When the 1920s were roaring, so was the borough of Braddock.

Steve Mellon, Post-Gazette Roofs are collapsing on many of the aging buildings along Braddock Avenue in Braddock. The three buildings in the left of the picture are scheduled for demolition. The building at right, with an awning, will remain. Click photo for larger image. Related coverage Some significant history is scheduled to disappear in Braddock

In the preceding 20 years, growth had boomed.

Buildings were constructed using a simple method. Brick walls were stacked up and wooden floor joists were tied into the main walls to support them, creating stately facades and sturdy buildings to match a time of unprecedented prosperity.

Barrooms, movie theaters, banks and haberdasheries lined Braddock Avenue. More than 20,000 people lived in the borough and the streetcar took them where they wanted to go.

The ensuing 80 years have not been kind.

The buildings that rose in the early part of the last century have deteriorated as the population has dwindled to fewer than 3,000.

Though the buildings were determined to be eligible for listing in the National Register of Historic Places, nothing was done to aid that process. Even the state's recognition of their historic status was withdrawn earlier this year.

Many of those buildings have collapsed. Now 23 of 75 structures considered historic are so dilapidated that their flat roofs have caved in or developed holes and the wooden floor joists have either failed or been compromised by fire or water.

Next month, demolition will begin on 15 of them. History is being cleared out to make room for the prospect of economic development in the future.

While some of the buildings are obviously on the verge of collapse, others appear to be stable until seen from above. Then it's clear they cannot be saved.

"That's the ravage of time that sneaks up on you," said Henry Hanson, an architect who has done a redevelopment survey of Braddock. "We've seen a lot of buildings, for example in Homestead, that appear from the street to be OK."

Hanson said those buildings look very different from above the roof line.

"It becomes evident the tragedy that is happening from behind," he said.

	Darrell Sapp, Post-Gazette Top: The Main Hotel at 1000 Braddock Ave. in Braddock was known as the Hotel Lloyd when it opened in the late 19th century. It had 27 rooms and one shared shower. Bottom: One of four gargoyle faces on the front of the Old Hotel at 1000 Braddock Ave. in Braddock. Click photo for larger image.

Walking down Braddock Avenue, one sees the dilapidation of the buildings by looking in through their windows. With many, the sky is visible through openings where ceilings should be. Still, the strong-looking brick fronts remain mostly intact.

The worst, by far, is the former Russo's Beauty Shop at 707 Braddock Ave. From above it looks like a square of pink brick with nothing inside, like stacked Legos, clearly just an empty shell of a building.

The money earmarked for demolishing the vestiges of Braddock's boom time will come from the settlement of a housing discrimination lawsuit. It was supposed to pay for the economic revitalization of seven blighted communities, including Braddock.

That money, $490,000, was for the Sanders Task Force, which was set up as part of a 1994 settlement of a housing segregation lawsuit in which the plaintiffs claimed that black residents in public housing were steered to those seven communities.

The state of the buildings in Braddock has been holding the borough back from economic development.

Hanson, who did the redevelopment survey for the Sanders Task Force, said the buildings create "a blighted condition that would inhibit economic development."

He said once they are down and all of those separate parcels are joined into larger properties, it will open up more fertile ground for businesses to grow along the avenue.

The low bid for the demolition was $338,000, an amount that is guaranteed to increase, said Noreen Kelly, executive director of the Turtle Creek Valley Council of Governments, which is administering the money.

The cost will rise, Kelly said, because the buildings are so dangerously dilapidated that no one could get inside to assess how much asbestos needs to be removed.

Hanson said when he was surveying Braddock, his team had hoped to save at least a few buildings, such as those at the corners, to keep an historic feel to the street.

"We felt at this point in time a traditional renovation of a commercial downtown historic street was not realistic," he said.

Steve Mellon, Post-Gazette The Peter Seewald house at 316 Ninth St. in Braddock is scheduled to be demolished. Click photo for larger image.

One property he had wanted to save was the Main Hotel at 1000 Braddock Ave. The hotel, which had 27 rooms, had only one shared shower.

The buildings that will be left when the 15 are torn down do not represent a thriving metropolis. Secondhand stores and pawnshops line Braddock Avenue from Sixth Street to the North Braddock line. A.J. Silberman and Bell's Market, the two largest businesses along that strip of the street, are wholesale food businesses, though Bell's also does a retail trade.

Another seven buildings with collapsed roofs are deemed "economically and structurally unsalvageable," too, according to a report prepared for Allegheny County by Charles Uhl, the president of Historic Preservation Services.

The former Alexander's Market, which at one time was a theater, is not slated for demolition despite the fact that the building's roof has completely caved in. It will have to wait for more money.

Uhl said the determination that the street was eligible for the National Register was never supported by documentation. In fact, he said, the area should never have had a similar state designation because when the proposal was made in 1989, it was already blighted.

"It was a bureaucratic designation that these same bureaucrats reverted," he said, noting there was never public comment either to determine if it was historic or to remove that determination.

He said saving those buildings would now cost thousands of dollars because the joists are all deteriorated, which means the entire structure is unstable.

"If the wood joists fail, it's not held together side to side," he said. "It's three, four or five stories of stacked bricks that are waving around in the air."

Kelly said the demolitions should start the middle of next month, if a wind doesn't take some of the buildings down first.