In 1950, Detroit was the 4th largest American city. Now much of it is literally in ruins, as buildings are simply abandoned to return to nature's embrace. Lots of people are remarking on the bankruptcy, but I want to show just what that all means.
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| You don't need office buildings when all the businesses head to friendlier locales. |
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| I think this used to be a theater. |
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| Here's the Church, here's the steeple. Open the doors, where're all the people? |
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A tree grows in Harlem Detroit. In the Book Repository. Looks like the
books are still there on the shelves. I expect ancient Rome looked like this once. |
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| Was this once a school? |
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| Someone went to some effort to upend that piano. |
There's more here. A cautionary tale, if we will listen.
| In this decayed hole among the mountains | |
| In the faint moonlight, the grass is singing | |
| Over the tumbled graves, about the chapel | |
| There is the empty chapel, only the wind’s home. | |
| It has no windows, and the door swings, | |
| Dry bones can harm no one. | | |
- T.S. Eliot, The Wasteland
14 comments:
Every time I see these pictures, I feel like Charlton Heston in the end scene of Planet of the Apes... :(
Look upon my Works O ye Mighty and Despair.
Tacitus
Tacitus, I thought about using that quote (or perhaps ne from Horace Smith's version). But "The Wasteland" seemed more fitting.
Seems such an awful shame; it looks like those were beautiful buildings once.
I was thinking the same thing...
Ozymandias
The book repository got me. But then I think 20% of the people in Detroit can read, or at least 20% of the current school system "graduates".
I was in Detroit/Dearborn in '78 for the Ford Motor Company Diamond Jubilee. I saw plenty of signs leading to this even then. Dad, my brother and I went across to Windsor one evening and it was just the opposite- clean, appeared safe, people on the streets downtown shopping and dining. I'm connecting through Detroit en route to Flint Tuesday. Fortunately, I plan to be back home Wednesday. If it weren't for the fact I'm commanded to go by my employer for 'social' reasons, I'd have declined, as I've read Flint is every bit as bad.
Patch, we should start getting in there now and buying everything up.
Eventually, I think it would be a great place to go Galt.
It needs to decline a little further first, but that's no reason we can't get started.
Seeing all those books in the Repository and that school(?), just makes me want to cry. And that theatre, that looked like it was quite the place at one point. Those vaulted ceilings in the last pic (piano), beautiful architecture. Cryin shame.
Notice how no one has stolen the books.
I suspected the game was up when I began to see progressives decrying pictures such as those linked as "Ruin Pr0n" and declaring it to be doubleplusungood.
The library is a diorama (scene constructed in miniature) in a series called "The City" by photographer Lori Nix.
http://www.lorinix.net/the_city/index.html
Here is what she has to say about The City.
In my newest body of work "The City" I have imagined a city of our future, where something either natural or as the result of mankind, has emptied the city of it's human inhabitants. Art museums, Broadway theaters, laundromats and bars no longer function. The walls are deteriorating, the ceilings are falling in, the structures barely stand, yet Mother Nature is slowly taking them over. These spaces are filled with flora, fauna and insects, reclaiming what was theirs before man's encroachment. I am afraid of what the future holds if we do not change our ways regarding the climate, but at the same time I am fascinated by what a changing world can bring.
The real book repository is much worse off.
http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1276/4704627374_bcc08db5f3_b.jpg
"kotetu said...The library is a diorama"
Thank you. That picture really did look like a scene out of "Omega Man" or "Planet of the Apes"
But yeah, the real scenes are more depressing that the fakes.
Or 'Logan's Run' come to think of it.
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