ABANDONED AMERICA
When the city, Michigan, Illinois comes up, the first thing I think of is Myspace.com for some reason? Every time I see a photo of Michigan, I think of a deserted motor city wasteland plagued by layoffs and dead metal factories, kinda like Myspace, right? (In a way), pretty much everyone has logged out and deleted their accounts?
Having to live in the impoverished cities of the mid-western/eastern seaboard states of America has got to be hard as fuck. Families are going through some of the USA’s most toughest financial crisis since the great depression. Surely this comes as no surprise to anybody? That said, there is something disturbingly real about looking at destitute images, and having a bit of a bleak stare into the future, without actually going there and experiencing it first hand. I’m not saying this in a “look at the poor people!” tour guide kinda way, I’m saying, look at how dire America is at the moment. It’s not news, but it’s definitely interesting.
1. Chicago, Illinois (2007) – Since February 2000, the Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) has operated the Plan for Transformation, the largest public housing reform program in the United States. Among its reforms has been to make use of Federal HOPE VI dollars to demolish many of its large scale developments. Ida B. Wells Homes, seen here, was the city’s first public housing development dedicated for African-American use. After more than 60 years of occupancy, it sat mostly vacant for several years as the groundwork was laid for its replacement. A new mixed-income community named “Oakwood Shores” currently occupies the site.
2. Detroit, Michigan (2009) – Much has been written about Detroit’s plight, but the way that communities carry on in the face of widespread dereliction is only now becoming a topic of national conversation. Here, three boys turn rarely travelled streets on the city’s west side into a bicycle course, hopping sidewalks and racing down the thoroughfares. [Photograph originally published in Migration: Lost and Found in America, edited by Donald McCrea. Michael Wiese Productions, 2010.]
3. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (2009) – After decades of economic prosperity, Strawberry Mansion experienced the decline common to many Midwestern and Northwestern cities in the second half of the 20th century. The demographics of the community and its physical condition dramatically changed throughout the period, and the neighborhood lost huge numbers of buildings in the process. While some edges of the neighborhood are now experiencing redevelopment, those farther isolated continue to confront the challenges of decline. These two buildings are among a handful that remain on this formerly dense row house block.
4. Milwaukee, Wisconsin (2011) – This Christmas wreath-bedecked derelict building was once an office of the Milwaukee Solvay Coke Company, which produced coke and gas on this site starting in the early 1900s. The location has been economically silent since 1983, when the company shuttered the facility. Still, it wasn’t until the early 2000s when the site was cleared of most of its structures and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency oversaw hazardous waste removal. The EPA is still actively assessing the nature of the site contaminants and expects remediation to be complete in two years. At that point, one of many recent development proposals could be executed.
5. Detroit, Michigan (2011) – In the 1920s Detroit was home to the construction of an unusual group of Spanish Moorish Art Deco apartment buildings. The city was transitioning from a low-density city to one that would require more multi-family units, so the city’s most important firms began designing distinctive buildings to house well-to-do residents. However, the Great Depression put an end to the construction boom, and within 20 years, the city’s density was reversing. The city remains dominated by single-family houses, with these apartment buildings dotted among them. The most famous cluster of these buildings is located in the Palmer Park Apartment Building Historic District, but the above building, the Laredo Apartments, lies outside of the historic district and its relative economic stability. Located farther from parks and major roads, it and other nearby apartment buildings have had a more mixed history in the Dexter-Linwood area of Detroit.
6. Baltimore, Maryland (2010) – This photograph was taken on the first day of the city-initiated demolition of all but a few row houses on Perlman Place. After years of neighborhood decline on the city’s east side, the block’s end came relatively swiftly following a failed attempt to rehabilitate the buildings into upmarket row houses. Without sufficient financing, the developer stalled the project, leaving the block in the state it was when pictured. There are no immediate plans to replace the demolished units with new housing.
7. Chicago, Illinois (2009) – Contrary today’s pattern of north side development, Chicago’s south side was the city’s first home of Chicago’s elite. While many buildings were demolished during urban renewal and public housing construction, still others were shielded from major institutional planning only to be affected in recent years. This block of remarkable row houses has seen ups and downs, including the recent renovation of the two left buildings. The right building remains derelict.
8. Las Vegas, Nevada (2011) – These small buildings are located on the northern edge of the Las Vegas Arts District, which occupies a liminal place between historic Las Vegas and the most grandiose contemporary casinos in the unincorporated Paradise to the south. The area is a place of contradiction, simultaneously underdeveloped and overvalued, a victim of its location. While major development of the area has slowed with the recession, many smaller incursions are happening through the arts community. The city’s tallest structure, the Stratosphere, is seen hovering over the buildings despite being more than a mile away.
9. Baltimore, Maryland (2010) – Like Perlman Place, this intersection is located among miles of row house blocks on Baltimore’s near east side. Here, two short blocks of entirely derelict and unoccupied row houses converge. The history of the neighborhood is written on the building façades, clear in layers of resurfacing, repainting and burn marks. The area was transformed into an art installation by local artist Ryan LeCluyse in summer 2011.
10. Cleveland, Ohio (2011) – Briefly the world’s largest shopping center, suburban Cleveland’s Randall Park Mall has been almost entirely vacant and derelict since March 2009, eclipsed by new retail construction in more affluent suburbs. At present, only a handful of stores with direct parking lot access operate on the entire site, leaving mall entrances like this one irrelevant. Meanwhile, unattended plants overgrow their planters and through the increasing numbers of cracks in paved surfaces.
11. Cleveland, Ohio (2011) – Like Strawberry Mansion in Philadelphia, many former Jewish neighborhoods in Midwestern and Northeastern industrial cities transitioned to African-American neighborhoods during the 1930s and 1940s. In the process, synagogues and schools were typically purchased by African American Christian churches, finding new life in a new spiritual community. Cleveland followed the same pattern, with some institutions finally becoming derelict after years of use. More than two dozen synagogues once populated east side; of those that survived the subsequent decades, nearly all but the Chibas Jerusalem are occupied by churches.
12. Detroit, Michigan (2011) – While derelict buildings are common in Detroit, the city is actively engaged in reducing their numbers. One major funding source is the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which will be used to demolish more than 10,000 buildings by the end of current mayor Dave Bing’s term. Here, a collapsing building on the city’s east side is demarcated by city barriers before its soon-to-come demolition.
Article and captions via HuffPo (Lead pic: Detroit Theatre – Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre - Guardian)
