Update: As can be seen on site - the building is
no more. It was taken down March 14, 2005. Bummer.
The Fox Building, located at 40 North 4th Street,
is an important example of commercial use of a Mission Revival
building. Designed by Louis Lenzen it was the location of the
Fox-Markovits Company from 1894 to 1947. One of San Jose's pioneer
metals dealers, they concentrated on salvaging scrap metal and
related industrial materials decades before the word “recycling”
came into common use.
| Before |
After |
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The building was rebuilt in 1919
and served for many years until the expanding company moved their
operations to a larger site on Old Oakland Road.
This historic building has been
found eligible for the California Register of Historic Buildings;
it is also eligible for City Landmark status. Plans for the site
have varied greatly over the years. The site was first proposed as
the new home of the San Jose Symphony. When those plans evaporated
(as did the Symphony for a while), the City decided to build a
parking garage instead, to house cars for the new Civic Center.
The 300-member Preservation
Action Council heard of the city's plans and filed a law suit. In
March 2004 a judge ruled that the city had violated the California
Environmental Quality Act and told city officials they must search
for other garage sites and consider relocating the three-story
Mission revival building. (Kelley Historical Park, the grave yard
for historic and obsolete buildings, comes to mind)
Why did the city officials decide
to demolish the Fox Building? Well, the parking structure was
originally planed to replace the Houghton Donner house. Once called
“the most historic building in San Jose”, its present location is
at 156 E. St. John St. The threat to the historic house, which is
of a late -Victorian Italianate style and was home to two
historically important San Joseans, early mayor Sherman Houghton
and his wife, Donner Party survivor Eliza Donner Houghton, caused a
public outcry, too.
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The San Jose Mercury News
editorialized: |
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“It’s beginning to look as if the City’s
preservation strategy is mainly Buildings on Wheels. . . . Now the
homestead of a Donner party survivor . . . stands in the way of a
housing and parking garage project at Fourth and St. John streets.
Movers, start your engines!"
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“. . . Perhaps the 120-year-old Victorian can be
saved by just shifting it a bit on site. We hope so. It’s genuinely
historic — the Donner connection is only one element of its history
— and even after being cut up into apartments, it’s still easy to
envision its elegant past. >
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“Moving historic buildings should be a last resort.
San Jose has always relied too much on it. . .
.
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“The trick to real historic preservation isn’t
putting buildings on wheels. It’s noting where they are — and not
planning to build something else on the
spot.” |
Today the Fox Building looks rather sad, is in
various stages of decay, surrounded by vacant lots and in the
shadow of the fancy new Town Hall building.
Locationless cache alert:
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To the right is a partly hidden sign for a car wash
- I think it would pass as a googie
view
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Further down the street is a huge mural,
right behind the filling station.
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The building itself looks a bit like the trusted
old Alamo.
Sorry, taken already. Guess who?
The cache is magnetic and is located at shoulder
height behind a sign at the corner of the fence. Since this is a
rather public location, please use your stealth approach and
pretend to be impressed - or saddened - by the Fox Building.
EDIT 03/05/05 Horwedel just reported: The building will be
coming down in the next month or so. While the City lost the first
law suit, Judge Nichols agreed that the City made the neccessary
corrections to the process and the EIR was found adequate to
demolish the building.
This is of course correct,
I missed a San Jose Mercury News article from 12/7/04
EDIT 03/14/05: A trusted source tells me the building is coming
down this week. :-(
EDIT 1/17/06: Some semi-good news
about the fate of the building was published in the Mercury News
today.