A Hole in the Sky

Today I had lunch at Subway in the Rat for the first time since Prince Hall came down, and it was kind of weird. I drive past the huge hole that Prince has been replaced by every day on the way into and out of work, and so I know it's there. I even admire it - when Washington University says they're going to dig a hole, they don't fuck around.

And I don't really think about the loss of Prince for campus. Honestly, Prince was a pretty bad building. Every interior wall was load-bearing (ha!) so the building couldn't be re-interiored and opened up. And every floor was structural, too, meaning they couldn't be taken out to make ceilings higher. Prince was just not suited to being anything other than what it was: an Oxford-style dormitory.

And so I didn't really miss it.

But then today I'm walking into the Rat and I look up past the wall that had been put in to control traffic flow back when it was a bar. And it just looked...blue. And empty. It used to be you could see the peak of the roof of Prince, and its old chimneys. Now there's nothing. No dust, no buildings, no trees - just sky. And there were no clouds around today, so the sky was unbroken. A solid light blue mass where a building used to be.

I don't really miss Prince Hall. Or, more accurately, I don't think I do. It's sort of like how an old tree falls down in your neighborhood. You didn't notice the tree, and maybe you didn't even like it. But now that it's gone, you have to wonder whether you miss it, whether you cared for it, whether you should plant another one, or whether you should just ignore that big gap and hope that something will just spontaneously show up and fill it again.