The Birmingham age-herald., 1916-01-23
|PASSAGEWAY ALONG GMAJEST|C THEATRE IS
 THE HOOD bU|LDlNG|SO[D ID PUTZ BY RESTORES TRAFFIC CLARK FOR $150,000
Owners Had Already Given Contract for Repairs When Ropes Were
 Ordered Stretched

1 Commissioner Barber ordered the
 roping in of the sidewalk on all sides
 of the Hood building, Third avenue and Twentieth street, yesterday at noon and refused to allow pedestrians to use
 the sidewalk or enter any of the stores
 until steps had been taken by the own
 CTS of the property to make the outside parapet wall and cornice of the Build | ing safe.
 i The roping off of the sidewalk and | the exclusion of pedestrians was or dered by Commissioner Barber when
 Building Inspector Matthews and City Engineer Kendrick officially notified him that the cornice of the building was dangerous and was liable to cause | injury to citizens in the event any part of it fell to the street. Four hours | after the roping off of the street a crew of men was at work building a shed over the sidewalk so as to pro- tect the citizens from any falling l cement or plaster. By 8 o'clock last night the shed had been completed and the stores had already resumed busi- | ness.
 l Commissioner Barber stated last l | tion when he saw letter sent to 1 Mosely, Henderson & Davis, agents of ! the building, informing them that the I cornice was unsafe and would have to i be repaired at once.
 q ordered the roping off of the street
 as soon as City Engineer Kendrick and l Building Inspector Matthews called my attention to the matter officially,
 he said. T consider my action one that | accrues to the benefit of the owners as we'll as the citizens. When it comes | to the possible loss of life by tns falling of piece of the cornice. when this defect could be repaired in short
 while, l could see no other course eX- cept to rope off the sidewalk and con demn the cornice as unsafe. l realize
 the action I took hurt those occupying
 the stores on the ground floor of the 1 building, but nothing else could be done.''
 l John w. Patton, one of the lessees of the building, stated that he knew MT. Barber had to take the action that he did and that some of the cornice had
 fallen into the street during the past i few weeks. One of these pieces that l fell from the top of the building struck an electric sign on the Third avenue side and damaged it slightly" said MI. 1 Patton "Of course, the roping off of the streets has worked a hardship on | us tenentS, put l I6el that tHlS was necessary for the protection of those who used the sidewalks adjoining the building"
 The Hood building was recently pur- chased by Richard W. Massey, Frank Nelson and Leo K. Steiner from the Saks Investment company. Richard w.
 Massey, when seen by an Age-Herald
 reporter last night. made the follow ing statement: The statement pub lished this afternoon to the effect that I the Hood building was unsafe was mis- ! leading The outside parapet wall on the top of the building might have been dangerous, but so far as the building 1 is concerned it is as safe as any in the
 city.
 "The first notice MT. Nelson and my self had of the danger of the cornice
 was yesterday when one of our agents called our attention to the fact. Charles Allen, contractor, was awarded the con- | tract of repairing the portion of the building deemed unsafe by the build ling inspector and would have started l to work at once had it not been nec- essary for him to wait until the walls 1 dried out The rain of last night was | an unusually heavy one and MT. Allen was going to start work as soon as possible. In a conference with MT. Bar Der Yesterday afternoon we told him l that we would build an overhead shelter on the sidewalk and he con sented to allow pedestrians to use the sidewalk upon the completion of it'