The Elegance of Endurance
The building is ordinary in the way things built to last often are. Red brick, symmetrical windows, a cornice that catches the light just so. It does not ask to be noticed, but it is still here, standing while so much else has vanished. The door is heavy, the kind that sticks in the summer and swells in the rain. Someone once stepped through it every evening at the same time, turned a key, shook off the cold. Now the brass handle is dulled by years of hands that no longer belong to anyone who remembers the first ones.
It was never grand, never the kind of place people wrote about, but there is something in its restraint, in the quiet dignity of brick laid straight and true. It holds its shape, outlasting its architects, its tenants, the city that built itself taller and shinier around it. One day, it will be gone too, replaced by something smoother, something that forgets itself. But for now, it stays.