These posts always feel so erie and unsettling to me, especially considering that where I live, (Manhattan,) the vultures circling are developers and gentrifiers, zeroing in on any space not being used to it's full potential. (and even some that are- NYU, do you hear me? Stop making churches into dorms!) My initial reaction to this was, oh, some foundation will buy it and ti will become a private school... because that's what would happen here, within a matter of seconds. I simply cannot wrap my brain around a place like this actually staying abandoned. It's like we in New York are clawing at the same tired piñata, while Detroit kicks around candy bars under its feet.
That's amazing that it's only been a year. It makes me want to see a timeline of photos, to see how quickly the damage progressed -- one day, one week, one month, three months. I wonder if it happened gradually over the year, or if there was a point at which word went around and everyone descended on the school at once.
If you hear of a school shutting its doors anywhere near you, come to think of it, you should do that project and document its collapse...
Another heartbreaking, beautiful, ghostly post. Well done.
These posts continue to hit me right in the chest. So very shocking and these ruins are a true barometer of the times we are living in, the true death of a city and society. Yet at the same time its all beautiful in some strange way. Like no matter what our mark on the land is, it all goes away. Nature wins.
I never knew until seeing your pictures that scrapping was such a problem.
Thanks for documenting this for those of us who live so far away. It scares and fascinates me in so many ways.
Something about the scrappers feels so Mad Max/end of days to me and gives me the creeps.
My two kids are at school, so I could give Google a little more attention and found this:
"Cooper Elementary was built in 1920. An addition was completed the same year. It was originally set to be named for Theodore Roosevelt, but the name was changed before construction began to honor the late Jane Cooper, a longtime Detroit educator.
Cooper was educated in Detroit schools. She taught in the Firname, Tilden and Clay schools and was principal of Clay, Barstow, Capron, Marr, Doty and Lincoln schools.
She was especially remembered for paying for meals for poor children at her school out of her own funds and for her concern for the education of gifted children."
I also found a reference that Jane Cooper had been Principal of Barstow School in 1903.
I simultaneously love and hate these posts. They are so riveting, but I am so sad for these buildings. History stripped bare. But that's how it works, human civilization has seen glorious buildings built, used and then abandoned only to be scavenged. The Roman Colosseum and the Greek Parthenon are two examples. So it is very interesting to see it happening now. Thank you for chronicling these buildings.
What part of the city is this in?
The last time I came home, I went downtown for a Tiger game with my husband and family. The entire ride through the city, my eyes were welled up with tears, largely because of the things you have shared with us on this blog. Parts of the city look rundown from the outside, but seeing your images of these "internal organs" breaking down on the inside should be an eye opener for everyone. It's heartbreaking.
Keep doing what you're doing, but please be careful.
I work in detroit and live in the suburbs.
Thanks for writing so thoughtfully and eloquently about detroit. I wish you had a newspaper column so that you could provide such thought-provoking reading to a wider audience of metro detroiters--although, I should lower my expectations...I've seen the kind of ugliness that comes from metro detroiters in the comments section of freep.com.
"...the last year of classes at Jane Cooper Elementary was 2006-7. After that, the cash-strapped Detroit Public Schools shut the school down. All the damage in the photographs I took occurred in just a little over one year."
I feel like someone pulled the rug out from under me.
I feel as though I should cry.
I already bought one of your prints and will be hanging it in my home.
I'm a reader, a learner, a compulsive booklover.
These photos hurt me.
As I was looking at the strewn textbooks and maps in the pictures, I was thinking, 'Wow, what a waste of all that taxpayer money. All those books and supplies that could have been used by students elsewhere.'
Then, I thought your comment following was interesting.
"The story I discovered here no longer belongs to the kids, but to those men with minds bent only towards metal. They came in and took everything of worth. They left textbooks, workbooks, chalkboards, maps."
It seems to me that the scrappers left what was really worth something--the books and learning materials meant for a new generation. It is a poignant commentary on how much American society has placed worth on money and making money any way we can and not on education and building lifelong learners.
Then my jaw dropped when I saw it had closed only a little over a year ago. I can't understand how school officials could not keep track of the security of the school or did not even have teachers empty the school and transfer all the learning materials elsewhere. I understand not having money to tackle problems, but this is disheartening.
I live in the near suburbs, and I often see scrappers digging through my trash. And I know that I strangely feel violated when I notice them going through what I've discarded, trying to find an old hinge or a coil of wire in a bag of basement junk. Then I read your stories of being in these places that are not garbage and should not be treated like garbage, and I can only imagine how I'd feel if this school was once mine or was in my own neighborhood. I have a hard time accepting that there can't be some solution to this problem.
in looking into this old neighborhood, I found a website by some woman from the suburbs who'd grown up there, filled with photos of burned-out houses, empty storefronts, vacant lots. under each she'd written, "How did this happen to my old neighborhood?"
The short answer?
You left.
I can't imagine why more people, more Detroit tax-payers, aren't completely outraged by this situation. I keep looking at your photos and stories of Detroit and wondering how things could possibly haven't gotten so desperate? It's so far beyond anything that I've experienced in my lifetime.
I wonder if any of the scrappers attended school there.
These pictures are exactly like ones of schools I took when I was in the Russian Far East. Abandoned after communism was no longer there to provide education and/or when mining towns would close because the mines were no longer producing.
Why do you say these are men without honor? Sure, it's horrifying to rip off a school, but Detroit is in a pretty horrifying socioeconomic situation itself.
I still can't believe the playground looks so good...
"Why do you say these are men without honor?"
because they are thieves---enterprising, hardworking, interesting thieves.
I should add this is not a phenomenon only seen in the poorest neighborhoods: for the last week I have been taking pictures of the scrapper who has been removing metal daily from the (poorly-secured) abandoned medical building across the street from our house.
I'm not saying that there aren't different degrees of scrappers: I have actually had decent conversations with some of the guys scraping the very bottom of the barrel in some of these buildings that have been abandoned and open for 20+ years; those guys are clearly less repugnant than the guys breaking into viable buildings and destroying their potential for rehabilitation. but I still think there is no honor in what any of them do.
These images, and these posts of yours, strip me of all idealism. For the scrappers, there is the opportunity and the reward. What else do they have? Make something amazing happen with their substandard education, which most likely ended before 11th grade? The city has shown them time and again how valuable these buildings are, how valuable the children are who once ran through its halls, how valuable the neighborhood is that was demolished and never rebuilt.
As outsiders, observers, we see potential. We see history. We see the possibility of this space becoming anything but this: a brick garbage heap. But their reality is something else. Something immediate, raw and stripped of a future. Perhaps it's all they've been given. Little opportunity, puny rewards.
Thank you for repeatedly bearing witness to the heartbreaking beauty of decay.
At least the building was abandoned - left to this. These scrappers are starting to ruin things that aren't.
At a local ballfield where I play here in Atlanta, thieves recently stole all the copper wiring out of the light poles. All the fall softball leagues had to be cancelled and the county estimates that it will cost $54,000 to repair the damage. This has also happened at several local youth league fields. So sad.
My old elementary school decided to build a bigger school in the country and isn't inhabited anymore. It's in a historic part of town and holds Sunday school classes, so it's not subjected to decay. After the building was emptied I took photos on the fire escape but left before too long because something felt "wrong." A year later I walked past it late at night and the doors were open and the lights were on so I went inside but felt like if I continued, I'd never get out. I guess I'm superstitious. But I really want to go back. (With permission.)
Have you ever encountered a scrapper?
Yolanda,
Maybe they're just angry (and desperate)?
Thanks for another beautiful entry, JDG. You really help to put things in perspective when viewing this.
Oh, and I just remembered! We watched that Emenem movie...what's it called? Anyway, there is a little short segment where they show the 'guns for rent' place you have a picture of somewhere on Flickr. Looks like it hasn't changed a bit since they filmed.
It was on VH1 and a re-run. I couldn't help myself...to reconcile all of the images I have seen here to what was filmed. It was a real eye-opener.
I wonder what the reaction would be if the Detroit Marathon route (which I just pounded with my own two feet, TYVM) went through areas like this instead of through Windsor, Indian Village, and the brand-spanking-new Riverwalk?
holy christ. This is unbelievably sad. There is definitely something Mad Max/Waterworld/The Road about it all.
"for the last week I have been taking pictures of the scrapper who has been removing metal daily from the (poorly-secured) abandoned medical building across the street from our house"
Are you referring to the old Wayne State pharmacy school high rise?
My wife went there in it's last year of operation (prior to the new school opening on campus). She said the inside was pretty dismal and deteriorated even then.
Were the surrounding houses torn down around the same time as the school being closed? Or did the kids walk to school through the prairie?
I find these photos (and all your others like them) so sad and yet fascinating. I'm sure if you showed these to anyone without giving any explanation, they would be assumed to have been taken in post-Soviet Russia or a war-zone somewhere - certainly not, as you say, the richest country in the world.
I was shocked when you wrote the school has only been closed since 2007. By the looks of things I thought it would have been much longer. I don't understand why the books and supplies were not taken to other DPS buildings. How wasteful and irresponsible! School district should have cleaned up and carried everything out, either to the dump or sell furniture and equipment etc.that was not going to be used at another building. Instead they just leave it to be an eyesore in a city already full of eyesores. Terrible. I'm surprised the scrappers haven't touched that playground.
Liz from Law School: here's a Google Map link to where the school is. There's even a Street View available for the area so you can check out the building and the (mostly barren) neighbourhood.
Quite shocking.
Lis, I completely understand that reaction.
But think about it this way: when a school closes, a lot of the staff (janitorial, secretarial, etc.) are let go. the teachers are either fired or moved to different schools. When teachers express an interest in bringing supplies with them to the new school, they are told that moving materials is a specific unionized job, and the district could face serious union trouble if it lets non-unionized workers do work reserved for a specific union. the most valuable school supplies are, of course, moved by such unionized workers, but the district can only afford to pay those workers to move the kind of items that will be absolutely necessary in the other schools. outdated materials, old maps, used workbooks, etc. are not a priority, and though they make a huge visual impact in these photos they aren't THAT big of a waste.
the district should absolutely be blamed for not properly securing the building. so should the police be blamed for not aggressively pursuing scrappers and illegal scrapyards. the other, worse criminals distracting the police should be blamed. the corporations and individuals who abandoned the city years ago deserve a share of the blame for creating the vacuum into which poverty and crime have flourished.
shit's complicated, you know?
It's the picture of the auditorium that made me literally gasp. I find it all so heartbreaking.
I know you say the men have no honour, but I hope that they doing this to feed their families (and not addictions). This is the only way I can find a justification of the ugliness.
These men absolutley have no honor. Is there any attempt to try to stop them, or are people too afraid? I suspect it is seen as being as hopeless as everything else.
Do you have any hopes that something will come out of your work & observations or are do you see yourself as just a witness?
"...these are men without honor. The only code they live by is if I don't take this, someone else will. Where I live, men like these are a force of nature, like piranhas in the Amazon; like locusts on the plains; like vultures circling above you as you try to make your way across the sands."
It surely is complicated, as you say above. But this quotation struck me hard. My only experience with scrappers is reading in National Geographic about children scrapping First World computer parts in the bowels of Western African cities. Is there any sympathetic portrait to be taken of men who perhaps cannot earn a living by any other means in this broken, broken city?
when assigning blame, don't forget the owners of the scrapyards who pay scrappers for clearly stolen property. and don't forget the lawmakers who haven't imposed more regulations/penalties on scrapyards who accept stolen property.
But, can you "properly secure" an abandoned building in Detroit?
Seems like it is a futile endeavor based on what I have seen and read here and elsewhere.
Great writing. Thanks.
The thing that always strikes me when I look at this or your library photos is how much we have in the US, and how little we value it. In some other part of the world what was cast of and left behind at this school would have been cherished and appreciated and used and used and used to teach children.
It seems like a waste of a blessing. Why should we have so much more than we need or want, and others have not enough?
the whole "whether these men have honor" question really misses the point, and it's totally my fault for writing that sentence in the post so flippantly. it kind of reminds me of the whole "whether the suicide bomber has courage" question that got bill maher in trouble.
as I wrote in an earlier post, I would like to imagine these men are doing it to feed their families, but that part of the equation really seems irrelevant to me. would a thief who steals bread for his family claim that act honorable, or simply necessary? I am not dismissing the forces that lead these men to scrap. I believe no matter how desperate you might be, when you steal something that doesn't belong to you, you bring dishonor to yourself, whether it's $4 worth of copper or $4 million dollars in a fatcat's golden parachute.
Like I said, these scrappers are a natural part of our city's ecosystem. whether what they do is dishonorable is largely irrelevant.
Heartbreaking, beautiful.
Every Sunday my boyfriend and I pass by an abandoned factory at the 75 and 94 intersection. There's symbols of this destruction everywhere. Those of us in the suburbs have no control over Detroit really, and Detroit hasn't been too good at picking themselves up either (or so it would seem).
Heartbreaking, yes. Unusual, no.
So, so sad. Heart wrenching, actually. The whole damn system is broke, the scrappers are just the product of a broken system. Why should they care, when the system doesn't care about them? Don't get me wrong, I hate scrappers and think it's horrible. But the problem lies in how they got to be that way in the first place.
Great post.
The last comment said it all... this is how we value education in this country. There are plenty of impoverished districts or counties that could have used the materials.
I'm a teacher and I appreciate you documenting this for all of us.
Oh. My. God. That front door. All that woodwork. Amazing.
Is it that they are without honor, or is it that they are without hope?
I have a hard time hating the criminal/scrapper/looter, and often hate the reasons why they feel compelled to do such a thing in the first place.
I agree with mfk that you should seek out at least one newly-closed building to track its decay. It'd be sad, but it couldn't possibly be much sadder than this. One year?!? I wonder what has spared the playground this long.
The worst thing for me is the graded papers, names on the board, posters in the hall. Wasn't that worth someone saving? You just know the teachers gave up, the students and their families just couldn't afford to care anymore. There's so much pain and injustice tied up in this that you could tell a thousand different stories without coming upon much of anything uplifting.
I can't imagine being bitter enough to not clear out my room, at least, before leaving. Erase the chalkboard, take down the art, pass out the papers, stack up the books somewhere safe. Leave an empty room. Especially if you know from experience this would happen.
Once again, like others have said, I can't believe they couldn't find a use for the educational materials in other schools-- aren't these students just switching schools, and won't those schools need books for them? I could ramble on and on, but it's just madness.
As a teacher myself, these pictures are particularily heartwrenching. I wish our government would take more stock in important things like education and less in overpriced toilets and NASA flights.
My dad & I used to have discussions about this, right there on Goddard & McNichols, after I got out of my Situational Ethics class @ UDM. I hope you know this is killing me, J. I would love nothing more than to move back, but I need a job there. I don't want Windsor.
Again, are you hoping something will happen because of these posts? Well, other than that we will al be mouth agape?
Many scrappers are starving artists types that actually incorporate the "found" objects into their installations.
I am not a scrapper. I have never scrapped or been around anyone that scrapped but I'm pretty sure I've seen art works and installations that made use of this kind of cannibalization.
Iv'e been reading and commenting ocassionally for a while now. I always find myself moved by your pictures and words, often there is a strange sense of beauty in your pictures. The "view through the window" picture in this post is incredible, had you asked me to guess at its location I would have responded with a single word "Chernobyl?"
Despite hours of coverage of US issues, politics and culture over here (UK)you show me a part of the US that none of our major news providers have.That you do so from within rather than outside the community is testament to your character and integrity.
I can only hope that your posts are the pebbles that create the ripples of change for Detroit.
Keep safe.
& just so the irony doesn't escape you, I'm an Urban Planner & my Huz is a Mechanical Engineer with 10 years of auto sales experience. We cannot find work in Detroit.
Scrapping in the news of my hometown too- seems that some men that were running a scrapping scam accidently recorded their plans on a state government voicemail (don't ask how) and they got busted.
JDG- your post highlighted how this is usually for such fraction dollar amounts of the original market worth... I thought of that as I read this article:
http://www.sltrib.com/news/ci_10772877
My first thought when I saw these pictures was Chernobil...seemed like everything was abandoned at a moment's notice. Then looking closer at the destruction that took palace in a year, it's hard to believe this is in the middle of a large US city. I just can't reconcile how we can fund these wars we’re waging, but can’t fund public education and health care. It makes me so sad to see this beautiful school in ruins.
It's so sad to see the destruction (and in such a short time, too). The elementary school I went to closed a year after I left for Jr. High. It sad abandoned for almost a decade, until the town decided to turn it in to housing for retired folks. One time, while it was still borded up, my older sister and her friend snuck in and walked through it. She told me it was creepy, but she got to see all the old classrooms and the auditorium. When they came across trash that looked like people had been living in there, they got out fast. We all still have great memories of that school, and from what I hear, the inside still has remnants of the old school, and the outside looks the same. Oh, and there were these beautiful frescoes that were on the wall that were cut out and hung in the new town library when renovations began. Thanks for sharing these stories of abandoned buildings.
There is very little incentive for schools and districts to be conservative and preserve possessions.
The farther removed the bureaucracy is, the less accountable they become. School funding shouldn't be federal, it should be much more local.
Another post of yours that just made me cry for lost things (what can I say, I'm a Taurus, we value lovely things).
Thanks for the beautiful post.
My heart feels so heavy reading this post - the waste is so unnecessary, so avoidable. I was a teacher and feel so utterly heartbroken and angry when I see these types of images. Actually, I get more P.O.ed than sad. Thank you for documenting the senseless destruction. One last thing, I'd like to point out that I don't agree with you that it's my parent's fault that the city is the way it is. They left Detroit for nearby Dearborn for several good reasons: my older brother was being physically assulted and harassed on a daily basis at his junior high school and they feared for his safety, their car was repeatedly vandalized (tires slashed etc.) and my dad wasn't able to insure that he'd be able to get to his job everyday. Without that car, he couldn't get to work, without that job, he couldn't feed, house and educate six children, and lastly, my parents just wanted their children to get an education in a safe environment. That simply wasn't possible where we lived in Detroit. So yeah, they left the city. They were protecting my brother's life, and trying to do the right thing for their children. Just my two cents. Still love your writing and photographs. No hard feelings I hope.
I don't think it's your parents' fault that the city is the way it is, BID.
In summer of 2007, I went "salvage gardening" with a Detroiter in this neighborhood. She looks for bulbs and plants that used to be in the yards of houses and transplants them to her gardens nearby. She was disappointed when we arrived because a growing strawberry patch had recently been destroyed by bulldozers. I have a photo of the school in October of 2007, but we were on Miller Street about a block away.
http://defcode.com/wiki/index.ph...:
Dscf020028.jpg
My neighborhood fought hard to have an abandoned hospital secured on the Detroit/Hamtramck border. (Coincidentally, it is the same hospital seen in "8 Mile", Greater Detroit Hospital.) The windows and pipes were stolen over six weeks by a few professional scrappers with tools. Everything else that could be removed by hand was stolen by drug addicts and traded for crack and heroin at drug houses. A neighbor once followed two men who stole an x-ray machine from the hospital to Sikora Metals. He watched the DPD give them a ticket, presumably for scrapping without a license. I'm sure they were able to cover it with the money they got for the x-ray machine.
So very sad. My sister lives in Saginaw, a rather depressed town in Michigan. In less than two years, her neighborhood went from being one of the nicest ones in town to being one where the scrappers remove the siding off of homes that are for sale. Truly sad.
These pictures and stories are very shocking to me. I can't imagine there is a city out there with less pride than Detroit. It seems as though it's hell bent on destruction. With the political problems along with all the other problems, I can't imagine it would ever be more than it is right now, if anything much less. To be honest, I can't imagine why anyone would want to live there. You can dress it up anyway you want, but it's still pretty nasty.
Thanks so much for showing those who might not otherwise see the good (and yes, there IS good in our city), the bad, and the ugly.
It is my hope, and maybe yours, that these images will raise awareness, and maybe motivate a few folks to do whatever they can to help make a change. Yeah, I'm an idealist, I can't help it. 
I recently interviewed, and am hoping to be selected for a job in the city. I currently live and work in the 'burbs, although I received my BS at Wayne State. If I do get the job, I'll be moving. I've always wanted to be able to walk to work.
Do you ever go to Elmwood Cemetery? I was there walking with my honey yesterday. I know it seems creepy, but it's a gorgeous park-like setting, and very peaceful.
Heartbreaking
Ah, Detroit at its finest!
This isn't just on Detroit. This is on all of us. We let this happen. Most of us just don't care because we never have to see that it's happening.
Amazing photographs, as usual. Thank you for writing the story.
May I ask if you call the police when you see the scrappers stealing items from these buildings? I agree with you that they are thieves, but how can it be stopped if no one takes the time to report it when the criminals are onsite? I know it would only be a drop in the bucket, but it would be a step towards a solution rather than just quietly observing and throwing up one's hands and accepting the seemingly inevitable. (And, by 'solution' I am referring to the loss of taxpayer money, not urban decay.) If you have reported the activity, please share the police dept's reaction and the outcome.
One Day I am going to get into trouble reading your posts.. I had to go see it. I used to work right there... on Conant..
It is jawdropping to see in reality.. You can still read the bulletin boards from the street.. Sorry I was in my car with the windows rolled up and the doors locked. Well not sorry but sorry I had to be..
this is happening everywhere in the ole USA. right under our noses. the only difference is that it seems much more blatant in motor city. this is not beautiful, merely the end of another empire.
You write with such compassion. Thank you.
Code of Ethics to not vandalize schools or playgrounds?!?! They vandalize churches! Nothing is above their thieving hands!
How come they haven't taken the metal in the playground swing sets?
So beautiful & so sad.
Thank you for these photographs and your writing. Be safe out there on the sands.
Outrageous. The photo collage of the kids' field trip got me. What happens with the kids when they close a school in an area of town that's this bad? Are they bussed to various other schools - do more drop out? Though I have a sense of what the answer is - how does this happen?
"I believe no matter how desperate you might be, when you steal something that doesn't belong to you, you bring dishonor to yourself, whether it's $4 worth of copper or $4 million dollars in a fatcat's golden parachute. "
This is what I was getting at, I think. It doesn't matter what you're stealing or where you're stealing from, it's still stealing.
Rhetorical question here: do you think Detroit will ever recover during your lifetime?
As always, love your photos and analysis.
Hi - I found your blog through the blogroll at Emphasis Mine, and this was the first post I read. Holy Moses! Amazing stuff here... this one really grabbed me. I'd like to link back from my own blog - will of course give credit where it is, most definitely, due.
I'll be back. Thanks for all the photos and the excellent writing.
I don't feel the waste here. More the consumption. And, I mean that, in deference to you of course, in a quite Victorian way... consumption.
I once worked on a Museum acquisition of Philippines ceramics, some of which were grave goods. I interviewed the collector who was making the donation and he was a beyond affable Filipino surgeon. The stories he told were wide-ranging of how he collected the varied and numerous beautiful plates, bowls, figures, etc. But what always struck me was his excitement (??) about things dug up. His reaction to the men who dug things out of the earth.
His relationship to these "labourers" is not entirely unfamiliar to me. I see it in my Dad sometimes a real white collar guy, when he goes back home and revisits his own father's 'blue collar' background. I wonder JDG about you and the scrappers. Your excitment is not a positive as the collector I interviewed back then but still there is a connection or attraction. I'm not sure.
It might be called perspective.
These images just seem so... apocalyptic, in a Stephen King sort of way.
on a purely aesthetic level, i just wanted to say that your photographs of abandoned spaces always take my breath away. beautiful.
These posts of yours about the ghost buildings of Detroit always sadden me to see the collapse of a once great city. My husband grew up in Detroit and attended Cass Tech for a couple of grades. He has some great tales about Motown musicians living down the street. But when we visited Michigan (from our home in Texas) several years ago, our visit to Detroit was not a good time for him. He tried to show me some places of meaning for him there and in one of the suburbs. He decided that he can't go back again, it was too difficult for him. He's been in Texas over 25 years now, his entire career in newspapers. On a brighter note, I enjoyed our visits to Ann Arbor, Traverse City and Mackinaw Island... (during summer). Being a native Texan, I've not experienced anything like this exactly. But my semi-inner city neighborhood in San Antonio has morphed into more of a 'hood than I remember. But my old schools are still going strong. The elementary school had to be expanded because the neighborhood is Hispanic and there are many more children than when I was a child in the 60s.
Wow, my elementary school's outside and its auditorium look so similar to those at this school. My parents grew up not far from this school in Highland Park. It's weird that my own school 1800 miles away looks so similar.
I, too, live in a place where buildings are abandoned and entire sections of the city go unused/abandoned. We moved here from San Francisco/Bay Area, though we've lived in several other gentrified cities (NYC, Seattle, Portland, San Diego), and unused acreage/square footage was hard to wrap my head around at first. To begin with, we could afford to buy a home, but then affordable housing usually = ridiculously low or NO wages as in Detroit.
We are in Charlotte, NC now and we have a friend in MI and we hear how hard life is there. Detroit breaks my heart. Thank you for bringing it to our attention.
I didn't comment when you posted a photo of a rusted MILK sign on James Street in Zeeland, a route I drive almost daily. I thought about commenting that I have children in similar stages to yours: a two and a half year old girl and a 7 month old son. But if you are going to link back to Velvet Touch and being a busboy at RUSS'?! I can not resist. Where did you grow up?
Becky in Ho-Land
I don't remember how I found it...but you can google it up. I found a short story called Domovoi on the web. It is about the "spirit" of an old building and her relationship with the developer who wants to "improve" her. (It is like the literary expression of your photos and blog.) If you have the time, you should check it out.
I often allow myself to forget this exists here in our country. Thanks for the reminder!
The photo of the exterior of the school with the boat reminds me of "Early Sunday Morning" by Edward Hopper.
Awesome! Amazing photographs! Amazing location!
jdg, why did they leave? You write very well, so maybe you can appreciate this.
a neo-fascist anecdote? really?
whenever i'm frustrated with another burglary email from my southside atlanta neighborhood listserv, i like to read your blog and think, "at least i'm not in detroit." i hope it gets better up there.
Although scrappers are immoral, a worse thievery happened when the neighborhood died and the school was closed. Should it just sit there alone and abandoned, maybe under some kind of dome? Would we be more comfortable if professionals bulldozed it or parsed it away in clean little bits? I don't know, not having stood there or seen the outright thefts of working things, but does part of you ever think, Well at least somebody is getting use from this?
What's really sad is that somebody seems to be saying Detroit is not a town worth fixing.
I'm hardly one to comment, but I like to think I read your posts as often as I can. (never having left a comment before)
So is it just me, or are you sounding a bit more melancholy lately? Maybe it's a combination of the photos and the subject matter. Maybe it's a reflection of my own thoughts. Who knows. Stay well.
I'm only 46 but I can remember when large parts of New York City were full of burned-out, abandoned tenements. I lived on the Lower East Side in the early 1980s, and visited there from the mid-70s onwards. Abandoned buildings, burnt-out cars, junkies standing in long lines waiting to buy heroin from dealers who constructed fantastic redoubts in empty buildings. The transformation from thriving neighborhood to Mad Max no-mans-land happened in about ten years or less, and then the transformation back again from Mad Max to incredibly rich yuppie playland took about 20 years. The Lower East Side is the province of trust fund babies at the moment. With the economic crisis we shall see what happens.
It is indeed strange how neighborhoods and cities can morph so quickly. I now live in Oakland, CA, which morphed from manufacturing powerhouse to Silicon Valley exurb in about 20 years. I am concerned we are poised on another roller coaster peak, ready to plummet back into Mad Max territory. There are many empty, foreclosed, unsold houses in my prosperous neighborhood. What is going to happen?
The school district just announced that my son's school will be closed this June. It's on a lovely site in a area of $600,000 houses on the edge of the ghetto. The local bourgeoisie all send their kids to private schools. What will happen to this place? The thieves have already been stealing pipe and air conditioning units - all the schools now have iron cages over their electrical and heating systems.
Weird, weird, weird. Oakland could become Detroit and it could happen fast.
My thoughts are with you - thank you for your blog and your photographs.
Re: scrapper's code of honor - out west, here in Portland, OR, the latest meth-fueled scrapper outrage du jour is that they've now begun stealing metal from Willamette National Cemetary. So, no, that chimerical code of honor is something that I do not believe exists.
Just when you think it can't get much worse...
I can't stay away from this site. I went to Cooper in the 50's and lived four houses away from the playground. When I saw the side entrance where I entered and then the large vacant fields that used to be my neighbors' homes, I felt sick. Then there were the hallways and, lastly, the auditorium where I was in many a play. This is sad. So terribly sad.
I found the below on a scrap of paper that blew across the street and stuck itself to my face. How Odd.
I'm an Art teacher in Detroit. Within 2 hours of reading this post I was inside the Cooper School. I assure you (all) that the supplies were packed up with all good intentions.
I uncovered the corner of a career's worth of lesson plans(strewn about of course). Whoever left this room did right to preserve these materials, but the ball was dropped right after. Still on the board is "1/2 days of school left June 15(?), 2007.
I gathered as much as I could from the Art room. I found (boxed) grade level art books for 1-6 and after a quick black mold filtering, I now have at least a dozen or so for each elementary grade. I had 0 before I read this post and no money to buy them.
I read in your story that "33 schools (were) closed in 2007" by the DPS. That's going to take me some time, but I've got one down, 32 to go.
I know art supplies so that's what I'm going to harvest.
I'll post here and on freecycle where other art teachers can pick these up from me. Maybe I'll put it together and donate it all (back) to the DPS, wouldn't that be a laugh.
What I saw today made me sick. I know how much time and effort goes into building lesson plans and gathering materials and I'll be damned if I'm going to let it all rot.
This is still my Detroit.
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