The old city hall is being torn down to make way for a building that 40 years from now doubtless will appear as much too small an insignificant as the one being removed has appeared for the past few years. Yet about the old building are clustered many memories, some of them as joyful as any that have been called up by shadows that flicker on a fire-lit wall, or are conjured up by the reminiscent elderly persons in living again through their childhood. In it too tragedy has been written, and if the walls now being razed to the ground could but give voice, many interesting chapters might be written.
The old hall has served its purpose and generation well. It is a victim of progress, and as a brick and dust return to earth, it is a reminder that man, who fashioned it, is yielding to those forces of nature which produce decay, change and progress all about us.
If the old city hall has a philosophy it ought to have prepared it for the day when past performances would be forgotten and the community which is served expected something more than a mere hull.
(From the editorial page of the Hickory Daily Record, Wednesday, Jan. 12, 1921)
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