Staring down the wrecking ball
Architecture student says it’s “heartbreaking” that a historic hospital might be demolished “out of simple greed.”
Growing up in the shadow of the Hoover Dam, Keegan Strouse has always been captivated by the history of the Depression-era buildings that once served the mammoth government project erected nearby.
At night, he and a friend would sneak into the Boulder Dam Hotel, scouting for ghosts in the inn that had played host to the likes of billionaire Howard Hughes and president Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Then, in July, the 27-year-old graduate architecture student at the University of Nevada Las Vegas read an Internet post that rocked those boyhood memories: the Boulder City Hospital, where injured dam workers were long treated, was facing the wrecking ball.
A developer and city planning commissioner, Randolph Schams, had purchased the abandoned hospital for $550,000 (U.S.). Citing its disrepair, Schams announced plans to demolish the1,350-square-metre facility and build a dozen new homes.
Strouse stared into his computer screen: The cornerstone of Boulder City’s historic district, a site listed on the National Register of Historic Places, could soon be a pile of rubble.
“It was heartbreaking to see that a piece of history would soon be demolished out of simple greed, to make way for a bunch of houses,” he said. “I had to do something about it.”
Within weeks, he scrambled to create a social media page, founded a historic preservation non-profit, researched real estate law and led a group of fellow volunteers to collect thousands of signatures on a petition against the project.
Strouse has plans for the old hospital: create a museum chronicling the Great Depression in a city he says worked hard to escape its grip.
He has become an unlikely David, taking on an imposing local personality in a battle most residents have given up for lost.
The developer, who has applied for demolition permits, says he’ll sell the property for $1.6 million if the buyer has another $2 million he says are needed for building renovations.
The hospital, the city’s first, was built in 1931 to care for dam workers. The Spanish colonial-style building, where many local residents were born, closed its doors to patients in 1977.
Strouse’s research has taught residents the vigilance needed to preserve local history: Even though the hospital is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, he discovered, it still was not legally protected against the sale and demolition.
Strouse introduced himself to Schams and the developer and organizer soon took a tour of the hospital together.
“He wanted me to see the vandalism done there over the years, but I looked past all that,” Strouse said. “In the scheme of things, a little broken drywall is like a cracked fingernail.”