It's never a good sign when a building demolition makes the front page.
"Wrecking ball wins fight over old church," is the headline in today's Herald.
The church was St. Steven's Episcopal Church in Coconut Grove, built in 1912 and said to be the oldest church building in Miami.
I'd been following the stories about saving the Bacardi buildings on Biscayne Boulevard and had not heard about the mission-style church in the Grove. There are numerous excuses: it was never declared an historic building; mold had been found in the walls; space was needed for classrooms.
But none of them cut it - not in a city as lacking in historic landmarks as Miami. How can you simply bulldoze the past, wipe away nearly a century of memories? Think of all the people who were baptized, confirmed, married in that church. (I know at least one.) A building that was built in the same year that Flagler's Florida Overseas Railroad reached Key West is no more. And every South Floridian is the poorer for it.
