This week in my actual column,
Dyspepsiana, I recall my time as a tenant in the Ferguson Building at Sixth and
Monroe in downtown Springfield. The building is now undergoing redevelopment by
new owners Rick and Kim Lawrence, but these worthies already have done the city
a service by removing the metal cheese-grater façade that had been tacked into
it in the 1960s.
That façade attracted more than
approving looks, and inspired this nearly serious column from my Prejudices
series that appeared Jan. 21-27, 1977.
A few years ago, when [the Springfield Central Area Development Corporation] was pushing downtown
“beautification” like a group of Bible salesmen working Death Row,
the owners of the Ferguson Building at Sixth and Monroe (the current tenant is
Haines & Essick) decided to give the nine-story structure a face-lift. They
mounted a green-and-gold-and-black lattice-on the street sides of the building.
It was considered — and is still considered by many downtown businessmen — to
be the sort of thing a smart operator does to keep up with the times. If you
can’t afford to put up a shiny new office building, the argument goes, then
cover the old dull one with aluminum. It’s cheaper and it looks almost as . . .
well, it looks almost the same.The plan to “beautify” the Ferguson Building had a
couple of flaws, though. One of them — its looks — is obvious; the building
looks like a shoebox turned on end and covered in tinfoil. The other flaw isn’t
so obvious, however. You see, the latticework they put over the old facade is a
perfect perch for birds. Dozens of birds. Hundreds of birds. The Ferguson
Building, in fact, is a de facto bird hotel.The upper stories are especially popular with the starlings,
grackles and pigeons who occasionally roost there. There is, however, no way I
can describe what it is these birds do to the latticework upon which they perch
without abandoning the elevated tone the Times’ editors work so hard (and
against such odds) to achieve. So let us pass quickly from the cause to the
effect — that is, dung, also known variously as droppings, guano, doo (my favorite)
or icky poo. It coats the lattice on the upper stories like snow on a
windowsill.Dung (to paraphrase the bard) by any other name would smell
as bad. Luckily, all the tenants of the affected floors have to do is look at
the mess. Down on the street, however, it’s a different story. Droppings
accumulate on the sidewalk and on the hats and overcoats of passersby. People
waiting for SMTD buses especially are, to continue the avian motif, sitting
ducks. (It’s a shame more architects don’t ride buses.) An irate rider recently
wrote a letter to the editor of the Journal-Register demanding in no uncertain
terms that the Illinois EPA do something to clean up what the writer described
ominously as the downtown’s “bird filth menace.”If bird filth is a menace at Sixth and Monroe, it’s a
catastrophe a block or two farther up the street. The trees planted beside the
city parking ramp at Seventh and Monroe across from the Municipal Building have
been taken over by thousands of birds. Droppings from these flocks (there are
nine trees altogether) are piled two inches deep in places along the sidewalk
and parking meters in the area are splattered so badly with dung that some
motorists would rather risk a ticket than get close enough to the meters to put
in their nickels.The bird waste is unhealthy as well as unsightly, and
pedestrians have complained to city hall. City council members have talked
informally about what might be done to clean up the mess, but they’ve reached
no decision yet.According to information coming out of the Municipal
Building, at least two of the council members have hit upon a solution that is
as cheap and simple as it is simple-minded: cut down the trees. It’s just an
idea, of course; the council may well opt for some other solution. But it seems
appropriate to point out that if the tree roosts are destroyed the birds will
just light somewhere else, perhaps even in the parking ramp nearby. If they do
move onto the ramp, what then? Tear down the ramp too? And if they move onto
the Municipal Building across the street? Must that too come down?Tempting as that last prospect is, there are better ways.
The council could make each roost subject to the local property tax, for
example. That’s made a lot of people move to the suburbs recently; I see no reason
why it shouldn’t work with birds too. If that didn’t work, the council could
threaten to annex the trees to the city, thus touching off a mass migration to
Leland Grove. Or they could appoint every bird to the Springfield Historical
Sites Commission. That way nobody would ever see or hear from them again.If all else fails, the trees could be wired for sound and
broadcasts of city council meetings piped in. By the time the council gets to
the new business the birds will have dozed off and fallen from their perches to
the ground, where they could be neatly scooped up by Humane Society volunteers
for quick transport to the edge of town.As for who will clean up the mess
the birds will have left behind. I have another idea. Hire a bureaucrat. The
city’s full of them, and they’ve been shoveling it for years.
This article appears in Dec 17-23, 2015.
