Detroit's symbols of urban decay
By Paul Breschuk
Features Editor
January 20, 2010
 In daylight hours, the truth behind the façade of Detroit’s skyline remains a secret. However, the recent years have seen a drastic dimming from the building windows after sunset. A sad symptom, this rather telling example of Detroit’s decline sounds the death knell for many historically significant buildings.
Their outer beauty, with some featuring Art Deco or Neo-Classical design, cannot hide the inner ugliness of a gutted and useless shell of a structure.
Curiously, and perhaps for PR reasons, efforts have been made to avoid the perfect black result of a perfectly abandoned building. Aside from a few stray lights, some by maintenance workers while others just randomly left on, a considerable portion of Detroit’s buildings are noticeably uninhabited.
Stepping away from downtown, a more dramatic example of a city decimated by deindustrialization can be found with its outlying factories.
While a skyscraper can hide its disuse, the sprawling acreage of a factory is a more obvious site of neglect. At the mercy of both resurging vegetation and ruthless scrappers, these structures have come to resemble the landscape of an urban war zone.
Their demise, however, came at a more peaceful, gradual rate – a silent slide into obscurity, weeds, and broken glass.
Rustbelt cities, most notably Detroit and Flint, Michigan, appear to be slowly declining into ghost towns. Schools, hospitals, community infrastructure, and commercial space are just some of the victims of rapid depopulation, spotting the Detroit map like open, rotting sores.
These symbols of urban decay, often containing much pathos and ironic beauty, have caught the attention of activists, historians, and artists alike.
Despite having different backgrounds, their motivation remains the same – to document and preserve their crumbling surroundings on rolls of film.
Armed with a camera, flashlight, and occasional permission, these photographers become what are known as “historic preservationists,” or the more flashy title, “urban explorers.”
Instead of letter writing or petition drafting, their brand of activism is conducted in a much more physical sense, wading through urban wastelands in order to obtain that perfect photograph.
Ultimately, these photographic efforts lead to a historical and cultural education which further strengthens a sense of community in even the most decimated of neighborhoods.
Perhaps the most well-known of such photographers is Detroit artist Lowell Boileau. In as early as the 1970s, Boileau became acutely aware of the aesthetic quality of Detroit’s ruins.
As a painter, he would spend much of his efforts searching for specific industrial vistas as inspiration for paintings. His job at the time, a Sears delivery driver, also allowed him to develop a nuanced understanding of Detroit’s landscape by seeing the city from unique angles and obscure backstreets.
With the mid-90s emergence of the World Wide Web, Boileau was quick to realize its potential to carry his images and their inherent messages of reverence and preservation.
He created www.DetroitYES.com as a virtual painting, a 250 web page tour of the ruins of Detroit which began in 1997. The site, named “The Fabulous Ruins of Detroit,” would become an award-winning hub of historic preservation.
“From the very first responses I received following its 1997 launch, I learnt that the site had unlocked strong and hidden emotional connections with the audience,” said Boileau.
“Our city of ruins had been a persona non grata, not a topic for discussion, and when spoken of, treated with scorn and derision. I set out to photograph them in their most beautiful moments when the gold of the setting sun turned their broken windows into jewels, their ivy-covered walls to flowers. I tried to emphasize their poignancy with the ambition of getting the audience to see them for the works of art and history that they are,” he continued.
Visitors of the website soon picked up on Boileau’s passion for the city’s fading landmarks. They began taking their own digital photographs, posting them on the www.DetroitYES.com forum alongside important political and preservationist discussions.
The movement to explore and document abandoned buildings spread across the country, with new websites popping up every year.
Sherman Cahal’s website, www.AbandonedOnline.net, focuses not only on Detroit, but other cities of the Midwest and Mid-Atlantic.
Cahal, who describes his efforts as a race against time, said, “I am drawn into the intrinsic beauty and history that an abandoned site poses.
Each abandonment or historic structure holds its own story, its own recollection of events over its lifetime.”
These stories are usually quick to disappear as soon as the wrecking ball arrives.
And although demolitions are necessary, preservationists only ask for a more mindful process involving a 60 day moratorium that would include a review committee.
“We rarely review anything to see if it could be salvaged,” said Cahal.
“It is necessary to clear out the obsolete, to demolish what is no longer needed, but we do it at such speed and recklessness that we are often not able to challenge these demolitions or collect any mementos or photographs before it is reduced to rubble,” he continued.
One of the sites where Cahal had beaten the wrecking ball was the Indiana Army Ammunitions Plant, his favourite site, located just southeast of Charleston, Indiana.
“Although the core of the plant is just now being demolished,” explained Cahal, “I have photographed and documented the complex for years, preserving what was the largest smokeless powder plant in the world. It helped the allies win World War II and it just sits there empty and barren today. The thousands of commuters who pass by its two power plants and hundreds of buildings, many full of vintage World War II-era industrial treasures, have no idea of its role in shaping the world.”
Back in Detroit, Boileau says his most cherished photographic sites is the Packard Motor Car Plant, offering 37 acres of industrial ruins dating back from 1907.
“In a nutshell, it tells the story of post-industrial Detroit. As a luxury car maker that went out of business 50 years ago, it presaged the coming years and path that much of Detroit would follow. Its collapse carried over to its surrounding neighborhood where the falling of its domino brought down those of schools, businesses, institutions, churches, and finally, residential homes,” said Boileau, describing its current neighbours as an expanding urban prairie and a cemetery.
Much of what has happened to Detroit is mirrored by Windsor, albeit on a smaller scale.
Although it has faced similar factory closures, it has been spared the problematic social issues that have plagued Detroit such as the “white flight,” or high crime rate. Still, there is no denying Windsor’s downward spiral as more and more vacant properties sit in disuse.
As long as there are abandoned buildings, there will be an interested party of squatters, curious teenagers, looters, and photographers nearby.
Local entrepreneur and Internet celebrity Mike Beauchamp of www.MikeBeauchamp.com has explored several of Windsor’s abandoned sites.
On his website are images from his daring expeditions into the Ford Foundry, Hotel Dieu Grace Hospital, and Brighton Beach, just to name a few.
In 2007, Beauchamp also managed to photograph the mysterious underground tunnels connecting most of the buildings on UWindsor’s campus.
There is an undeniable sense of romance in the exploring and documenting of such here-today gone-tomorrow places.
In the end, these activists seek an understanding of the world that surrounds them, a discovery of why and what next.
To this effect, Boileau quoted T.S. Eliot:
“And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.” |
