many of the people who grew up in these cottages.