In my early years of living in the South Loop — around 15 years ago — there was always one building that stood out for us lovers of the old and strivers for historic preservation: the YWCA building just north of 9th Street on Michigan Avenue.

The building was a little dowdy but it sure had possibilities. Everyone would imagine something different. Condos for one, naturally. But really wonderful and charming ones. Or an oversized and very classy bed and breakfast, which makes sense because although the building was built to serve as a YWCA, it was built to fit in with the extravagant hotels along South Michigan Avenue in the 1890s. And then it actually became one in 1929.

Some people thought it would make great boutique offices upstairs and great boutique shops downstairs.

The blue paint covering the red brick and terra cotta, although not original, seemed to give the structure all the extra warmth and charm it needed to capture the hearts and minds of the neighbors. The pointed bays and the lintels accentuated the 1890s like few leftover building details do today. You can almost see the ladies who came to the big city to work and find themselves, walking in and out, and primping behind the wonderful mix of Victorian windows. Behind the windows — many now boarded up — you can imagine the ladies powdering their noses, tightening their corsets and fastening their high button shoes.

Now we hear it’s a graffiti-filled rat hole that is so dangerous it has to be torn down. And it didn’t help that the various owners of the building have completely and irresponsibly neglected the building for years, sticking scaffolding in front of it, thereby marring the block and making things worse.

South Looper and former South Loop Neighbors board member Harvey Choldin, who lives next door at 888 S. Michigan (in the old and converted Crane plumbing supply building) told the Tribune that if the building comes down, that part of Michigan Avenue will look like “someone with a really nice smile with one tooth missing.”

But there’s more to that story. What happens when one of those pesky developers decides to put up a crummy building in its place? Is there any reason to believe something fitting will replace the YWCA? Probably not. And Michigan Avenue at that spot might end up looking like a nice white picket fence with a dirty old floorboard sticking up in its midst.

So how can we stop them? The city has already given permission to the developers to tear the building down. The whole building — although there has been lots of talk about saving the façade at least. (Please! Do it! Some how, some way.)

We are left with mysterious building owners — 830 Michigan LLC — and their legal counsel, which includes the powerful law firm headed by Sam Banks, whose brother is the recently retired Ald. William Banks. Ald. Banks headed the zoning committee. The Banks family law firm specializes in zoning changes.

When the decision was made to bring down the YWCA, there weren’t too many imaginations in the room. The bottom line is that the vote was not for giving an old impressive building new life. The order of the day just seemed to be to destroy. Then build anything. And lest you forget, make some cheap money while you’re at it.

The economy might forestall the inevitable for a while. But aside from a few businesses ostensibly “failing” in the neighborhood lately, the economy seems to have not affected life in the South Loop all that much.

Even though some new condo buildings are in trouble, with developers dropping prices faster than speeding bullets, and some being sold at auction for a fraction of their original asking prices, developers still seem to be developing. They know that tomorrow will be here before we know it and they will be prepared with their pickaxes and bobcats. And many dotted lines on which to sign.

As for those Victorian ladies residing in our imaginations, on whose floorboards and through whose windows it would have been wonderful to alight once again, they will be left bereft, ending their lives for good in the rubble of a place that at one time offered them the possibilities of life in a big city.

A city that is letting their era of hopes and dreams slip away along with the hopes and dreams of people who wanted to preserve their memory: from their corsets to their high button shoes.