Posted on 04/03/2013 10:09:07 PM PDT by Arthurio
HYDE PARK — Demolition began Tuesday on the Hyde Park apartment building where President Ronald Reagan lived for about two years as a child.
Crews from Heneghan Wrecking Co. were out with cranes fitted with large metal claws to pick apart the building at 832 E. 57th St., where the 40th U.S. president lived with his parents in 1914 and 1915. The University of Chicago bought the building in 2004 as part of a decade-long effort to buy all residential property immediately north of the hospital.
“The university plans to install a plaque at 832 E. 57th St. to commemorate President Reagan’s connection with that site,” the university said.
Preservationists had tried to save the building, but were unable to persuade city or university officials that the gas-lit apartment where Reagan lived from ages 2 to 3 was historically significant.
Mary Claire Kendall, president of Friends of President Reagan's Chicago Home, said her group wrote to university President Robert Zimmer on Jan. 9, but never received a reply, which she attributed to "high-level politics."
"We did, however, reach out to major players with means and influence who could talk with President Zimmer but it is unclear what, if any, contact was made," Kendall said. "I am certain, however, my message was reinforced through back channels — namely that we wanted to work with the university to preserve the home and transform it into a museum and center."
The university said it has no immediate plans to build on the property. “In the short term, the site will be part of a construction staging area, to be used for the new Center for Care and Discovery Hospital and for construction of a new parking garage for the medical center,” the university said.
Despite rumors, the university has repeatedly stated that the site will not be used for a Barack Obama presidential library.
Read more: http://www.dnainfo.com/chicago/20130403/hyde-park/ronald-reagans-boyhood-home-being-demolished-by-university-of-chicago#ixzz2PT6ItaVo
Hmm. I read a story last year that a plaque was placed in Hyde Park to mark where the obamas first swapped spit.
The comments are better than the article:
“Destroy where Obama was born....if anyone knows where that was.”
“They would have to go to Kenya to preserve the boyhood home of Obama.”
Traitor Roberts needs to have his nose rubbed in Reagan's writings.
I don’t think he lived there 2 years. More like 4 or 5 months. His father soon got fired from his job selling shoes at Marshal Fields or wherever.
Reagan himself didn’t know the address—Thomas F. Roeser had to do sleuth work to locate it after asking Reagan to tell him where the apartment building was. Reagan didn’t remember. He remember a few things about living there.
But to call it his boyhood home is really stretching things.
We have bigger fish to fry than this issue.
The real purpose for the site is the Bill Ayers Memorial Bomb Factory dedicated to all the heroes of the Great Refusal [to Grow Up], otherwise known as “The ‘60s”.
Good Point.
What if they were to want to save every building in Arkansas where Bill Clinton “slept?”
There’s a rumor that someone important for something may have flown over my house. So I think my house should be restored to the way it was then, maybe add on another room, and this at taxpayer expense, of course.
Just like the Mooselems do, the democRats try to erase History.
Similar to the other Islamics wanting to put a mosque on Ground Zero. Their way of showing conquering.
A few years ago, the home in the little college town of Compton, Calif., where George Bush lived with his family, including George H. W., was demolished. The site, on the corner of Santa Fe Ave. and Myrrh, is now a vacant lot. The building was for many years dilapidated and almost certainly uninhabited. But then they were living there, Barbara Bush described the neighborhood as “lovely.”
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