Saturday, March 12, 2011

Church Flowers

oh, a year ago, maybe slightly more, a building on Union Avenue which housed a home office for a branch of the Presbyterian Church was sold, torn down, and replaced with the perfect blend of Protestant Christianity and Secular Fast Food, a Chick-Filet.

It was a stunning building that looked like a church from the outside. I thought it was a church, and I'm sure most people did as well.

After the announcement, the ensuing cries and lamentations could be heard all across Memphis, with the loss of the beautiful architecture, to be replaced with yet another fast food restaurant, which seems to completely populate Union Avenue.

To make matters more interesting, the Heritate Commission threw down with a brow beating on the Chick Filet people until they relented and left up one wall of the building, facing Union, and propped it up, lit it up, and turned it into a patio. It created such a horrible traffic flow that the restaurant, already destined to be popular because, well, it's Chick Filet, seems even more busy due to the way they built the drive-through to accommodate the wall.

And this wasn't the original point of today's blog, but while I appreciate that Chick Filet decided/gave in and kept the wall up, and I can appreciate the Heritate Commission's intent, really, to me, the wall just looks sad and pathetic. To me, it's not the tribute to the architecture it was intended to be.

Drive by and judge for yourself.

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