Step 3 of five
Pieces kept inside something new
The building came down and parts of it did not: a front, a stair, a run of iron columns, held inside whatever replaced it.
The two fronts at this step
- Step 3 of 5, pieces kept inside something newA Front Wall With Nothing Behind ItOne wall of the old building, propped through the works and built into the new one. The most visible kind of fragment and the one that starts the most arguments.
- Step 3 of 5, pieces kept inside something newIron Columns Inside a New LobbyThe building went. Eleven columns did not. What is left is a real piece of one building standing inside another, which is the whole of step three and the step people find hardest to read.
The five steps
- Step 1 of 5Still doing the first jobPut up for one purpose and still at it, which in a city that rebuilds itself this often is rarer than it sounds and worth going to look at while it lasts.
- Step 2 of 5New work in the old shellThe use inside has changed completely and the building has not. The most common step in this city and the one that rewards a slow walk past the outside.
- Step 3 of 5Pieces kept inside something newThe building came down and parts of it did not: a front, a stair, a run of iron columns, held inside whatever replaced it.
- Step 4 of 5The shape left in the groundNothing stands. The outline is still legible in a curb line, a change of paving, a wall that stops where a building used to start.
- Step 5 of 5Nothing left but the nameThe last step. No fabric at all, and a name still in use for a corner, a stop or a block, attached now to something that has no connection to it.