Kaufman’s cladding is coming down in Wheeling.  Here’s what it reveals.

It was inevitable…eventually.  But it’s still a shame.  The bold, celestial blue panels of the Kaufman’s Building in downtown Wheeling, West Virginia are coming down.  They looked great as recently as December 2024, when I covered the building as an architectural novelty.  Truth be told, it’s really more of a façade novelty, because the original architect of the structures (yes, plural) at Bridge and Main streets had nothing to do with the space-age panels; the architect(s) mostly likely pre-deceased the Mid-Century Modern movement by decades, and the panels deliberately obscured the original masonry and architectural vision.  But they represented something distinctive: an almost otherworldly color amidst the prosaic brown brick of this former industrial powerhouse and original capital to the seceded state of West Virginia.  Here’s Kaufman’s cladding in its full glory on Christmas Day 2024:

It’s remarkable how vivid the Kaufman’s cladding looked, because Kaufman’s Formal Wear ceased operations around 2010, and the building has sat vacant ever since.  Ostensibly, the owners (which, for many years at least, remained the Kaufman family) made some effort to animate the storefront windows with decorations that at least reduced the sense of desolation.

But the look and feel of those panels on the upper floors, combined with the deeper blue at street level, easily made the complex the most eye-catching edifice in all of downtown Wheeling.  The façade polarized the community: while many appreciated its vivid contrast and the commitment to its upkeep long after Mid-Century Modern waned in popularity, others lamented the neglect of the original architects’ intent underneath.

Alas, these photos and my article date almost a year and a half ago.  Here’s the appearance of Kaufman’s cladding in March 2026:

The panels on the upper floors are all but gone.  Flanking the storefront windows, the sapphire tiles remain, and apparently the owner intends to paint the plywood in that same shade.  As little as this photo reveals, it still distinguishes masonry patterns formerly lumped together by the unifying Kaufman’s cladding: the sturdy, grimy yellow one dominates the photo, while a seriously corroding red one on the left-hand margin indicates its neighbor.  Kaufman’s bridal and formal had claimed two adjacent buildings, punching out a party wall on the first floor to showcase the bridal merchandise.  Operating at a time in the mid-century when such space-age façade treatments were popular, the business was apparently a fixture in downtown Wheeling for decades, and the Kaufman family continued to own the structures after the dissolution of the business.  So it was most likely a Kaufman son or daughter who kept the blue Kaufman’s cladding looking so spry all those additional years, even after the building no longer generated revenue—all in the hopes that another tenant might step in to tame the albatross.

The polarizing color scheme met its demise within just the last few weeks. I failed to recognize the importance of this vignette and only snapped a single photograph, but local Instagrammers captured images from just weeks ago, after an early spring windstorm blew through the Ohio Valley.  Therein lies the problem: Kaufman’s cladding couldn’t cope with the elements.  With a few panels down and others compromised, the sixty-year-old façade became a significant safety hazard overnight.  These tiles are heavy and could hurt people when they fall. A small construction team roped off the sidewalk and removed all the other panels.  Distinctive though it may have been in 2025, Kaufman’s cladding couldn’t lure a tenant to these largely derelict buildings, but the threat of litigation from injury prompted the current owners to dig into their pockets and remove the threat.

With all the panels down, the historic revelation is bittersweet.  The masonry underneath is undeniably more authentic, but it continued to deteriorate, while a much lower maintenance sheath concealed the decades of damage.  Historic photos from the buildings’s infancy reveal terra cotta ornamentation that the Kaufman family (or their predecessors) stripped off by the 1950s, about the time downtown Wheeling was starting to decline, and the upper floors of 1890-era commercial buildings no longer had any marketability.  So they “modernized” it using the architectural equivalent of cosmetic tattoos.  Bright blue panels covered most of the windows; no need for apertures when upper floors are little more than storage (at best).  The sheath was so comprehensive that it became impossible to tell how many buildings there were.  In fact, the side alley (Bridge Street) even offers a separate entrance to a long-closed business that may or may not have comprised a separate structure in an earlier life:

Note the yellow ties at the cornice, similar to the deep blue at Kaufman’s that survives. And that lettering looks like it also dates from the 1950s…at the latest. Campeti General Shoe Hospital left this location years ago as well, but relocated elsewhere in downtown Wheeling, operating up until the early days of COVID.

So the question remains: what is the future of this family of small buildings, now that Kaufman’s cladding is down?  It’s not easy to determine.  The Kaufman family pursued new uses after closing the shop, and rumblings of a buyer began to ripple across local media in 2018, when the listing price for the properties—the two Main Street buildings and the separate Campeti storefront—was $125,000.  At that time, the broker indicated that many deals had fallen through because the removal of the Kaufman’s cladding would exempt the buyer from West Virginia Historic Preservation Tax Credits that have been instrumental in salvaging many structures in Wheeling’s pockmarked downtown.

Crossing the Ohio River bridge in the first of those photos—the border from Ohio into West Virginia along Interstate 70—Wheeling’s beefy mid-rise skyline makes it look like a much bigger city than its 27,000 tally at the 2020 Census would indicate.  Much like the West Virginia capital Charleston, or Cumberland in Western Maryland, these central Appalachian cities shot up so quickly in the late 1800s and early 1900s, then declined so precipitously after 1950, that most of them still have the surviving architectural bones of a bigger city.  Wheeling at its peak had over 60,000 people, but it started the trajectory of population loss after the 1930 Census.  Its downtown district is much larger than one might expect for a city this size.

Preservation efforts can only stave so much flight of capital: while the Centre Market in the south side of downtown Wheeling has prevailed for nearly 175 years (older than the state itself), and the Jazz-Age Capitol Theatre revived amidst the city’s ups and downs, many structures with less distinct embedded uses have fared poorly.  

With such a track record, and in the face of pronounced population loss, a duo (or trio) of three-story 1900-era commercial buildings are possibly less distinctive and less sellable in their current state, minus the Kaufman’s cladding, than they were with that zany, historically protected cerulean chain mail, incentivized through state preservation tax credits.  The 2018 sale went to Vineyard, a local non-denominational church on the outskirts of Wheeling, which media at the time heralded as a critical turning point for the city’s downtown.

Nearly eight years have passed since the acquisition, and Kaufman’s building, still vacant, now lacks its most distinctive feature.  To the best of my understanding, Vineyard Church, now named Newbridge, still owns the property but has made no efforts to refurbish it—beyond the removal of the Kaufman’s cladding when it proved too dangerous.  I’m not faulting church leadership: they purchased the property not long before COVID hit, and the social distancing measures imposed on gatherings in much of 2020 and 2021 proved particularly devastating to houses of worship.  Alternatively, it’s easier to criticize the economic development mentality prevalent in the 2018 press, which ballyhooed the Vineyard/Newbridge purchase.  Such optimism suggests that a church, which typically only lures large numbers of people to a location on Sunday mornings (when most other businesses are closed) is somehow likely to galvanize the more dormant parts of Wheeling’s downtown.  I’ve reflected on multiple occasions that a storefront church is virtually never a good indicator of a healthy downtown district, or a suburban shopping center for that matter.  (Any mall that has lots of churches is almost certainly dying or dead.)  Churches can locate virtually anywhere in any zoning district, so a commercial broker that lures a church probably isn’t asking for much.

Like so many buildings in downtown Wheeling, the future for the Kaufman trio isn’t all that rosy.  All things considered, unless this drab masonry under the Kaufman’s cladding gets a good scrub (and restoration), it’s hard to imagine any house of worship repurposing two (or three) partially connected buildings into a sanctuary; the interior scale doesn’t align with the volume needs of a typical auditorium.  In a best case scenario, the Kaufman’s acquisition might become an overflow viewing/streaming site for the church, so people closer to downtown Wheeling can watch together on big TVs and enjoy more fellowship than would happen when viewing a streamed service on a laptop.  Meanwhile, Vineyard/Newbridge retains its primary location in the less constrained suburban milieu of Warden Run Road, where parking is abundant, the space already fits collective worship…and they don’t have to worry about Jetsons-style blue tiles flying off the side of the building during a windstorm.