Dismuke

One thing that worries me about a full restoration is the amount of collapse of the first floor slab and how the marble flooring will be replaced or matched.  The teller cages were also marble from the counter down, and those could be easily damaged.  From my photograph, it appears the marble matches the floor.  

What I remain curious about and cannot find in any of the coverage or photos is just how much of the concrete on the first floor collapsed into the sub-basement.  Was it just a section or was it all or most of the entire first floor?

I think it would be safe to assume that, at the very least, the floor in the corner of the building where the sidewalk collapsed also collapsed.  There were news articles that discussed people needing to be rescued from second story windows.  I would assume that would have been due to the floor under nearby stairways no longer being there. 

But I also read accounts of other guests who climbed down pitch black staircases from the upper floors that did not make mention of having to be rescued through windows.  That suggests to me that the floor underneath at least one staircase did not collapse.  Also I saw video coverage which showed fire fighters going in through the building's Main Street entrance.  Presumably they wouldn't have done so if there wasn't a substantial portion of floor remaining in that part of the building.  I seem to remember seeing video of people come out of the door to the covered entrance at the back of the building - but that was before I had learned of the floor collapse and my memory of it is fuzzy.

Regarding replacement of damaged marble, assuming that substantial amounts of it remain intact on columns and any parts of the floor that did not collapse, here is my thought on what could be done.  First, of course, would be to try and match it, especially if the quarry from which the original marble came is still open.  But if if it is not possible, my suggestion would be, rather than to just do a modern remodel, to locate marble that is mostly similar and let the difference between the two marbles be a visible part of the building's history for future generations to see. 

What brings this possibility to mind is the Dr. Pepper Museum in Waco at the beverage's old headquarters in the city where it originated.  The building was repaired after being heavily damaged in the 1953 Waco tornado.  I don't know if it was intentional or an inability to find an exact match, but the replacement brick was a slightly different color than the remaining original brick (see attached image).  Rather than being a bad thing, I think the slight difference provides visitors with a better feel for the building's history.  The design and aesthetic beauty of the original remains despite the slight difference.  Imagine if they, instead, clad the damaged portion or the entire building with the ugly metal panels or mid-century style brick that was commonly used on 1950s era industrial buildings. 

So if a match cannot be found for the W.T Waggoner marble, then let a slight difference in the replacement marble serve as a memorial and a visible indication of the extent of the damage caused by the blast. 

 I would imagine that the facade blowing off of the bottom two floors on 3 sides released a lot of energy that might have otherwise resulted in more serious casulties. 

That makes a lot of sense to me - though I have ZERO expertise on such matters.  In addition to much of those three sides on the first floor consisting of wood and glass, the second floor was an open mezzanine which would have provided a large path for the released energy. I noticed that on news photographs the windows on the third floor do not appear to have been broken.  It probably would have been much worse had there been a typical mid-century remodel where the mezzanine was closed in and most of the ground floor covered by a more solid sort of material with few windows.

By the way, this was not the first hotel explosion in our area.  On June 21, 1946 there was a major explosion in the basement of the old Baker Hotel in downtown Dallas which killed 10 and injured 38 people.  I recalled that it involved ammonia gas which, at the time, was the very explosive refrigerant used in refrigeration and air conditioning systems.  But, since it had been years since I last read the specifics, I looked at the Dallas Morning News archives from 1946 to refresh my memory.

Ammonia was definitely involved in the tragedy.  After the explosion a cloud of ammonia gas quickly spread through the hotel overwhelming guests.  And, at the time of the explosion, workers were installing new refrigeration equipment.  The June 25, 1946 edition of the DMN quotes local officials as saying the explosion was caused by a gas pocket above the refrigeration rooms in the basement that was 2 feet high, 52 feet long and 37 feet wide. But officials also stated that the type of gas involved had not yet been determined.

The July 6 edition stated that an inquiry into the cause had been completed.  Oddly enough, the only specifics that the paper reported was: "The type of gas that exploded has been determined, but what set it off is still a mystery, the investigating group has indicated."  The article made no mention as to what type of gas that was and I didn't see any further articles from 1946 discussing the matter.

I did, however, find a website with information about a subsequent lawsuit that states:

"The Hotel will be able to produce evidence that the explosion which occurred in the basement of the Hotel on June 21, 1946 was caused by the igniting of natural gas which had accumulated in the area above the refrigerator rooms and butcher shop and below the first floor level in the new section of the basement..."

While the death toll and injuries was much higher, it sounds like the damage to the building was not as severe.  It did blast a hole in the east side of the hotel's basement which caused  concrete covering a lot east of the hotel to fly two stories into the air.  In that respect, it was similar to the damage caused to the sidewalk next to the W.T Waggoner building.  But I didn't see any coverage suggesting that the concrete there flew up two stories high.  Perhaps the concrete flying two stories next to the Baker was where a substantial portion of the energy was released thus minimizing the damage to the hotel.  The hotel reopened just four days later though, because of damage to the kitchen, no food service was available and the hotel's popular Mural Room nightclub on the first floor remained closed due to damage.

June 1946, by the way, was a horrific month for hotel tragedies.  Earlier in the month there was a fire at the LaSalle Hotel in Chicago which killed 60 and injured 200.  The damage in that fire was further fueled by the heavy varnish on the woodwork in the hotel's ornate lobby.  And 19 people were killed in a fire at the Canfield Hotel in Dubuque, Iowa.  And later that year, on the fifth anniversary of Peral Harbor Day, what remains as the worst hotel fire in US history occurred in Atlanta at the Winecoff Hotel where 119 people were killed. 

While doing a google search to get the date of the Baker Hotel explosion I stumbled across stores of another hotel explosion at the Pathfinder Hotel in Fremont, Nebraska on January 10, 1976 which killed 20 and injured over 40 people. The explosion,  caused by natural gas in the basement, was similar to the one at the W.T. Waggoner Building but resulted in a large fire that caused further damage.  You can read a sad article about the explosion and its long term impact on those involved here and see a number of photos here.   

Of all the hotels mentioned, only the Pathfinder did not reopen.  The Baker and LaSalle were demolished decades later. The Canfield was able to reopen in its newer annex that was not as badly impacted by the fire and is still in operation. The Winecoff reopened a few years later as the Peachtree On Peachtree Hotel.   After decades of sitting empty, the building was restored and reopened as the boutique Ellis Hotel.

Given the above, as others have mentioned, we are  fortunate that the number and scope of injuries was not far worse.  And hopefully we will be fortunate as well in terms of the building being put back together. 

 

The explosion made the New York Times.  Here's the link, if you have access:

 

https://www.nytimes....-explosion.html

 

It was one of the biggest stories in the entire country yesterday it seems. Was crazy to see the depth of coverage from all the networks. 

 

Must have been a "slow news day."  I suspect the news networks constantly find themselves in one of two extremes: figuring out what interesting stories can they find to fill up their allotted airtime or how to cram everything that is super important into that finite airtime.

What I found disgusting was when I checked Twitter (I still call it that) for information I saw lots of postings floating conspiracy theories regarding it being an intentional act.  That is to be expected I guess on social media.  There is a certain personality type whose first impulse to explain something is to concoct some sort of grand conspiracy. But I saw one of them that went so far as to concoct an actual name of the supposed perpetrator.  Such postings were apparently widespread enough that I noticed some city official specifically cautioning people about it.

Look at it this way - if there was even the slightest evidence that it was intentional, the nature of the law enforcement activity going on would be significantly different.

From this morning's update, via Harrison Mantas on Twitter:

 

"Davis says building has "significant structural damage."

Says the first floor concrete is "pancaked" into the sub-basement"

 

https://x.com/Harris...6225048753?s=20

 

That does not sound good.

Let's hope it is not as bad as it sounds and it is fixable.

Back in 2003 the abandoned historic Texas State Hotel in Houston was being restored for what is now known as the Club Quarters Hotel.  A 20' x 30' section of concrete on the 9th floor suddenly collapsed and caused the concrete on all floors beneath it to similarly collapse into the basement.   Fortunately, even though workers were present, nobody was injured.

I have never learned what caused the collapse - at the time it happened there was mention that some workers were using jackhammers elsewhere and speculation that vibrations from that might have caused it.

When I heard of it happening, my assumption was that was going to be the end of an impressive and beautiful building.  In the months afterward, I was not able to find any further coverage regarding cause or what would happen next.   But eventually I read about the hotel reopening and it is still in operation today. 

My guess is they inspected the building, determined that there was no risk of it happening with other sections of concrete floor and did whatever would have needed to be done to pour new into the impacted sections.  I suppose they could have just left the hole on each of those floors and built walls around them.  That sounds a bit unlikely to me - but I have zero knowledge about such things.  I was very pleasantly surprised that the hotel was able to reopen.

https://www.chron.co...pse-2112083.php

Dismuke, do you know of any "urban" Braum's locations for reference?

I don't know of any and rather doubt that any exist. If one did exist, it would most likely be here in the Metroplex. 

Because the company gets its milk from its own dairy heard, it limits the the locations it opens to within so many miles of where its farms are located near Tuttle Oklahoma, which is southwest of Oklahoma City.  I forget how many miles that is, but it is based on the distance their delivery trucks can travel to and from within a single day.  That's why none show up on a Google Maps search south of Hillsboro.  Other than D/FW the only urban areas that are within that radius for them are Oklahoma City, Tulsa and Wichita Ks - none of which are quite as "urban" as our area.

So I suspect that it would be an entirely new concept for them.  And, perhaps even if they thought it to be likely profitable, they might not have interest simply because of extra management attention it might require to break from their normal cookie cutter.  And, given the chain's strict geographical limitation, it is not as if it could be done as a testing ground for possible expansion to lots of other urban locations.
 

On the other hand, for reasons I mentioned, it does strike me as being more likely to succeed in a location such as downtown Fort Worth than other burger chains - many of which rely on drive-through traffic which would be missing if it were located in the heart of downtown.  Braums locations have a drive through - but my hunch is the drive through is not as large a percentage of their sales volume as other chains. 

Obviously, a key test for them and any other fast food restaurant downtown would be whether there would be enough walk-by traffic to generate the necessary volume.  I don't know the answer to that.  But it occurs to me that some fast food restaurants can be profitable with less volume than others - which is why I suspect one sees Subway locations in small towns and downtowns.  Where Braums would fit relative to other chains in terms of volume necessary to be profitable is something I don't know.