• Category Archives: Architecture

Livingston at Dayton

This was hardly the most iconic Trachte building in the neighborhood. Much of its siding had been replaced and also the roof. It was always getting tagged with spray paint. And I’m not sure it was being used for anything. It was torn down in June to make way for another big apartment complex.

Prepping the building for takedown.
They cut off the bottom strip first.
One side left.

Another one bites the dust

It has not been a good season for Trachte buildings, the indigenous metal buildings that were once made in the company’s Dickinson St./Mifflin St. headquarters (mostly, although not entirely, still extant). They can still be seen all over east Madison, but they are nearing the end of their useful lives, and they are going.

A Trachte building being used as a used car lot office on East Washington Avenue came down in late August, as did one at E. Doty and Livingston Street. Now I see that this former auto-body repair shop (long empty) on 113 near Murphy’s (aka Top of the Swamp, aka the Bavarian Inn) is gone.

I took this photo of it a couple of years ago in the spring, with the VUWS (Vivitar Ultra Wide and Slim), a cheap plastic film camera that has an improbably wide-angle lens and vignetting.