The history of Binghamton’s First Ward leads many to stand in front of a given area and say things such as, “Here was once a great scale-making factory,” or “Here was a factory that sold Matthew Brady his supplies and went on to make the film used on the first moon landing.” These are gone now. But something was there then, which everyone knew, saw, worked with or around, that now hardly anyone knows is still there. Imprisoned in the 1920s, it still lives, and from time to time escapes into the streets. Unlike the Jones Scale Works, or the spot on Charles Street where Ansco employed tens of thousands of people, this forgotten entity spans the entire First Ward.

There is no spot in the First Ward from which one can say he is far away from Trout Brook, or Trout Creek. It was once a peaceful little brook, but it became a mosquito-ridden dumping ground as the ward grew. It was once loved, and then it was shunned. Much money was spent hiding it as a shameful nuisance. It is a natural spring, here before any settler, and it is here still.

“Trout Brook” is only known now to the very old timers, or to people in the water department. From a ravine in Glenwood Cemetery, it can be seen running freely. There is a mention of it on a plaque in St. Michael’s Cemetery next to Glendwood Cemetery. The only other visible mention is on a large sign at the creek’s far end (near McDonald Ave.), which gives warning with a phone number to call in case of flooding. Thus, the only two public notices of its existence bookend its whole length.

Today, Trout Brook runs like this: … visible from the Glenwood Cemetery ravine it runs free, and then it runs in a large square tunnel under Route 17. It discharges from there on a series of cement steps next to the teacher’s parking area for Woodrow Wilson School. Hidden amongst the overgrowth there is a stone boulder plaque from the builders of the earthen dam on Mt. Prospect, which is now the major source of control for Trout Brook. On the grounds of Wilson School one can see the fenced-in area of Trout Brook running through its “screen chamber.” These iron bars are meant to catch debris before it flows into the tunnel.

I live a few blocks from there, and began researching this water system three years ago during the noted floods of 2006. I have a manhole cover in my yard, which is clearly noted: “TROUT BROOK, 1927.” I came home from work at 10 p.m. to find all my neighbors’ yards a lake, and my manhole cover ajar.

After the screen chamber near Wilson School playground, the water is not visible again unless one actually enters the tunnel. The tunnel goes under private residences on Baxter St., and makes an abrupt left turn on to Julian St. A manhole cover can be seen in the sidewalk on the north side of Julian St. about three housed in from Glenwood Ave. Just before this area one can see an odd-shaped piece of wood about the size of a door or table that apparently was a stop-gap repair job, or was once used for entry. It forms the ceiling of the tunnel for about 6 feet, and is not in keeping with the rest of the tunnel workmanship.

The tunnel, which in most areas is about 5 feet high, proceeds down Julian St., and has a manhole cover in the middle of the intersection where Julian meets Johnson St. Because that cover is a little loose, when cars hit it, the reverberation can be heard blocks away even above ground. The sound is deafening if one is anywhere near it inside the tunnel.

Another manhole is visible where the tunnel crosses Holland St. at Julian, clearly marked “Trout Brook.” As the tunnel crosses Holland and goes under a vacant lot, the workmanship changes. All this way the tunnel is made of reinforced concrete; these sections were made whole and installed in 1927. But there appears to have been some trauma here; some segments are made of indented plastic, and others of clay shingles.

The tunnel heads briefly towards Clinton St. for about the space of five private yards on the West Side of Holland St., and then crosses Colfax Ave. near May St. Four manholes can be seen covering it in the area many old timers refer to as the “May Street Dump,” the raving below Berlin St. I found a rather large salamander clinging to the walls in this area, and later brought a professor from BU who specializes in such creatures, to rescue it. We could not find it again. (His name is Dylan Horvath, and when he saw Mt Prospected nearby he felt that it was no longer unusual that such creatures would make their way there from such terrain.

The storm drain then crosses Charles St. near the steep curve, and crosses under the land where the Ansco plant used to be for so many decades. The path of its course is surrounded by chain link fence on the Ansco side, and the wrought iron fence of Spring Forest Cemetery. It passes under Spring Forest Cemetery, and at Mygatt St., there is a dramatic change in workmanship. From Mygatt to Wilson School the work is generally plain even cement piping. But from Mygatt to the Chenango River outfall, near the old Cutler Ice House, the tunnel is made of beautiful stone work with a large keystone where the stone portion begins.

The tunnel makes its way down Lydia to Gaines, and then under Winding Way, which owes its winding shape to the course of the brook.

The stone portion was built about 1924-25 by a contractor named Fitzgerald. While work-in on the drain, one of his vehicles backfired in such a way as to start a Lydia St. house on fire. A change in patent laws regarding concrete during this time made it cheaper than stone work when another contractor named Clarence Rose got the contract to build the segment from Mygatt to Prospect St.

Mr. Rose stood on the hill in Glenwood Cemetery for his mother’s funeral with the Trout Brook running freely nearby while the work was going on down below. Mr. Rose was an avid hunter, and once slightly wounded himself with a gun. He was swindled out of several thousand dollars by a con man from Los Angeles in the 1930s. Involved in politics in the Chenango Forks, he left an estate of $750,000 when he passed away in 1958. His retirement party a few years before that was held at the IBM Country Club with over 800 guests attending. Someone left flowers on his grave in Katellville Cemetery during the Christmas season of 2008.

A careless typographer at the Binghamton Press on Sep 19, 2927 marred much of the meaning in an article headlined: “Trout Brook Sewer Is Two Thirds Finished,” but this detail can be made out: “Clarence W. Rose has completed the Trout Brook sewer to a point west of Colfax Avenue near Holland Street.” Other articles of this period show Rose to be working on the screen chamber at Wilson School and on the pump houses, which are still visible in a state of decay on the Ansco property on Charles St. Interestingly, on the same day a New York Times article tells of the death of a former Binghamton mayor’s wife.

Mayor George E. Green, during the 1890s had to deal with a large group of angry First Warders who blamed the City for flooding their basements during water main installation work. They claimed that the city had destroyed ancient wooden storm drains put in place by Daniel S. Dickinson as he drained the “swamp” and developed the land for parcel selling. Mayor Green took the position that the people were after “Free improvements” to their lands .The First Warders petitioned Governor Levi P. Morton, who had to spend months investigating the complaint. (The whole saga is captured in word for word letters on Google Books viewable by searching for “Wolcott Street Swamp Nuisance.”)

Gov. Morton, though forgotten today, was previously a Vice President of the United States under President Arthur. Before that he was Minister to France, where he accepted the Statue of Liberty for the United States. Much loved in France, he was given the honor of driving the first rivet into the statue (in a big toe).

The wooden storm drain in question drained spots of swampy water into Trout Brook. The incident became known as the Wolcott Street Nuisance, but we know Wolcott St. today as St. Cyril Ave., a one-block street just below Spring Forest Cemetery running to Starr Ave. where the Jones Scale Works once Operated.

When he died in 1910 Mayor Green was buried in Spring Forest Cemetery. Just as Contractor Rose was busy burying Trout Brook under Spring Forest Cemetery in September 1927, working on 20-foot-deep pumping houses just next door at the Ansco site, the former Mayor’s wife came home from Albany, where she lived, and as she tended to the family plot she dropped dead on her husband’s grave.

“As she was turning away from the plot, employes (sic) in the cemetery saw her collapse. Physicians said that the death was caused by heart disease.” (New York Times, Sep. 19, 1927). The widow Green was probably not happy with the way the main lawn of the cemetery looked at that time. She was buried beside her husband.

From 1904 to 1927 there was a peaceful little pond using Trout Brook water in the main lawn, reported to be part of the improvement work going on in 1904 when Architect Issac G. Perry (of State Hospital “Castle” fame) designed the cemetery gates as his last job, and then promptly died becoming the first body brought through the gates. That local history story is fairly well known, but those articles also mention the intent to use Trout Brook to create a lake.

No one knew Trout Brook more fondly than Senator Daniel Dickinson. He built his home so as to look upon it, and picked his child’s, and thence, his own burial spot so as to be near it.

He was robbed of the above ground appearance of this brook next to his grave fifty years after his death, but it still runs at about the same level under Spring Forest Cemetery as he is in his grave. Mr. Dickinson built his home, “the Orchard,” on the West Bank of the Chenango River near the Erie Railroad Bridge. When his body was brought home from NYC, thousands followed the hearse from the depot to his home where present day McDonald Ave. is located (and where one can see a Trout Brook flood control sign). Maps show his home to have been between Trout Brook and the rail bridge. One map of the 1800s actually signifies the brook as “Dickinson Creek,” but it apparently didn’t take.

In a “Testimonial of Respect of the Bar of New York” (viewable on Google Books), it is stated that the Statesman’s “body was laid in the Northwest parlor and the vast concourse that thronged to take a last look, entered from the south, passed around the coffin, and was permitted to leave from the East entrance.”

Upwards of 6,000 people escorted the casket to Spring Forest Cemetery from The Orchard. All of them had to have stepped on little bridges over the creek, not only on the Dickinson property where it would have been visible from that parlor window, but all along the route to Spring Forest.

Dickinson often visited his child’s grave and sat there writing poetry. He chose the family grave plot next to Trout Brook. In its coverage of the funeral, The New York Times referred to the stream as “insolent.” Let’s end with the coverage from the Testimonial of Respect.

“How sweet the grave wherein he (Dickinson) lies entombed. A little mound, shaded by an adjoining hill was the spot selected for the final resting place of this great and goodly man. A little fretful brook, whose wandering course leads along the base of the mound, sings gentle dirges on its rippling surface, as if to soothe the calm sleeper who rests so near its borders.”

Related posts:

1. The Macabre Saga of Ogarita Booth Henderson
2. Frank Lloyd Wright and His Forgotten Larkin Building
3. An Abandoned Mansion from Lebanon’s Past

Making the drive from Chicago to Detroit, along Interstate 90 is a lot like traveling back in time. The modern roadside outside of Chicago slowly seems to recede into oblivion along the way. Factories and coal fired power stations crop up, and suddenly the hulking mass of the Gary Union Station passes your window – a blemished reminder of a once-grand past.

Though Gary is only 30 minutes from downtown Chicago, it could just as well be in a third world country. Drive through downtown Gary, and you’ll find yourself on a barren boulevard, buffeted on each side by abandoned social clubs, theater marquees, and beauty shops. In the span of about 1/2 a mile of Broadway Avenue, once an exemplar of Main Street USA, you’ll find the buildings to be nothing more than decaying time capsules awaiting their inevitable “demolition by neglect.”

I’m a West Coast native. Everyone with us on the drive to Detroit had never been to the Rust Belt before. Was this the American Hestia of steel we had been taught about in our high school History textbooks? Somehow, it seemed these books had become outdated in little more than a decade. Gary soon makes you realize the pitfalls of modern, free-market capitalism, unhindered by checks and balances, a boom-town driven purely by the motive of profit. What’s truly unfortunate is that Carnegie Steel is long gone, but the children and grandchildren of the men who built Gary are stuck in a place that has little in its future, and a rut of steel to try to dig out from.

Today, much of our steel is imported; our manpower is exported. Our unions no longer exist — at least not in the sense that they once did, when over 40% of the American workforce were members of a union. If Gary is our example, and steel work is the epitome of work, then we are no longer the “Workers of the World.” When I myself brood over our post-industrial lot, I often like to reflect on a little-known introduction by playwright Arthur Miller in a book about Cartier-Bresson. Miller says of Cartier-Bresson’s photos of the decaying roadsides of 1950s U.S.:

The very horizon is often oppressive, jagged with junked cars, the detritus of consumer culture, which after all is a culture of planned waste, engineered obsolescence. Whatever lasts is boring, what demands its own replacement energizes our imaginations.

After rolling up to a side street from Broadway, the five us found the mouldering marquee of a hulking theater on the corner. The lettering advertised the appearance of the “Jackson Five: Live Tonight.” Certainly in jest, the marquee held its own ironical ode to the family that made Gary famous — perhaps more famous than its steel moguls. We peeked inside of the theater to find a different world than the one just outside. Orange seats in the trademark hue of the 1970s stank of mold and rotting wood. The seat cushions themselves were strewn all around the theatre grounds, which had turned from wood or cement (whatever may have been there before) into a mass of organic, decaying dirt, all harboring its own garden of tenacious flora. A grand piano, sans legs, lay belly-down in the orchestra pit, and the original tapestry-like curtain still hung from its rods high above on the stage, itself depicting a lively mediterranean scene but darkened by years of decay.

It was no longer a theater of echoes, as it likely once was. Our voices carried off into the many holes that weathering had created. Towards the front lobby, up a set of grand, iron-wrought staircases, I fortuitously stumbled inside one of those holes to find that it was a passageway into a completely different building. The building that adjoins the theater is just as incredible as the theater itself. It’s a hodge-podge of apartments and doctor’s offices, connected by cavernous hallways filled with tumbled bricks and a thick, 30-year-layer of dirt. Trumble beds, long collapsed from their closets in the wall, appeared in the middle of rooms. Chairs and pieces of artwork still remained in the rooms.

Deep inside one of the kitchens of these apartments, hidden beneath a caked layer of dust, I discovered a single seashell, likely left by the flat’s last inhabitant in the 70s. It was perhaps the most eerie artefact I’ve discovered during my life as an explorer, simply because of its minimalist display of a life past lived in a place that is geographically distant from the sea. I was forced to visualize the building at its zenith, when young professionals flocked to these apartments, filled with big dreams and a bright future. The reality is that this building probably ended its life as a slum, only to decline into vacancy along with Gary’s entire downtown corridor.

I returned to the theater and hobbled among the cushions for a few minutes. Emerging out of the exit into the light, I felt as if my whole life’s outlook had been altered by a single, hulking brick structure. Everyone had a look of shock on their faces. But Gary was just the beginning of our trip. We had to find the next place to discover. So, with heavy hearts, we hopped into our rental van and departed for another abandonment, another adventure.

Related posts:

1. Abandoned Hotels of the Catskills Borscht Belt
2. Cold Storage Building: World’s Fair at Chicago
3. The Lost Mural of José Miguel Covarrubias

There is a cross atop a hill in Waterbury, Connecticut. The cross is fifty feet tall and made of steel. Below it, ten-foot-tall neon letters spell out HOLY LAND U.S.A, a ‘testament’ to the religious amusement park, now closed, that occupies the site. The sign and the cross are still illuminated at night, the electric bill paid by the two nuns who live next to the property. Holy Land was an amusement park, built in the mid-1950s by a local lawyer named John Greco; the park was aimed at educating visitors in Christian doctrine by showing them scenes from the life of Christ.

Holy Land did not have rides or roller coasters — just an earnest desire to teach. This lofty goal was accomplished with simple materials — plaster, concrete, plywood, and tin siding. Since its closure in 1984, the park has slowly crumbled to become a ruin of religious proportions.

The entrance to Holy Land. The wood-and-plaster architecture is found throughout the park, as is the faux-ancient-Palestinian style.

Holy Land is easy to find and easier to access. Drive towards the cross, prominent on one of Waterbury’s tallest hills, or follow any of several road signs that local authorities still — after 25 years — managed not to remove. Then walk around the locked gate, hoping that the nuns don’t see you. (The nuns, part of the Religious Teachers Filippini, do not seem especially vigilant.)

Jerusalem in miniature. Each building is between eight and twelve inches tall.

Just inside the entrance is a set of archways, labeled “Holy Land — Jerusalem.” These lead to the heart of the park, a rocky hill covered in miniature buildings. It feels like the type of thing your wacky uncle might build in his backyard. The buildings, most made of plaster and wood, are meant to represent Jerusalem as it existed during the life of Jesus Christ. The original installation used a crude version of forced perspective, placing larger buildings closer to the path.

This building is about three feet tall.

The park seems to maintain a fine balance between between sincerity and kitsch: A building next to the path, about the size of a large doghouse, has caved in on itself. Across its front, the letters spell out “HEROD’S PALACE,” but the style of the letters suggests something your father might have picked up at the corner hardware store to nail the family name above the front door; really, that describes most of the park.

The tiny buildings are pieced together from plywood. Tin siding has been bent into columns, then crudely covered with plaster. House paints, in mid-20th-century colors, have transformed a motley collection of tiny shacks into a vision of the Middle East. Of the Holy Land.

The stainless-steel cross is different. In a clearing at the top of the hill, beyond the crumbling Jerusalem, it feels clean and no-nonsense, an architecture reminiscent of US military bases and mid-century hospitals. The welds are precise, the angles sharp. It is also new, the second such cross to crown the site. Its predecessor, replaced last year, was six feet taller and made of neon, but both were meant to last. They towered above Waterbury and were visible from the highways–I-84, CT-8–that pass beneath the park. From the top of the hill, Waterbury and the Brass Mill Mall stretch out beneath you.

The Hollywood-style letters were also renovated, by Boy Scouts in 1997. Together, the cross and letters burn bright in Waterbury’s night sky. That’s the paradox of Holy Land. It is abandoned, derelict, and falling in on itself, but still able to summon compassion and care from those around it. Every attempt to demolish the park has brought protests. The cross and letters remain lit at night because they are a local icon, a vital part of Waterbury.

We spent about 40 minutes in the park and left just after sunset. It’s a small park. It is also decaying quickly. The miniature sphinx visible in various photos online has lost its face. A life-size tin statue of Jesus holding a lamb has been lopped off at the shin, the upper part of His body now gone. The concrete rock garden built by Boy Scouts barely a decade ago–HONOR GOD, it used to read–has been vandalized, so that it now reads HONOR COD.

Inside the park, there are few hazards beyond underbrush and pricker bushes. The paths, like the rest of the park, are overgrown, and trash–mostly beer cans–abounds. The park’s existence is no secret, and it seems especially popular with local teenagers.

Holy Land is gone, but not forgotten. People still care about the park–the nuns with the electric bill, the Boy Scouts who replaced the sign, the photographers and explorers who still frequent its grounds. I’d like to be able to pin an adjective on my experience, to summon a word that encapsulates the park. But I can’t, really. The park wasn’t creepy, wasn’t thrilling. It had none of the drama or tragedy of Six Flags New Orleans. Despite the decayed statuary, there was nothing about it that summoned “Ozymandias.” Mostly it felt innocent. It is one man’s loving paean to a religion. It is a material hymn sung to Jesus Christ.

Further Research:

• Roadside America has an entry on Holy Land, including photos and instructions for getting there.
• Two relatively recent New York Times articles, here and here, detail the ongoing plans to save or restore Holy Land.
• Roadtrip Memories has excellent collection of vintage photos of Holy Land, including construction shots.
• More vintage photos and postcards are in this Flickr set.

Related posts:

1. Symbolism, Icons at the Abandoned Byron Hot Springs
2. Abandoned Gary – A Lost Metropolis of Indiana Industry
3. Abandoned: Six Flags New Orleans

We live in a post-industrial world, and our connection to the modes of production, our infrastructure, and the cogs of society is becoming more and more disembodied from day-to-day life. This guide is meant to be an introduction to one of the fastest growing hobbies our modern time: Urban Exploration.

Why?

The definition of Urban Exploration may be different for every adherent, but most urban explorers call themselves modern historians, discoverers, archivers, documentarians, and architecture buffs. Some explore for simple aesthetic reasons because they find the crumbling edifices of society to be perfect artistic subjects. Others find a certain level of adventure and excitement in exploring off-limits areas or skirting the law to reach places that most people can’t see. Still others have a purely historical interest in a specific building or complex.

Whatever the reason, Urban Exploration is something that can be traced back hundreds of years, even back to 1793, when an oft-cited “explorer,” Parisian cataphile Philibert Aspairt, became famous for his untimely death in the Catacombs under Paris. To this day, the Paris Catacombs attracts a subculture that descends underground for regular socializing and fraternizing.

How?

The methods of urban exploration, much like the motivations of its adherents, vary. Extensive research is essential for any “virgin” finds. This may often require visits to your local library or archive. Topographic and historical maps, especially Sanborn maps, provide a perfect starting point. Google Earth, Wikipedia, and Wikimapia are vital tools if you wish to get a more up-to-date snapshot of your target location.

Some Urban Explorers have a penchant for Google Alerts; by setting up an alert on Google Alerts for specific keywords, an urban explorer is continually aware of new abandonments. Geotargeted key phrases matched with the word, “abandoned,” or “vacant” also work especially well in researching new “finds.”

The best way to start exploring is to pair up with a buddy.  Much like scuba diving, urban explorers are safest if they explore in small groups. Established communities online, including uer.ca, Infiltration, and Deggi5 allow you to become acquainted with like-minded explorers, some who can provide you with a valuable list of new locations to explore.

Above all, the late Jeff Chapman (who passed away in 2006 after a battle with cancer) published a posthumous book that has become the de-facto Bible of Urban Exploration. Chapman’s book, Access All Areas, provides a full summary of the basics of “Building Hacking.”

The Gear

The hobby is known for its extremely low barriers to entry.  All one
needs is a flashlight, some water, and a passion to discover. Of
course, if you prefer to photograph your finds, a camera always helps,
but the lighter you travel, the better off you are. Certain treks may require more extensive gear-packs – see the Health & Safety Section for more on that.

The Methods

Image by forklift

Methods of entry are important to decide prior to entering your target. Consult with other members in the group.  Lay down ground rules as to how much climbing, crawling, and razor-wire you wish to encounter. Some groups may turn back at the first sight of a fence. Others may jump at the opportunity to try their hand at nine-foot razor-wire. Be absolutely sure of the risks you’re taking and the laws you may potentially be breaking.

Health & Safety

Urban exploration is a dangerous hobby, and it should be treated as such.  Some of the more common hazards include:

• Falling from, or within, multi-story buildings.
• Inhaling dangerous fumes, gases, or particles.
• Stepping on or accidentally touching hypodermic needles from illicit drug use.
• Encroaching on the territory of gangs, drug-users, or hostile vagrants.
• Cuts, scrapes, and bruises — ensure that Tetanus shots are up-to-date.
• In the case of draining, flash floods, or even small amounts of rain could prove deadly if one is confined in a storm system.

Specialized Gear for Health & Safety

Unwritten Codes of Conduct

There are a few unwritten rules in Urban Exploration, and one should be cognizant of the protocol in order to be fully accepted and trusted as a new member of the sub-culture.

The most common and oft-quoted rule follows the mantra of the Sierra Club: “Take only photographs, leave only footprints.” Though not all urban explorers follow this directive, the vast majority do. Many abandonments possess a treasure trove of esoteric objects, unique contraptions, rare industrial components, or special antique items that could sell for a handsome profit on eBay. Despite all this, the community has decided to officially condem taking any object from a building.

Graffiti and vandalism are generally condemned, but there are exceptions. It should be noted that urban explorers are a diverse group of tens of thousands, potentially hundreds of thousands. The diversity of opinions falls in both extremes, but the moderate and mean consensus generally follows the rule of law except for the very notable exception of Trespass.

As of now, there is no officially sanctioned urban exploration moral codex. In fact, “following the rules” would run counter to the central principle of exploring. For this reason, urban explorers have a general understanding of the community’s moral compass and make of it what they will.

Documentation

Most urban explorers consider the documentation of the structure or location to be their prime concern. The most notable method of documentation is by still photograph. Video, sound, and architectural sketches or rough maps are recorded to a lesser degree.

Most explorers are astute photographers, and the artistic liberty taken inside of an abandonment results in a dramatic collection of architectural photography that has only recently been possible. To most, this is the central purpose and goal of their hobby – and they hold it as a very sacred duty in order to record pieces that are often lost within months or years due to the wrecking ball.

The Law

Urban explorers are breaking the law, but it’s generally assumed that such laws are antiquated or unjust. The most notable law that is broken by an explorer is trespass, but others may come into play as well, including:

• Invasion of privacy
• Either purposeful or inadvertent destruction of property
• Certain broadly interpreted anti-terrorism laws
• Liability for the injury of others in your group

In general urban explorers are liable to be prosecuted for criminal and civil judgements for trespassing, but publishing the photographs themselves is considered a separate issue. The only exception is invasion of privacy. If an explorer publishes photos that infringe on the likeness of someone, or put them in a negative light, then he or she may be held liable for that action in civil court.

Conclusion

Urban exploration is, by nature, a very dangerous and illegal activity. At the same time, it can be a very rewarding and engaging pursuit. This guide was meant to inform you of all the safety and legal concerns so you can make an informed decision whether or not urban exploration is right for you.

Resources

The Urban Exploration Resource (Forum)

Author’s Site: Photos and Stories of Historic Architecture

Related posts:

1. Bethlehem Steel, Wartime Labor, and San Francisco
2. World War I and Bethlehem’s Labor Force
3. Treatise on Trespassing

Interior of Castro Theatre image by Katie Spence

Movie Poster Passion of Joan of Arc

The Passion of Joan of Arc is consistently given the laurels as one of the greatest movies of all time. Maria Falconetti’s performance as the 19-year-old Saint, Joan of Arc, has been called the 26th greatest performance in cinema. Sight & Sound’s top ten films poll listed Passion three times (in 1952, 1972, and 1992). But Passion itself is not the remarkable story, despite its revolutionary cinematography and film editing techniques.

No, the real story is that of Director Theodore Dreyer, who spent $9 million in 1928 dollars on the Passion of Joan of Arc only to see its destruction by fire a year later. Dreyer died in 1968 believing that his uncut, 86-minute opus in its original format was lost forever. History, however, has strange ways of creeping back into notoriety.

When Dreyer passed in 1968, there were only a few rudimentary cuts of the film remaining (whatever wasn’t consumed by fire was censored by religious leaders for its harsh portrayal of Joan’s inquisitors who – let’s not forget – were men of ‘religious esteem’). Dreyer painstakingly tried to piece together fragments in a 1933 release that was 61 minutes long (the original was 86). The film circulated for some time in its less then perfect format until the second original was destroyed once again, annoyingly enough by fire once again.

Still, in pure, poetic justice to the film’s namesake and Joan herself (who was given sainthood by the Catholic Church just seven years before the film’s release) an uncut, original release re-emerged in 1981. It appeared in the most unlikely of places: Deep in the bowels of a closet within the maze of passageways of an abandoned psychiatric hospital in Oslo, Norway. An unknown doctor had ordered the film – perhaps intending to show it to his troubled patients as an example of Christian virtue (or maybe even to show his mentally ill patients that divinity is sometimes perceived wrongly as “insanity”). What mattered was that history had rediscovered something it never should have lost — and all because someone forgot to throw away something in their closet.

Falconetti as Joan of Arc

The warm November night I sat admiring the Castro Theater’s Spanish Colonial embellishments and the deco sconces, I imagined the original screening of the film in the very place I was sitting. The Wurlitzer Pipe Organ started the show with verve. The curtains separated. And the lights dimmed. Maria Falconetti’s face appeared, in dramatic close-up. Her tears were palpable, and hundreds of strings heralded the beginning of the oratorio created specifically, and inspired by, the film. Richard Einhorn’s “Voices of Light” could not have been a better match for the dramatic images of Joan of Arc’s final days alive.

As it turned out, Passion would be Falconetti’s final performance as a film actress. After a stint as a stage actor, she escaped from France to Argentina at the height of World War II and lived her final days in peace (no doubt from Dreyer’s authoriatarian style of directing). But the re-discovery of The Passion of Joan of Arc will always be considered one of the great blessings of modern cinema. Chances of its survival were slim – the Library of Congress estimates that only 10% of films made before 1928 exist today. But in its 1,300 individual shots, its three-dimensional multi-million dollar set, and the painful passion exhibited on the face of Maria Falconetti we see a new purpose in the preservation of history, even for something as ‘kitsch’ as a reel of old film.

Related posts:

1. Frank Lloyd Wright and His Forgotten Larkin Building
2. Auschwitz “Death Camp” Blueprints Discovered in Berlin Apartment
3. Atomic Cafe: America in the Era of the A-Bomb

–Arthur Miller

Related posts:

1. Abandoned Gary – A Lost Metropolis of Indiana Industry
2. Nooksack: A Washington Town Left to Decay
3. Highway 101 in a Post-Industrial West

But it’s a Saturday. And a Saturday is a perfectly acceptable day for an edifying documentary film without losing any sense of hipness at all.

And if there is any documentary film that is perfect for a Saturday, let me just say, that Ken Burns’ eponomously titled documentary DVD, Frank Lloyd Wright, is a masterpiece edifice of its own.

The film follows the path of the iconic architect, even his less-than-glamorous history of philandering and his penchant for self-promotion. But, through it all, emerges a portrait of a man who did it to create beauty. And it is a uniquely American and transcendentalist notion of beauty — a perception of beauty that bequeaths “nature with a capital ‘N’,” in Wright’s own words.

So what did I most like about the film? The pictures of course! And which pictures, in particular? The one image that made my heart jump forthwith was the Larkin Building in Buffalo New York:

The beauty of this building really rests in its careful consideration of the worker. Its interior closely resembles the cathedral-like structure of a church — workers bustling away to complete orders, while the sun spills in from the six-story ceiling. But the story of Wright’s first big commission, at age 35, really rests in its demise. It is heralded as one of the biggest losses in American architectural history. The building was demolished in 1950 to make way for — what else — a parking area.

Said Douglass Swift, a partner in the company that is restoring other Larkin warehouses: “The ironic thing is that we, as a city, tore down a masterpiece to create parking space for a factory building. All of the other Larkin buildings, including ours, are still here and thriving. But the work of art is gone.”

All that remains of Wright’s Larkin Building is a 20-foot-hight pillar that once anchored one of the building’s corners. At one time that corner was one part of a 76-foot-high interior that rose to the sky and imbued workers with an ethereal experience via its double-glazed skylights.

But the Great Depression came, and the Larkin company, America’s fourth largest mail order operation (behind behemoths Montgomery-Ward, Sears, and others) simply fell by the wayside. By 1948, the deteriorated, unheated building was a haven for vagrants, and it was quickly becoming a nuisance, rather than a work of art. By 1949, the Buffalo Evening News found reason for editorializing:

“The area from street to street is carpeted with broken bricks, sticks, rubbish and waste. The parallel side streets are even more cluttered with fallen plaster, masonry and rubble. Groups of urchins have fun hurling brickbats and plaster chunks at one another and at visitors to the structure.”

Even Wright himself, by then 82 years old, felt indifferent about the building that he spent energy designing as a young, 35-year-old independent architect, “To them, it was just one of their factory buildings, to be treated like any other,” he said. So, in 1949, for the sum of a mere 5,000 dollars, one of America’s greatest architectural designs collapsed and was replaced with a parking lot. It was once the first air-conditioned building in the U.S., but by 1949 it had become a nuisance.

“Nobody cared,” University of Buffalo’s Jack Quinan says simply. “It was a time when people didn’t place a value on those things. There wasn’t much of a preservation movement in the United States at that time.”

Related posts:

1. Oakland’s Key System Building in Retrospect
2. Detroit’s Historic Farwell Building
3. Cold Storage Building: World’s Fair at Chicago

What is depicted in the above image no longer exists. What little I saw of it, when it existed, was in shambles. Pieces of cardboard and stripped copper wiring were strewn across the floor. Scrawls intersected with airbrushed art. Light ended on concrete. Colors converged.

It was a beautiful place for what it was. A post-industrial escape. A progressive-era Muir cathedral that was literally five minutes away from me. Despite the fact that it resided in the center of the homicide capitol of the west, it was my respite.

And it no longer exists.

Appropriately, PABCO roofing and manufacturing in Richmond, California is losing its last few bricks as I complete The World is Flat. Though I don’t necessarily subscribe to Friedman’s radically liberal (in an economic sense) tendencies, I believe the central premise of his thesis is correct. We are losing our manufacturing base. The time has come for us to choose between “open” and “shut.” My suggestion? Let’s pick open.

It may be fine and dandy when what we lose is an antiquated brick structure that made easily producible tar roof shingles — but it will be another matter entirely when we lose in the battle over minds, R&D, and high-tech production. There are countries that are already a sprint ahead of us in the energy realm. For starters, look into the host country for ITER and the sugar ethanol strides made by Brazil; also consider the efforts using offshore wind in Denmark.

Energy is just one example. For Egypt, the Ramadan tradition of fawanis is another, and Friedman tells us why:

“For centuries, small, low-wage workshops in Cairo’s older neighborhoods have manufactured these lanterns ? until the last few years. That was when plastic Chinese-made Ramadan lanterns, each with a battery-powered light instead of a candle, began flooding the market, crippling the traditional Egyptian workshops.”

Why the Globalization Hate?

To the untrained, careless peruser, the title of this entry may seemingly point an accusatory finger at globalization. That couldn’t be further from the truth. My own belief is that the world benefits from globalization, and I wish everyone would accept it. The requisite political stability and economic prosperity will soon follow. Getting there — though — means we have to replace the hard work of manufacturing roofing shingles (as we did in the factory above), with the even more ambitious task of competing globally in technology.

All of this requires a New Manhattan project, and a new program akin to the space race (more on this later). Thankfully one presidential candidate has laid out a clear plan for this. How we will get there is also up to us, but one sure route is by changing our culture, attitudes, openness to change, and adaptability in a “flat world,” as Friedman would call it. In order to do this, we’ll need to pull up our boot straps, roll up our sleeves, and start mucking.

Related posts:

1. Flared Mushroom Columns
2. The 1893 Fair That Changed the World
3. Art Moderne and Glass Bricks

There was a time in our history in which a cut of meat, or links of sausage didn’t come from a chain supermarket. Meat wasn’t transported pre-cut, across the country, via refrigerated trains. There was a local butcher. He knew you personally, and likely had an order made especially for you, every week.

Stephens Meat Products is now a parking lot next to San Jose’s central train station. Those who happened to pass by when the building existed, and who were not regular customers of Stephens, would immediately be struck by the neon sign above the parapet and a 1950s-era sign depicting an illuminated pig (one which was animated, mind you).

The building was constructed in 1948, but the business itself dates as far back as the Depression Era. During World War II, meat was hard to come by, but Stephen Pizzo was able to find an uncle with a beef ranch in the hills. When times began to change, and the packaged meat industry was dawning, Pizzo was visionary enough to purchase the first vacuum-pack lunch meat wrapper West of the Missouri. “They said he was crazy,” said Bob Morrison, Pizzo’s son-in-law.

Eventually, Pizzo’s meat products company was fighting an uphill battle. The big guys were controlling every aspect of the meat processing industry — vertical integration is what it’s generally referred as — and Stephen’s couldn’t compete with rancher cooperatives out East, who were controlling every stage of the production. These companies became the Oscar Mayers, Armour, and Swifts of today.

Morrison, who took over the business from his father-in-law, focused on quality to keep afloat — and it worked for years. He scoffs at the sausage made by the “big guys.”

“Beef Broth,” he said in a disgusted manner, “That’s what plumps ‘em. I shudder to think where that broth comes from. We don’t need that. And our franks out-plump ‘em all,” pausing for a moment. Then he picked up a package of chorizo sausage from his ‘corporate’ competitor, “Go ahead. Read the ingredients,” pointing out the list, which included salivary glands, lymph nodes, and tongue trimmings. “It doesn’t excite me seeing that on a sausage label.”

By the turn of the century, though, Stephen’s Meat Products was closing down. After 63 years of providing links and dogs to ballparks, cafeterias, and supermarkets the company just couldn’t compete. In its final years, it focused on its strong suit — something the conglomerates had difficulty matching in quality — sausage.

“In the meat business, sausage making is the top of the line,” Morrison explains. “Anybody can kill, but making sausage come out the same every time? It’s an art.”

Related posts:

1. Fleishhacker Pool – A Strange Journey Through S.F. History
2. Frank Lloyd Wright and His Forgotten Larkin Building
3. Discovering the History of a Titan I Base

Consider this a manifesto of sorts — an encouragement to go beyond the societal definition of private property and pave your own way. You should do this because these places are disappearing. You should do it because through your stories, and your experiences, you could perhaps inspire us to appreciate history for its lessons. Do not let old laws prevent you from telling incredible new stories. Do what you believe is right, rather than what the establishment says is right. There is still much to discover in this world. It all may seem to become less mysterious by the day; in reality, each day brings a new thing to analyze and a past to appreciate.

I wear shoes with padded soles to these places of the past; this keeps me from being heard while walking. Touring an abandoned place is a lot like walking through a post-apocalyptic no-man’s land; but with it comes both the guilt and exhiliration of potentially being caught for a crime.

When we see these places from the outside, they often don’t leave us with any lasting impression. Passing by them may incite idle curiosity for a few fleeting seconds, but it’s generally in passing. When one is inside, though, the experience changes. There are moments in which I’ve heard my own heart beating; seen flapping gulls in a framed-glass six story foyer that once housed radioactive ship components; an escalator that was once the world’s tallest and sits covered in mold, rust, and bird droppings. In a digital age, where everyone has a camera and every person with a cell phone is a photographer, these places serve as ideal snapshot fodder — and as a result an entire sub-culture of explorers have built a veritable institution online.

Beyond their raw photographic, draw though — beyond the interplay of light and rust, peeling paint, and the odor of asbestos and death is something that tells more about our culture than any critic or pundit could. Top secret manuals strewn about in military bases closed by the Base Realignment Committee; a multi-million dollar mansion built by a copper baron; the pervasive smell of benzyne, diesel fuel, and who-knows-what-else hundreds of feet underground in a Titan 1 missile silo. These experiences are incredibly formative; in an odd way they are the modern, post-industrial equivalent of Muir’s cathedrals.

My first conversion experience was not in a pew; it happened while I was alone. I was about to enter one of Oakland’s grandest historic structures — the Key System building. Pulling up a retractable ladder to a second story window, I nonchalantly climbed into the dark hole as bus passengers across the street looked at me in shock. The ladder disappeared from the bus passengers’ view along with me as I cautiously strolled across the precarious platform, which had a commanding view of the lobby below. Hand-carved Beaux Arts plaster had toppled from the ceiling; water dripped; a lone desk from the 40s sat in the middle of it all, rusting in its wake. But the conversion came higher — six stories up. I climbed the wrought iron staircase, encountering artifacts from various raves dating to the 80s. Though the building was an empty shell, one still had a sense of its magnificance. It was first built as a bank building and the architect spared no expense.

As I went higher, the rooms became emptier. Characteristic orange sodium vapor light flooded in through the broken windows. A building’s beauty is often best brought out when it’s empty. All too often we walk through active buildings and take little note of the care that is taken into its construction. At night, and while empty, is a building’s moment of glory. If a building’s best moment is when it is empty, its worst moment is reaching the final set of stairs. It is a moment of loss; a moment when one realizes there is nothing left to discover and this brief escape — like all escapes — will have its end.

I emerged to the roof and saw high-rises all around me. To the north was the Tribune building. I stood there to take it all in, understanding history through experience; knowing what a place once was, in the middle of a growing city that’s so alive, yet still carries the dead weight of the past on its shoulders. I stood there for what seemed like minutes (likely hours) in meditative silence. There on the top story of a 1911 building, a new belief was formed, and since then have discovered things about the past that few have been privileged to see.

Yes, I am a trespasser, and I have likely encroached on one of America’s dearest of ideas — that of private property. But through that minor transgression, I have been in the captain’s room of a 1950s cruise ship and have seen the silo of a 4-megaton nuclear warhead; photographed the abandoned mansion of a billionaire, and walked the halls of a World War II secret interrogation facility. It’s good to know there is still much to discover in this world, and taking pictures of these places is my conceit of ensuring that they’re never forgotten.

Related posts:

1. Location 51
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