T-8, T-9 and T-15Not a dollar was wasted on T-Buildings T-8, T-9 and T-15 since their construction in 1942 during World War II, and it showed: chipped paint, leaky roofs and – at one point – feral cats bred in them.
When the Army Air Force occupied these three T-Buildings, they served as officers’ quarters. They served a practical purpose: lodge the personnel from the Air Corps Technical School of Radar, then a top-secret program.
But they weren’t practical enough to salvage, argued FAU administrators like University Architect Tom Donaudy in February 2007. So, the bulldozers came without warning – nearly 18 months ahead of schedule. Their wobbly cement foundations, pried loose by 65 years of hurricanes, shuddered as the wrecking balls drew near.
“T-10 and T-11 were already officers’ [quarters], and we needed the acreage – FAU’s Master Plan shows that it’s going to be additional athletic fields for FAU’s [A.D.] Henderson School,” says Space Utilization director Azita Dashtaki.
But that didn’t explain why administrators failed to inform any of the three preservation groups fighting to preserve them.
“They went and bulldozed T-8 and T-9 without allowing us to save anything, and they did it without letting us know,” says Susan Gillis, a Boca Raton Historical Society archivist. “There were a lot of rare documents there that we lost out on recovering.”
Over a year later, only two empty parking lots of cracked asphalt remain of T-8 and T-9. Both buildings were evacuated after the 2004 hurricane season, too unstable to hold tenants. Records are hazy concerning which FAU associations occupied them, but Small Business Development Center training coordinator Jeanne Cimillo remembers their headquarters used to be T-9 around 2002.
T-15’s lot, a clear 500 feet north of T-11, borders the FAU Research and Development Park. Records and testimonials show T-15 used to be a painting classroom in the 1960s and stored tractors and landscaping equipment thereafter, says Lynn Laurenti, a Boca Raton Army Air Force preservation group member.
“T-15 was leased to the Research [and Development] Park, and the roof had been caving in from [15 years] of neglect,” says Bonnie Dearborn, an administrator of the State Historic Preservation Office.
T-3 and T-4 Crash! Lightning tears the evening sky, bathing the newly remodeled T-3 building in a soft golden glow. The next second, a bolt hurtles to Earth and strikes the arched sunroof, setting it ablaze. The flames lick every centimeter of the 21,000-square foot edifice, and soon it collapses in a smoldering heap of wood.
T-3’s rededication party on May 6, 2006, drew hundreds of Boca Raton Army Air Field (BRAAF) preservation members, World War II veterans and history buffs alike to applaud and ogle at the once-warehouse for radar equipment during World War II. It had gotten renovations – HardiPlank wood siding and red brick for the infrastructure.
Ten days later, stray lightning trashed the planned office space for the FAU Research and Development Park.
“One bolt of lightning and that was the end of it,” says research park manager Dana Chase, who’s also a BRAAF member. “The flames were 100 feet in the air, and it was devastating.”
“The weather gods saw fit to take T-3 away from us,” says BRAAF member Lynn Laurenti, who helped organize the ceremony.
Two years prior, park developer Tom Head’s company Head Construction Corporation (HCC) had owned and insured the building. They’d intended to revamp T-3’s entire infrastructure with the same Dade pine crossbeams and windows used during the early 1940s, according to Chase.
“We wanted to raise money through the ceremony to benefit BRAAF,” Chase says.
That’s because BRAAF and the Boca Raton Historical Society pleaded with Head to restore T-3 using its original guts. HCC even had tenants lined up to occupy its lofty, spanking new office space.
But while T-3’s restoration soaked in the acclaim, nobody seemed to remember T-4’s untimely fate, local author and historian Sally Ling says. After HCC leased T-3’s land from the state, Head opted to bulldoze its adjoining building in late 2004. Records show T-4 belonged to Army Air Force base administrators during World War II.
“Well, [Head] agreed to preserve T-3 and renovate it but did not agree to preserve T-4,” Ling remembers. “So [HCC] took it down and put T-3’s parking lot there instead.”
But that wasn’t the most heart-wrenching part, Laurenti says. After Head agreed to devote a small corner of T-3’s future office space to WWII memorabilia, BRAAF decided to relocate a 1942 military desk recovered from T-5 – once a radar training classroom – and place it in T-3 just before the rededication party.
“It was still in that building when the fire broke out,” Laurenti says. “If only we hadn’t moved it.”
