There I was today, a cold but clear December afternoon, cruising along Golf Road, a major northwest suburban artery, when I noticed the destruction of a building in progress. A building I’d scarcely noticed before. A nondescript office tower headed for nonexistence. I had to stop to take a look at that.

Later I found out that it is (was) 2550 Golf Road, a 10-story, 270,000-square-foot structure in the city of Rolling Meadows. The insurance company next door acquired it not long ago, already vacant. Such is the anemic state of the office market that re-tenanting must have seemed undoable, and such are the economics of repurposing such a building that razing it must have been the best option.

Not a huge office building. Mid-sized I’d say, but still large enough for numerous people over the decades to spend countless hours there. Every work space has an invisible drain into which one’s life slowly disappears, workday after workday. I wonder how many human-hours (formerly man-hours) – or how many human-years – this building represented.