The End of Old Knesek

To the Editor:

The 1875 E. J. Knesek Building now lies, presumably, in a landfill dump somewhere, never to be seen again. Pursuant to a permit granted by the Fayetteville City Council, it was demolished on January 25, 2024. Why? Nobody seems to know for sure.

At the preceding City Council meeting on Monday, 1/22/24, I stood up as a member of the nameless public and urged the Mayor to put a temporary halt on the anticipated demolition until the private owners of the building on our historic Square had produced a written, signed structural engineering report (in accordance with standard protocols) on the building’s supposedly defective foundation, as demanded previously by the Fayetteville Historic Preservation Board. The reason given to the Board for the necessity of demolition had in fact been the unsubstantiated claim of a defective foundation.

For the next two days,Tuesday and Wednesday, it rained hard all day. Early on Thursday, the third day after I made my urgent request for a temporary stay (though still not expecting an immediate execution of the permit), two giant yellow demolition machines showed up behind the archaic building. After sitting quietly but menacingly for a little while, looking for all the world like two monster praying mantises about to eat breakfast, they set about knocking and ripping down the 1875 E. J. Knesek Building.

Was the timing a coincidence? I don’t know. Was any part of the original façade – the part facing the Square – salvaged, as promised? Who knows?

By Friday afternoon, the great pile of debris left at the end of day Thursday had been trucked off and there was left a great gaping hole in the ground where foundations, said to be “defective,” had of late lain. As a retired civil engineer, with an abiding interest in building history, I had a keen technical interest in what types of materials (hand-pressed brick, machinepressed brick, sealed limestone, etc.) would have been laid for such a heavy building in 1875 Texas.

I am a (at least) sixth-generation Texan along several lines of my ancestry, going back to when Texas was still a province of Mexico. My ancestors landed in Texas on the Mayflower, as they say. I have Texas in my blood. I know that many people in this town and county, of whatever ethnicity, do too.

As I turned away to leave the Square that Friday night, two young ladies from Round Top in a shiny black Cadillac SUV, stopped me to ask what happened to the huge white structure that used to be there on the corner. I did my biased best to explain, but soon they drove off, looking puzzled.

It’s a short one-block walk from that used-to-be site of the 1875 E. J. Knesek Building to my house. Half way along that path I noticed that, from the porch of one house, the Lone Star Flag of Texas stood at halfmast.

In my mind I seemed to be hearing that song by the rock group “The Band” from half a century ago (slightly adapted for circumstance):

The night they tore old Knesek down And all the bells were ringing The night they tore old Knesek down And all the people were singing They went, “Na, na, la, na, na, laaaa….”

Robert Phillips Fayetteville