Big Blank Thursday: Butchertown Behind The Fence Edition

Thursday, November 20, 2008 by Broken Sidewalk.

Big Blank Fence

This week’s big blank wall is industrial like weeks prior, but it isn’t attached to a building. It’s much worse: it doesn’t provide the basic mass and presence even a blank building offers. This week’s blankness is the tall wooden fences of Industrial Butchertown, that giant split separating the east and west portions of the neighborhood (there’s a map after the click). There’s not just one fence either, but a series of the surrounding most of the block around Washington Street, Buchanan Street, and Story Avenue. And to think, they don’t belong to Swift (whose parking lot is the nicest in the area, go figure).

These fences mostly shield from view storage lots that more resemble junk yards. Most of them belong to the J. Edinger & Sons truck repair and modification business located on Story Avenue. Most of them are not well kept.

J. Edinger & Sons was started in 1942 and works on a lot of dump trucks and other industrial trucks installing heavy duty equipment and the like. This is unfortunately yet another family owned business, but its just so destructive to the surrounding neighborhood.

In most cases, the front steps of the houses demolished for these fences are still visible, serving as a poignant and constant reminder of the death of the neighborhood, something we lamented at the Phoenix Hill Tavern’s parking lot fence. These are worse, though. Gravel and mud from the lots washes down from under the fences, making the sidewalk difficult to navigate at best and often impassable. There are usually no trees, but there are many mangles stumps of dead ones. The fences serve as an open canvas for graffiti tags that are haphazardly painted black.

The company was also responsible for the alley closure on this block a while back on grounds of safety from vandalism that the city agreed to if the truck company posted a “No Trucks” sign. Jim Segrest, longtime Butchertown advocate, also requested the company clean up its block. There’s no sign yet that it’s any cleaner. The area is part of a Traditional Marketplace Form District. Here’s some info on that designation from the city’s web site.

“Traditional Marketplace Corridor Form District will not conflict with the established pattern in the neighborhood and will promote the public health, safety, or welfare by facilitating development or rehabilitation of such property compatible with the surrounding neighborhood”

But then again, we suppose industrial wasteland is an established pattern in the neighborhood.

Big Blank Fence