Neglect, ignored warnings let history burn

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July 27, 2012

Neglect, ignored warnings let history burn

By TAMMIE TOLER Princeton Times The Zope Gazette Fri Jul 27, 2012, 05:01 AM EDT

PRINCETON — Code Enforcement Director Bill Buzzo’s words played in my mind Wednesday morning, as flames fed on what remained of the Barger’s Guns and Shooting Supplies building.

“We don’t call it an unsafe building for no reason,” Buzzo candidly said during a June interview on demolition plans for three dilapidated buildings in the heart of Princeton’s otherwise proud downtown.

The Barger’s building, at 823, 825 and 827 Mercer St., was one of those structures that Buzzo’s department has said should be demolished for years.

Empty since the late to mid-1990s, the two-story building with two store fronts and an entrance to upstairs apartments was once a sturdy, stately link in Mercer Street’s row buildings that lined the downtown.

According to Mercer County Historical Society’s records, the structure always stayed busy with retailers downstairs and residents upstairs.

In the 1960s and early 1970s, Cliff’s Barber Shop and Nancy’s Beauty Bar were the mainstays inside 823 Mercer St. Adding to the offerings that Princeton’s ladies in the finest fashion, Merle Norman sold cosmetics from this headquarters for a time.

At 827 Mercer, Rose Jewelry Company specialized in sparkling jewelry and pretty pieces.

Friends who gathered to watch the building’s demolition Wednesday also recalled a fresh seafood store inside one portion of the structure and all of the traffic that once accompanied a busy gun and ammunition store.

Sadly, none of those positive memories kept the structure occupied when its last businesses closed their doors. In recent years, the structure became a damp, dark place where people who’d rather not be seen fled to commit acts that shouldn’t be witnessed.

While it sat empty, the water damage from a deteriorating roof took its soggy toll on the floors and walls, drips and drops at a time. Everything of value was looted from the building, and empty bottles without aparent owners lingered as testament that the brick wall on the front shielded an array of decay and derelict activity.

In January, a woman was found dead inside the structure that was locked on the front but completely open on the back. Angela Lynne McKinney Cook’s murder remains under investigation, but her case has not yet found closure.

Then, Wednesday morning, flames gluttonously ate their way through the structure’s roof and over the walls and floor, burning through the wood, stone and history that time and neglect hadn’t already claimed. Though officials have stopped just short of calling the situation a case of arson, there is little doubt that someone set the Barger building ablaze and ended the debate about whether it should be restored or removed.

With little infrastructure left inside, demolition crews ripped through the front walls Wednesday and continued the work to tear the building down Thursday.

As the front wall tumbled from the first floor to the sidewalk laden with tires in front of the building, just before 7 p.m., the demolition made for a solemn scene. A piece of Princeton’s past crumbled with each brick that hit the rubber debris barrier at the bottom.

But, it was the only choice decades of disrepair and a likely arsonist’s actions left city crews. Just like Buzzo said a few short weeks ago, these buildings aren’t deemed unsafe without cause.

The fire that sealed the structure’s fate left firefighters, police officers and code enforcement inspectors on the scene of a building they knew they couldn’t save for 14 hours, or more, Wednesday, working to protect the city from further harm either allowed or inflicted by an unsafe building.

These folks, expecially the building and code inspectors, often get a bad rap, because the codes they enforce and repairs they require can be costly, but the Barger building is now fallen proof of what happens when their efforts are either prohibited or ignored.

After all, they don’t call them unsafe buildings for no reason.

Tammie Toler is editor of the Princeton Times. Contact her at ttoler@ptonline.net.

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Neglect, ignored warnings let history burn

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