Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 22, 1992 TAG: 9203220078
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: D1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
It's an ideal building for a public utility. Monopolies that operate with the government's blessing - like Apco - are shrewd enough to know they have no business in gaudy headquarters with glass and chrome and steel and airy atriums and spiral staircases and potted palms and waterfalls and chandeliers.
Apco's is a no-nonsense and unpretentious building, like those old post offices built by the Work Projects Administration. They're short on flourishes, but long on somber signs of serious business - heavy stones, thick floors and high ceilings. Come here, these buildings say, do your business and go away.
After all, what's sexy about electricity? There's darned little glamour in the generation or distribution of electrical current. Apco headquarters reflects that.
Apco's place, though, wasn't without its charm.
There's some polished granite on the facade, and - architects, forgive my layman's terms - a gigantic entranceway framed by heavy pillars that look like mutantly large tusks of ivory on end. Indeed, they looked like the gargantuan doors to the elephant house. Gulliver's front door. Kong's portal.
But oh, those doors.
Apco had, arguably, the classiest, finest front doors in all of Roanoke.
The glass was thick and heavy. The frames almost glowed, burnished as they were to an amber so deep, so lustrous and so intimidating that the angriest Apco customer was reduced to quivering fear.
Were the doors brass? Gold plated? Copper?
No matter. It was one serious threshold, and Apco knew it. An hour didn't seem to pass that some Apco worker wasn't poised there with a soft rag, rubbing, stroking, polishing. Smudges disappeared at the speed of light.
These were the doors you hoped that archaeologists would dust from the Roanoke rubble in a few thousand years. They spoke well of us.
If Mount Olympus had doors, these were them.
Even the night depository next to the entrance matched. Lift that heavy shiny mail flap and drop your check inside and you knew your money was in good hands. Serious people worked behind that flap.
The night depository is still there. Admire it while you can.
The doors are gone.
Within the past couple of weeks, the Apco entrance was renovated to comply with the Americans With Disabilities Act. The federal law took effect Jan. 26. It requires all public places to make themselves accessible to the handicapped.
That includes Apco.
Alas, the towering, behemoth Apco doors required 20 pounds of pull to open, said Charles Echols of Apco. Handicapped people could not open those 39-year-old, metal alloy doors. Shoot, anybody under 160 pounds couldn't budge 'em.
The new aluminum doors are silver. And boring. And mortal. They require only five pounds of pull to open. If you've been to a Revco, or a Blockbuster Video, or a 7-Eleven, you've seen them.
I am glad that Apco is a more accessible place now. But we sure lost some doors to do it.
by CNB