Photo courtesy of Cynthia Mulcahy
These two old Bishop Arts apartment buildings turned to rubble within the past 24 hours.
A duplex at 631 N. Bishop was torn down Wednesday evening. The adjacent apartment building at 627 N. Bishop was demolished this morning.
The smaller building was constructed in 1920, according to property tax records. And the larger, red-brick apartment building went up in 1940.
Miranda Realty Co. owns the properties. We put a call into them this morning but haven’t heard back yet.
The properties are on the National Register of Historic Places as part of the Miller Stemmons Historic District, and they were considered “contributing structures” to the historic district because of their age and architectural style.
Photo via Google Maps
The brick building fits one of the historic district’s descriptions explicitly: a two-story brick apartment building constructed before 1944 and having “large hipped roofs covered with asphalt shingles.” It also had a dormer and pediment above the front entry.
Being listed on the National Register of Historic Places helps owners with tax abatements and other considerations. It does nothing to prevent demolition, however.
The properties were just outside of our neighborhood’s original demolition delay overlay area, which would have required the owners to wait 45 days before demolishing the buildings. They are just inside the recently redrawn demolition-delay overlay area, but we assume they pulled the demo permit before that took effect.
