It could be construed as an ignominious honor, but Honest Joe’s was the most famous pawn shop in Deep Ellum back in the day. Stories about “Rocky” Goldstein driving his insanely decorated station wagon around town with a 50 caliber gun mounted to the hood and playing poker in the back room with Dallas political figures are a part of the fiber of Dallas. According to the Dallas Appraisal District Edward Goldstein is the current owner and he has let his apparent legacy languish unused and poorly maintained until it is now falling to pieces.

This is a more familiar image of what the building looked like.

This is what happened around 6pm on Sunday, July 1.

The recent freakish storms were the trigger of the collapse, but it is evident that it took years of neglect to get to this point. It appears to my untrained eye that the drains were probably clogged on the flat roof, collecting thousands of pounds of water. At some point it gave way taking a large portion of the façade with it. What you cannot see in the pictures is the damage between the two buildings. It looks like there are some major structural issues and the response from the city workers pretty much confirms this hypothesis. They have since built a massive support structure to keep the building from spilling into Elm street. Recently there has been some fairly squirrelly looking people hanging around that space and 2515 Elm, so maybe the attention on his properties will lead to a moving day for those cats.

This is not an isolated case, there is much of Deep Ellum’s intriguing history that is in the hands of people who are unable or unwilling to preserve it. No one seems to give a fiddley shit, so I guess bring on the fucking bulldozers.