First Glimpse Inside, Part I |
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April 7, 2005
Going Deeper
As a child, I was fascinated with abandoned houses. There were two on Shore Road just down the street from me, on waterfront property that sat vacant for years. My friends and I would enter them stealthily, climbing the staircases, hands sliding up and down old, untouched banisters. We would look at the details of the interiors—the corner where a child had drawn on the floor, the pile of papers left behind. These were tiny hints of former lives, evidence of families passed. We would leave our own mark, as well, with markers and spray paint, and occasionally (and said without pride) a match.
In those days, the thrill of haunting those houses was twofold. We were breaking and entering, of course, which might give any thirteen year old a rush. But we were also treading floors of someone else’s memory. I remember this acutely. Touching the banisters, the walls, the floors. Finding a tattered book, perhaps a doll. We were breaking into a family’s past left behind. We were breathing a history.
On Tuesday, a family of seven plus Lex and me walked through the gates of Admiral’s Row. We walked down the road, slowly at first, necks craned at the houses, hands shielding eyes from the brilliant sun. And then the Wagners quickened their pace. They broke off into small groups. We all moved closer, touching tree trunks, pushing aside bramble. Brothers and sisters climbed ivy strewn stairs. They opened rotting doors and stepped inside their former homes.
I am not sure what I expected to see inside the Officer’s Quarters. When Lex interviewed me the day before, memories of the abandoned houses on Shore Road flew back at me. I remembered a curved staircase and remnants of former families. Curtain shreds. A chair. Quarters L had none of these. To me, the interiors of the houses lacked any color at all.
Paint peeled from every surface. Mantles and fireplaces had been stripped clean of any valuable wood. There was not a piece of furniture to be seen, save an old pool table. Floors sagged. Sun streamed through missing roof. There was an archaic magnificence to the decay. However, there was no color. No life. It was difficult for me to imagine the Wagners living in Quarters L, or anyone for that matter.
The houses were truly shells, and what filled them was the quiet murmuring of siblings, the cracking of paint of floorboard underfoot, and a muted sadness—the cruelty of time and the bittersweet merging of memory and current reality.
Posted by callalillie at April 7, 2005 6:00 AM | Brooklyn Navy Yard
how long has it been since anybody lived there?
Posted by: ChrisG at April 7, 2005 11:22 AM
My brother and sisters and cousins used to break into an old "big" house near my grandparent's on our summer vacations to Ireland...a beautiful old Georgian mansion in the middle of a sheep pasture...finding "secret" tunnels and entry ways, servant quarters, climbing rickety dangerous stairs, writing our names on the roof. How did we even get to the roof? The thrill of almost getting caught, of being an explorer...rediscovering the past.
http://homepage.eircom.net/~williamfinnerty/wh/wh1.jpg
Posted by: Cynthia at April 7, 2005 12:15 PM
Posted by: b at April 7, 2005 12:41 PM
When I was 16, there was a "club" called Naked Vanilla (in Tampa, FL), where I lived at the time. The club had a short lifespan, but while it lasted I saw some great punk shows and formed many fond memories. After the city shut it down (in 1986), the building was shuttered, as it is to this day.
Around 2002, I managed to get the owner of the property to let me in to take some photos. I was sooo excited, envisioning a "time capsule" that had been untouched since I was a kid. To my dismay the place had been ravaged by both squatters and fire. It still brought back some great memories.
Here's a link to one of those pics: http://www.toddbatesdesign.com/naked-vanilla.html
Posted by: Todd at April 7, 2005 3:47 PM
We're a little unsure, but we think the last of the families lived in the houses sometime in the early 80's or very late 70's.
Posted by: corie at April 7, 2005 8:54 PM
we should meet...cause i grew up with an architect father who has old buildings that looked like this when i was a kid, and has been working on them since then (70s)...i have it in my bones to wander thru buildings like this and want to revive them to their once resplendant beauty...who is in charge of them? who would i talk to about visiting them with you? (also, my bkgd is BFA in photo from RISD, so we could probably share old photos too...!) let's get in touch somehow. ~teresita.
Posted by: neighbor in ft. greene at April 8, 2005 2:04 AM
This resonates with my childhood and my present on so many levels. I love the beauty and the remnants of lives in old buildings. I never set fires, but everything else (also said without pride) Corie mentions I did. Today I tour not just abandoned buildings, but the hidden places of ones still in use (I've learned that most hotels, for example, don't lock their roofs), though I don't feel the urge to leave behind the markings that I did as a teen.
Abandoned places though, seem to have more stories to tell - there's no one tidying the leftovers of the past and the window into a different era is open wider: the beauty of big-shouldered old machinery, with instructions to "hold button down" magic-markered onto a panel; notes from childrens' play written on the wall in the attic or the closet, scraps of someone else's existence in a fragment of a letter from their bank left in a drawer.
A voice describing the past to go with the photos seems like it'll be truly powerful - I look forward to the completed work.
Posted by: Mark at April 8, 2005 6:09 AM
NIFG, we'll send you a note soon. you should all know, however, that the homes are beyond repair. after seeing them up close, i can totally attest to that, sadly. once all of the land use testing is finished (anywhere from a few months to a year) officer's row will be demolished and some sort of retail will be put in, with the goal of giving something to the neighborhood-- perhaps a supermarket, which there are none of in the area.
mark, i loved those little pieces of the past, too. when i was in college we would find a lot of things like that near and inside the northampton state hospital, which had been abandoned for 10-15 years. so eerie.
Posted by: corie at April 8, 2005 8:23 AM
