A farewell to 1741 Main

The Herald-Tribune — and by extension, Unravel — has moved out of the iconic glass building at 1741 Main Street … all the way next door, to a few floors of the SunTrust building. We don’t need the space we once did, and our former owners would rather sell the building than let us squat in it, for some reason. Sigh.

So we thought we’d put together a little farewell post for 1741 Main. From the peculiar “eggs” out front — actually a changeable sculpture titled “Ellipsota,” by artist Robert Chambers — to the accordion roof that led to some peculiar acoustics on the third floor, it’s been a memorable place to work. Here are some things we’ll miss, or perhaps won’t miss, about the building.

Ellipses, ellipses everywhere

Those eggs out front are actually just part of a design element that is carried throughout the building. Like Disney’s “Hidden Mickeys,” once you start seeing them, more appear. There’s an elliptical railing around the open staircase connecting the middle of the third-floor newsroom to the second-floor advertising area. There are subtle white ellipses in relief on the north and south interior walls of the newsroom. The pattern in the elevator floors? That’s right, a big ellipse. Even the exposed A/C ducts on the third floor are elliptical, and I literally realized this on one of my last days in the building. After working there for a decade.

The Screeching Staircase

 

Nope, this isn’t a discarded Harry Potter plot point. Users of the north staircase at the Herald-Tribune building were frequently treated to peculiar shrieking sounds. The culprit? No monster, no murder taking place behind a hidden trapdoor, just the “Super Bird XPeller Pro,” apparently intended to keep avian invaders from colonizing the rooftop.

 

 

Glorious sunsets/moonrise kingdom

If you follow any Unraveler on Instagram, you’ve probably seen a sunset photo taken from the balcony, or even from inside the building. The west-facing windows made for a colorful close to the workday for day-shift folks, while those of us who burn the midnight oil were occasionally treated to fantastic full-moon gazing to the east. The unfortunate corollary: A blinding glare from the afternoon sun, which seemed to hit its peak brightness just as the “smart” shades decided it was time to roll up for the evening. But overall, we’ll definitely miss the eleventy-zillion windows that lined our walls.

#HTsunset

A post shared by Kathryn Naufragous (@thrynkat) on Oct 29, 2015 at 4:04pm PDT

 

 

Roof “features”

In the halcyon days of 2007, when I started working here, I noticed an odd acoustic situation. I could sometimes hear people sitting halfway across the room more clearly than I could my copy desk colleagues just a few desks away. The culprit? That interesting accordion roof. Blame the accordion shape or just wear and tear from Florida thunderstorms, but weird acoustics were just the start …

 

 

 

 

The infinite flush

Overall, it probably benefited us all that the bathrooms were designed with auto-flushing toilets. But at least one of the toilets occasionally flushed repeatedly when not in use, sometimes for hours on end. It’s hard to even begin to fathom how much water was wasted.

Purposeful design

 

For all the quirks, working here has been a pleasure. The building was purpose-designed to house a news organization, with an ingenious filing cabinet system that rolled along tracks in the floor for our back materials and “morgue” of the past year’s papers and an open floor plan that encouraged collaboration and communication. And so far as we know, the building’s still on the market.

It might make for a cool co-work space. I always thought the lobby, with its high ceilings, had potential as a brewery. It would be a shame to see our former home razed to make way for yet another condo tower. And maybe the eggs will hatch someday.