It was just another fleabag when they blew it up, so no one minded much. By the time of its demise the Andrews was a lingering symbol of Hennepin Avenue’s blight - a gaudy liquor store on the ground floor, a clientele of transients, disabled vets, boozehounds, welfare cases. You can imagine the interiors - tired carpets, old pipes, creaky windows that stuck, everything coated with forty years of paint. It was never the city’s grand hotel. I keep waiting to run across an old story that describes a gay night at the Andrews, or the excitement caused when a radio star checked in, but I don’t find a thing. I’m sure it had a moment of vogue; all new hotels do. It had heft and a great location; in 1911, it was newer than its streetmates, the Vendome, Milner and Russel. Interesting note: it began as a five story building, nearly identical to the Ritz and the Francis Drake. The rest of the stories came at the end of the ‘teens, I believe. As with the rest, it was blown up and replaced with a parking lot, and another single-room-occupancy building was erased from downtown.