PHOTOS OF THE DEMOLITION OF THE HANSELMAN BUILDING IN KALAMAZOO, MICHIGAN

PHOTOS OF THE DEMOLITION OF THE HANSELMAN BUILDING IN KALAMAZOO, MICHIGAN. The Hanselman Building, which stood at one corner of Kalamazoo;s main downtown intersection for better than 60 years, was a dream come true to its original owner. George Hanselman had been sent packing by police when he set up a peanut stand at that location (the northwest corner of Burdick and Main, now Michigan) in the late 1800's, but he vowed to return and build his own building there. By 1910, Hanselman was a successful candy merchant and was able to make his dream a reality by construction of the ten-story Hanselman Building (the tallest in southwest Michigan), which was ready for occupancy by 1913. In 1958, the Hanselman Building was sold to a group of Chicago investors, and in the summer of 1973, the City of Kalamazoo purchased the building with monies donated by interested citizens in order to raze it to make way for Kalamazoo Center complex. A well-documented, controlled explosion sent the ten-story building tumbling into its own basement on December 30, 1973, to make way for yet another dream. And, like the dream of George Hanselman more than 60 years earlier, the 1973 dream brings something that in its own day and way will be as pace-setting as the skyscraper Hanselman brought to what was then, as now, a forward-looking community. 19 photos (7 x 5 inches) in binder. Vg cond.