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City enjoys historic skyline
Mark Webb/The Herald-Dispatch Huntington’s downtown skyline still features many of the historic buildings from the boom days of the 1910s and ’20s, including three of the tallest shown above.
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HUNTINGTON -- It's in the grandeur of the Keith-Albee Performing Arts Center, beneath the pillars of the Huntington Junior College, and at the top of the West Virginia Building.
The beauty of downtown Huntington is evident throughout, though often overlooked, some local architects and historians say.
"Architecturally, Huntington is under-appreciated -- the whole downtown," said Alan Gould, retired executive director of Drinko Academy at Marshall University. "The entire downtown area is truly remarkable. If people really take the time to look at the edifices and the architectural design, some are quite striking."
In a series of occasional stories that begins today on the Business page, The Herald-Dispatch will take a look at some of downtown Huntington's historic structures. They are many, and they are filled with lessons to be learned about the city's past. The Coal Exchange Building on the corner of 4th Avenue and 11th Street, for example, is the former C & O Building that housed business offices for the Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad. The building that houses the Marshall Hall of Fame Cafe used to house Huntington Dry Goods Co., Gould said.
The Frederick Hotel had Turkish baths, hot vapor rooms and all variations of retailers throughout. Then there's the array of grand church buildings.
Keith Dean, an architect in Huntington for more than 50 years, can discuss several handsome buildings in the city, all noteworthy for different reasons. There's the Hines Building in the 900 block of 5th Avenue, which was an architectural feat as an early parking garage, built back in 1925. His father, Levi Dean, designed the old Reuschlein Jewerly building at 825 4th Ave. back in 1927.
He also likes City Hall and several others.
"Downtown Huntington is truly fortunate to have so many wonderful structures dating from an earlier day," said Jim Casto, a local historian and retired associate editor of The Herald-Dispatch. "While the urban renewal projects of the 1970s claimed many of the downtown's oldest buildings, we still are blessed with a number of handsome structures, some dating back to the 1890s and others built during the city's boom years of the 1920s.
"I suspect few other downtowns, large or small, could boast such a broad array of architectural styles, from the grand churches along 5th Avenue to the opulent Keith-Albee Theater, from the imposing Cabell County Courthouse and Huntington City Hall to the former Frederick Hotel, the Masonic Temple and others. In the Campbell-Hicks House and the sadly deteriorating Coin Harvey House we even have reminders of when downtown was once a prime residential area."
Of course, having these buildings also presents Huntington with a tremendous responsibility, he said.
"We need to do everything within our power to preserve and protect them for future generations," he said. "We've already lost too many of them. We can't afford to lose any more."
Gould sat on a commission that helped set up an historic tax district in Huntington. It zig-zags a bit, but roughly, its boundaries are from 6th Avenue to the Ohio River and 7th Street to 11th Street.
Developers can get credits for bringing new life to the properties within the district. That's something that architect Phoebe Patton Randolph would like to see more.
"I think it's important to see more upper-story residential and commercial development," she said. "It's exciting to see what Phil Nelson and Jim Weiler are doing with the old Dickinson Furniture building and the Love Hardware building, but we need more of that."
She also likes what's happening with some of the properties across 3rd Avenue from Pullman Square. "People have invested in that. They feel comfortable and safe," she said. And she hopes the Old Main Corridor renovation project on 4th Avenue will encourage more developers.
When community redevelopment expert Vaughn Grisham, who lives in Mississippi, came to Huntington recently, the first thing he said is that Huntington has a great inventory of architecture, and that's one of the city's greatest assets, Randolph said.
"A lot of these buildings are perfect -- they just need investment," she said. "You can tell if a place is loved if people have invested in it -- instead of taking things out, to put things in.
"From a sustainability standpoint, it makes so much more sense to invest in existing buildings," she said. They already have water and sewer lines, and roads leading to them.
"It takes investment to get them up to code," she said. "A lot of those buildings only have one egress (stairs or exits) and you have to have two. You have to put in a second stairway, and that gets expensive.
"The issue of accessibility and upgrading elevators, those too are big costs that are deterrents for some people to take on those types of projects."
But the long-term benefit is there, she said.
Gould said he'd like to see a committee set up to look at how to use the territory.
"We should be a regional hub in everything you can think of, if we could get our act together -- retail, business. We could be an educational hub, too, if the community college could be downtown someplace," Gould said. "There's plenty of potential for growth. Other towns have gone through this and have found ways of reallocating the use of space."
