Documenting Decay
Ever wonder what might be lurking in that empty hotel in your town? Or that old, forgotten, high rise? Urban Explorers do, but they take their curiosity to a whole other level – passing "No Tresspassing" signs and traversing the halls of old, abandoned properties just to see what's inside.
Urban Explorers participte in this strange and dangerous hobby at their own risk. Many of the older, forgotten buildings are filled with lead paint, asbestoses or harmful gases like carbon monoxide. Abandoned places are fragile, and often have structural damage such as unsafe floors or roofs that could collapse. Exposed wires and the threat of entrapment are also risks. To them, the health risks, and violating tresspassing laws, are just part of the adventure – going somewhere they should not be, seeing things that many people will never see.
Why do it if there’s so much risk?
“Because it’s beautiful and fascinating,” says longtime "urbexer" Connor Doornbos. “I have a deep attraction to history and the unseen.” For example, Doornbos tells the story of a railroad foundry he once explored in Roanoke, Virginia. “Even though kettles and casting forms were all still there, it was desolate.
“O. Winston Link was a photographer known for his railroad photography. At one time in the 1950s he took a photo of the foundry building while it was in use. I took my camera and stood in the same perspective that Link stood. The structure of the building hadn’t changed in some forty years, in a way it still retained its honor and majesty.”
But many places don't.
The Beyond Repair Repair Shop
On a busy street in Grand Rapids, Michigan sits an unrecognizable Auto Shop. “It’s amazing how fast structures are reclaimed by their environments,” Doornbos says of the space. “In less than a year, the roof caved in on that building.” The roof is currently being held up off the floor by a refrigerator.
“It’s become a dumping ground for the neighborhood,” he explains, motioning toward the leftover auto parts that are intermixed with broken appliances and torn furniture.
In Forgotten Detroit
Urban explorers are big fans of Detroit. With the city’s downturn in the 70s and 80s many buildings of beauty have been reduced to rubble. One such building is the United Artists Theater. Designed by C. Howard Crane, the Spanish-Gothic style theater was once where audiences delighted in the early motion pictures of the 20s and 30s, including the first run of Gone with the Wind. By the late 90s the theater was in ruins.
There are many accounts from urban explorers who have found deteriorated baby grand pianos and other items of interest in the abandoned theatres of Detroit. One even found a body partially frozen in ice in an elevator shaft of Detroit's Roosevelt Warehouse.
Only When It's Gone...
The J.L. Hudson Company was a retail department store chain based in Detroit. The flagship store, at one time the tallest department store in the world, stood on Woodward Avenue in downtown Detroit until its demolition in 1998. “It was only after the building was demolished that there was any outcry,” Doornbos says, “That kind of vacancy creates noise and irregularity. That’s when people start to have nostalgia. Urban exploration at its core seeks to document, for posterity, that nostalgia and the process by which things fall apart.”
The most striking thing about being in a dilapidated building is the contrast between beauty and neglect. Pictures of people hang on graffitied walls. Light pours in from timeworn "skylights." Once-grand spaces seem to have gone spoiled. This creates an emotional cocktail mixed with excitement and apprehension – you never know what you're going to see, or what that thing is going to make you feel.
Originally published on December 9, 2009.
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