DANVIILE– One of Danville’s most striking landmarks is slowly being torn down. With the demolition of Bresee Tower, the city is losing a symbol of its past prosperity, while gaining a site that could be a part of its future growth.
The demolition of the 12-story downtown office building began in early May. With no explosives involved in the process, city officials say it could take months for a demolition crew to remove the long-vacant building.
In its first few days on the job, a demolition crew focused on Bresee Tower’s north side, tearing down the fire escape, and punching through walls.
Danville resident Barbara Young came to watch the crew work on its first day. Until her retirement, she worked in Vermilion County government offices in the now-demolished Courthouse Annex that was attached to Bresee Tower.
“It was always the landmark for the community, when you were coming up (U.S. Route) 150, from a distance you could see,” she said. “And for me, when I moved away (for) ten years, and I’d come back to the area, it was always comforting and soothing to see this building, because you knew you were home.”
But while it’s been a Danville landmark, Bresee Tower has been vacant since 2005, except for broadcast and telecom towers on the roof (those towers, which were removed a few years ago, included one for the Danville repeater station for WILL-FM).
History of a downtown Danville landmark
Bresee Tower’s heyday was in the early to mid-20th century. It was built in 1918, from a design by the Chicago firm architectural firm of Mundie & Jensen, designer of several early skyscrapers in Chicago’s Loop area. It was built as an office building anchored by the First National Bank of Danville, replacing an earlier, smaller building on the site.
That site was a narrow one, hemmed in by existing buildings, but the new building towered above them, 12 stories high. In addition to its height, the new First National Bank building featured a gleaming white terra cotta façade in a Classical Revival style on two of its sides.
Sue Richter, director of the Vermilion County Museum, said the building had a prime location on what was then Danville’s town square, at the corner of Main and Vermilion Streets.
“It was really a focal point for activities in town,” said Richter. “The bigger stores were down there. The banks and savings and loans were down there, so it really made a hub, and especially with the courthouse being there right across the street.”
From First National Bank to Bresee, and decline
Richter said the building’s golden age ended in the late 1960’s or early 70’s. By that time, the First National Bank had moved out of the building, and it was renamed Bresee Tower, for its new owners, local businessman Paul Bresee and his brother “Tiz”.
Meanwhile, the city’s population was peaking. The 1970 U.S. Census counted 42,570 people in Danville. By 2020, the population had fallen to 29,204. The loss of people went hand in hand with a loss of businesses. Bresee Tower, which housed doctors, attorneys, a commodity brokerage firm, corporate offices for the Grab It Here grocery store chain and radio station WIAI (founded by Paul Bresee in 1970), began to lose tenants.
The building went through a series of owners, while its condition deteriorated. That led one owner, Corbin Financial Corp. in Kentucky, to force the last of the tenants out of the building in 2005. The building’s rooftop transmitter towers remained, but except for those, Bresee Tower has been empty ever since.
Demolish and redevelop
Efforts continued to preserve the building and to find a developer who would restore and reopen the building. But now, pieces of its terra cotta façade were occasionally falling fall to the street, causing a hazard for passersby. City officials erected structures to protect pedestrians from the falling debris, and began thinking that demolition was the most realistic option.
Danville’s previous mayor, Scott Eisenhauer, had warned that demolition might be necessary unless Bresee Tower was repaired. Current mayor Rickey Williams Junior says with apparently no one ready to foot the bill, demolition was the best option.
“I’ll do all that I can to honor history, but leaving the building falling into the street is not honorable”, he said. “It never can serve any modern purposes. To fix it would be $25-30 million. That would be irresponsible and terrible stewardship and if you tear it down, it leaves space for something else.”
The city of Danville has torn down hundreds of dilapidated buildings in recent years, but Bresee Tower may be their largest project. The city acquired the building in 2023, after a court battle with its final private owner, Chris Collins, who held out hope of saving the building, but lacked the financing to do so.
Williams says the city is spending about $1.2 million to tear down Bresee Tower. The Vermilion County Courthouse Annex, which was attached to the tower, was torn down in April at the county’s expense. Another structure next door, Danville’s municipal building, is also slated for demolition. The city has acquired the Old National Bank building across Main Street, which it plans to convert into its new city hall.
The result will be a block of property in downtown Danville that’s ready for redevelopment.
Hope for downtown Danville’s future
Kim Kuchenbrod with the local business group Downtown Danville Incorporated, is looking forward to that redevelopment. The downtown area, once Danville’s main shopping district, is now home to an eclectic mix of mostly independent shops and services — but also many vacant buildings and lots. Kuchenbrod notes that Bresee Tower has been one of those vacant buildings for many years.
“When you look at it, yes, there’s probably some history with it, and it’s the landmark for the downtown area, but what was the economic impact it was making?”, she asks.
Downtown Danville Inc. once participated in efforts to reopen Bresee Tower, but Kuchenbrod said she’s looking forward to whatever new development that local government officials will be able to attract to the site, once Bresee is demolished.
“Maybe a combination of a retail space with loft apartments, executive apartments,” she added. “Downtown living is a possibility, so I have no doubt that they’re going to be looking for the right investor to redevelop that place.”
Kuchenbrod’s hopes for downtown Danville are shared by former state representative and Vermilion County Board chairman Mike Marron. He remembers the latter days of downtown as a shopping district, when a block of Vermilion Street was a pedestrian mall, and stores such as J.C. Penney’s attracted customers. Even earlier than that, Marron said his father worked at Bresee Tower.
“There was a commodity brokerage firm, I think, on the first floor. I know my dad — that would have been before I was born — he got to start working at the commodity brokerage firm there,” he recalled. “He would go to the junior college (Danville Area Community College) and then come back after school and go to work at that firm.”
Today, Marron is president and CEO of the chamber of commerce group Vermilion Advantage, with an office just a short walk to the south of Bresee Tower. He’s looking forward to exploring new ideas for the downtown area, including a recent proposal from the Danville Library Foundation to make the area into a cultural district designed to entice visitors back to the area.
The idea makes use of existing downtown cultural institutions, such as the library, the Danville War Museum and the Fischer Theatre, as well as nearby features such as the Vermilion riverfront and the city’s 60-acre Ellsworth Park.
“There’s going to be a little bit of a lift getting all the stakeholders on board, with getting that done and actually being successful,” said Marron. “But it’s a great idea, and some really creative minds got together and put a really cool plan together.”
The significance of Bresee Tower
Marron said Bresee Tower will be missed. Since the news spread about the demolition plans, he’s been seeing a lot of comments on social media-some accompanied by aerial photos of the building taken with drones. Bresee Tower reminds people of a time when Danville was a growing community, according to Marron.
“To some people, it may be a vacant building that has been empty since 2006, and needs to come down,” he explained. “But for a large majority of the people in Danville, it represents another time, when things maybe weren’t as economically challenged as what we face now. It’s hard for a lot of people to let go, and I understand that.”
One of those people is Barbara Young, the retired county employee who came to watch the beginning of the demolition of Bresee Tower.
“I mean, it’s just, it was just a beautiful building,” she said. “It’s just not a good end for it.