THE FOLLOWING IS A NEWS-GAZETTE ARTICLE BY JENNIFER BAILEY
ABOVE: The 12-story Bresee Tower, and adjacent Vermilion County Courthouse Annex, are set to be demolished.
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DANVILLE — The Danville City Council’s Public Works Commitee is finally expected to act on an intergovernmental agreement this week to demolish Bresee Tower and the county’s courthouse annex building.
Danville Mayor Rickey Williams Jr. said Corp. Counsel Leon Parker was putting finishing touches on a cover resolution for the agreement to be taken to the public works committee at Tuesday meeting at the Robert E. Jones Municipal Building, 17 W. Main St.
“Finally,” Williams said about the agreement coming before aldermen. The full city council won’t act on it until Aug. 20.
The Danville City Council set aside $4 million three years ago to tear down Bresee Tower and a handful of other buildings in the downtown area that are unsafe and need to be demolished.
Williams has said he hopes the Bresee demolition will cost the city $3 million or less and they’ll have $1 million left to tackle the other buildings.
The landmark building shares heating and plumbing with the Vermilion County Courthouse Annex. An antiquated boiler is located in the attached, vacant annex to the city’s municipal building.
The city will be paying for Bresee’s demolition, with the county paying for the annex’s demolition. The city “will coordinate, orchestrate and supervise the demolition of both buildings,” according to the intergovernmental agreement. The city will prepare the contract documents with assistance from Farnsworth Group.
Each demolition bidder must inspect the buildings and their interiors before submitting its bid, according to the agreement. The city and county will select the successful, qualified bidder.
The contract may have an early completion incentive. The incentive is $325 for each day both demolitions and other work are completed prior to 550 days in which time period shall commence the day following when the demolition permits have been issued by the city.
“The county shall obtain necessary and required disconnections of all utility services provided to or available to Bresee and the annex including, but not necessarily limited to, power, water, heat, and sewer services,” the agreement reads.
“The parties shall not retain any salvage rights for materials not removed from the annex prior to bidders’ inspections…,” it continues.
The agreement becomes effective within 45 days of the first of the parties to execute it. There’s also conveyance of property, default and dispute resolution as part of the language in the agreement.
Past memories
As the 12-story Bresee building’s demolition comes closer, some with Bresee Tower ties reminisced about the unique historic building.
First National Bank expanded and modernized its facilities to 12 stories in 1918. The cost was reportedly $350,000. The bank occupied the lower floor, first floor and mezzanine level. The bank featured oak, marble and oxidized fixtures. Chandeliers and wrought iron were in the building.
The bank called it home until 1961. The skyscraper also was known through the years as the WIAI Tower.
WITY Radio Sales Manager Gary Hackler of Georgetown has fond memories working at the WIAI radio station in the tower.
“I was going to school at Eastern (Illinois University), studying broadcast communication…,” Hackler said about coming home on weekends and breaks in the early 1980s.
He worked at the radio station on the seventh floor, including overnight shifts.
When he got out of college, he started working a few more hours there, and also started working at WITY.
Two of his favorite memories are when he’d have to put on a long song to go to the bathroom in the building. He’d have to take the elevator to go to another floor to use the bathroom. The elevator was slow, and he’d have to hustle to get back upstairs.
Also, while working overnight shifts, many third-shift workers would request songs to play on the radio.
“I like country music, but it’s not my favorite genre,” Hackler said.
One of the most requested songs was “Elvira” by The Oak Ridge Boys.
Hackler said he got tired of that song. He opened a window in the tower, took the album and threw it out the window like a frisbee. It flew over the streetlights and into Towne Centre which was just being built.
“We had other copies,” he said, laughing. “It just made me feel better.”
Hackler said the time has come for Bresee Tower to be demolished.
“It would have been nice if they could have done something,” he said.
But it has to be done, he said of its dangerous condition of falling terra cotta and now dilapidated state.
Hackler said the tall tower will be missed from Danville’s skyline, but “it will be a good change for Danville. It will free up some space.”
The space to be left over after the buildings are demolished will be green space until an appropriate developer is found, Williams has said.
More History
Bresee Tower, 4 N. Vermilion St., was built in 1917 as the First National Bank in downtown Danville. It was designed by noted Chicago architecture firm Mundie and Jensen. In 1963 it was renamed after brothers Paul and H.R. “TiZ” Bresee, who had bought the building. The Bresee brothers were businessmen. Paul was an inventor and served as president of the Continental Loan Company, Bresee-Warner Inc. and University Federal Savings and Loan. Tiz was a partner of Bresee Brothers Cleaners.
The brothers also served as public-address announcers at Illinois home football games from the late 1920s until the early 1960s. The Illinois football program honors the most-improved player on its team each spring with the Bresee Award.
Bresee Tower is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
The classical revival-style tower has been vacant since the previous owners forced business tenants out and closed the building in 2005. Potential development proposals through the years never materialized. Different developers tried redevelopment, but it was largely too costly.
The city now has ownership.
Joanne Bresee Foley, 96, of Champaign, daughter of Paul Kirk Bresee, says she can’t remember why her father bought the building except he thought it would be fun to have a big building.
“Real estate was a hobby for him. After he got it, it was sort of an albatross. The only way to get rid of it was to sell it with the radio station — WIAI. Too bad it’s still named the Bresee Tower. I don’t like to be part of it, “ Foley says.
According to Foley’s daughter, Jill Kaltenthaler, who now lives in Michigan, “I worked at the radio station in the early 1980s. WIAI stood for Wonderful Illinois And Indiana. The space where the radio station was, was very small. It was a narrow building, and there were only about five rooms that comprise the whole office. The studio, the library… There was an office for the ad salesman, a small front entry and an office for the general manager.”
To get information for the radio, they would go downstairs to the commodity broker in the lobby area, which had been a bank, and cut things off the Commodity News Service (CNS) wire.
“I would cut those and read them for the farm reports. It was a big deal since I was 20 years old and interning for the summer…,” according to Kaltenthaler.
Abraham Lincoln also is tied to Bresee Tower’s location. Lincoln occupied offices in a building on the site while practicing law in the Eighth Judicial District from 1847-1859.
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