That could be the motto of downtown Lancaster these days, where construction crews have been tearing down their share of buildings in order to make way for new projects.


Oblender’s Furniture on South Queen Street, gone. The old AAA building on North Prince Street, gone. The adjoining Pennsylvania Academy of Music, gone, to be replaced by a newer and grander structure that will also occupy the old AAA site.


None of these places were architectural jewels — though the AAA building had a retro 1960s charm — but all of them held memories from people who worked there, did business there or, in the case of Academy students, learned there ... for every building, from palace to hut, beautiful or ugly, has a human legacy.


Which got me thinking about my own humble home, a small side-street rowhouse built in the 1850s.


It’s a simple structure, not even 20 feet wide and with none of the grand interior woodwork or exterior cornices that would grace many of Lancaster’s later city abodes. But if these walls could speak ...


This house has witnessed — for I believe that buildings, like ships, have souls — eight wars, boom (the Roaring ’20s), bust (the Great Depression) and the turn of two centuries, among other things. Generations have lived there, no doubt died there and maybe gave birth there.


Did a mother stand in the front doorway, seeing her son off to the Civil War? How did the occupants celebrate when 1899 became 1900? Did a neighbor knock on the door with news that the Titanic had sunk? Did anyone die in my house during the great influenza pandemic of 1918?


Was beer or bathtub gin illegally enjoyed within during Prohibition? Did a father come home with news his job had been wiped out after the Crash of 1929? Did his family gather around the radio listening with hope to FDR’s “Fireside Chats” and with heavy hearts when news of Pearl Harbor was broadcast? How many wives and sweethearts sat near the living room window, awaiting letters from their boys in World War II, Korea, Vietnam?


And on a lighter note, how many changing phases of design have graced the interior? Did the floors once groan under the weight of heavy Victorian furniture? Did some style-minded woman redecorate the front bedroom in 1930s art deco? Did somebody ever buy a funky 1950s living room suite to go with the new Philco TV (complete with antenna)?


Did a bead curtain and psychedelic posters ever hang anywhere inside?


And, as I discovered when I had the carpeting torn up and replaced, who painted the original wood plank floors underneath a hideous shade of blood red?


How many kids scampered off to the nearby school; how many pets romped in the little back yard? And what did anyone living there do at holiday dinner time, because you can’t squeeze more than four people, tops, into that tiny dining room.


Someday, I’ll no doubt move; others will take my place and surely, whenever, my house will be torn down, to make room for something else.


It will be gone, but no place, however big or small, is ever totally forgotten.


Stephen Kopfinger is a staff writer for the Living section. Write to him at skopfinger@lnpnews.com. blog comments powered by Disqus