I was at Drexel in the 80s, and always thought the Shaft was mythical. I didn't realize that that stupid flame thing was our official representaiton of the Shaft.

I was in the first class to get a Macintosh, though- still have it- with its powerful 128K ram and 440K floppy drive, and the Drexel "D" underneath the screen.

It was taken down as part of a series of power infrastructure improvements on Amtrak's Northeast Corridor line, for which Amtrak got some $25 million in federal stimulus money.

Corrections:
The building (and shaft) in question is on land owned by the railroad and has no association with Drexel.
It hasn't been in use in decades.
They're using the land for a parking lot.

I graduated in mid 1980s. I could see this chimney from my dorm. We never had a name for it other than the chimney. The shaft was always the fountain in the quad--the same fountain that somebody added dish detergent to one spring. Bubbles floated over the entire campus. One Christmas someone added cutout snow flakes. Festive!

I also remember the rainy night when the first Apple Macintosh computers were unloaded at the armory. Drexel was the first university to require its students to have a "microcomputer." The incoming freshman class was required to buy Macintoshes through the school. I didn't know what a Macintosh was, but I wanted one.

Mmmm.. lasagna.

+1

Is it really intensional?

@Xerloq, we are all made of stars.: this is why you should seek a doctor after those 4 hours...

why not demo the whole plant?

not in slo-mo either =(

The fountain you are referring to got moved when they renovated the quad a few years ago. The fountain is now in front of North Hall.

@Oranges w/ Cheese has 2 cats! ahahaha.: Yeah - first time I've ever seen anything allowed to fall over like that instead of set up to implode down onto itself...must be a lot of open real estate up there.

I was also there the year they painted the grass (what grass there was) green so it would look better for graduation day.

Drexel Shaft falls down
Beautiful dust cloud, Come FORTH!
Future is now bright

They're always complicated for me, in that the structures tend to be creations of industry that damaged a lot of people while unfairly enriching others; on the other hand, that's pretty much what most industry of that era did, and it's how cities thrived, so the abandonment of such buildings is really haunting, even if just for marking the end of an era at best. The dinosaur steel mills around Lake Michigan's south shore are incredibly depressing. (On the other hand, the destruction of Chicago's Taylor Homes brings me no such ambivalence.)

But the whole "Queen ripped off Vanilla Ice" line of thought makes my feathers CRAWL.

@DGberg:

Wow! I listen to this podcast everyday by Preston and Steve. I always hear them talking about these buildings.

Thanks for the info!

Actually, the glas building in the video is the Cira Centre, adjacent to 30th Street Station.

The Comcast Center building is downtown and is significantly taller (but not as cool looking, IMO).

@savvy999:

The Cira center is actually pretty far from the smoke stack--the long focal length used to shoot this compresses the perspective.

It would be a nice fail, though.

Seriously, why the music? I wanted to hear the crashing sounds. And as Oranges said, I hope that was planned to topple in that direction. Everytime I've seen any demo's they usually just fall in on themselves. Otherwise, they usually end up hitting things they weren't supposed to.

Maybe it was because they had all that space next to the tower?

Otherwise, nice job.

That was cool to see the glass shake.

@idip:

Watch it in HD and Full Screen. The glass shooting out of the windows is pretty cool.

This article keeps talking about this as an eyesore, but I always thought it was sort of a pretty sight from the train in a sort of Battersea Power station kind of way.
[media.www.thetriangle.org]

I like how you can see the sound wave hit the glass building right after the Shaft hits the ground.