A Treasury Of… Minneapolis Fashion and Interior Design Blog

My parents have lived in Florida for five years and when I visit them its become a tradition for them to drive me to the abandoned Old Colony hotel where I would cross the No Trespassing tape to take photographs while they patiently waited in the car.

It unintentionally became a tradition because three years ago my parents mentioned the building was to be leveled soon so a strip-mall could take its place – but every time I came back, the pink battered beauty was still standing. I felt I owed it to her, and to the postcard perfect vision of old Florida, and to the way America used to sparkle, to continue to photograph her as long as it was still possible.

The day before Mother’s Day, my mother e-mailed me this:

“at 7 a.m. this morning, the Colony Plaza motel that the Disney people stayed at while building Disney World will be destroyed and the pink motel will be no more.  Good thing you got your pictures of that piece of history while you were here.

i sure do love you, my heart.

-mom”

And then an hour later she sent this:

“They televised the implosion live. The building went down at 7:10 with a thousand pounds of dynamite sticks that were set off from the ground floor up. It sounded like a series of 20 loud gun shots, and then the building dropped and there was a huge cloud of dust that they said would be picked up by dopplar radar because it is so large. Interestingly, it was 41 years ago that there was a press conference at the hotel where there was a world-wide announcement about the construction of Disney World, so it really was a historic landmark. It will now become a shopping center. Hundreds of people were lined up to watch the implosion. They said it looked like a fourth of July parade turnout.”

Sometimes I feel like just about everything postcard perfect is being leveled by a thousand pounds of dynamite sticks, merely to be replaced by a closer Barnes & Noble or a larger Verizon Wireless store. All we can do, friends, is whip out our cameras and save what we can.

Indexed Under: Design, Happiness, Perfect Places, Will