Detroit in ruins

[AtomicEraTom]

It's happening everywhere. My family lived in Milwaukee for generations, since they came to America. I was the last one in my family to be born there. Since then, we've all moved to other towns, smaller towns, nicer neighborhoods. It's all part of the historical 'white flight' that's been going on since the 1960s. In the 'core' in Milwaukee, you can buy a house for a buck. But the neighborhoods are so rough, you can't live there. The houses are gorgeous, victorians to bungalows. Great woodwork, original fixtures, the whole nine yards. It's a shame that they're unlivable.

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

What I find bizarre is the waste. Buildings will always become obsolete or unused and delapidated, but the fact that people and the state simply walked away without clearing them first or at least stripping the useful, valuable or confidential items is just awful. Never mind the beautiful fixtures and fittings, to leave a whole library of books to rot is a crime, especially in this age of austerity. Couldn't they have been redistributed or donated?
And speaking of the criminal, what about the police station? Leaving all that confidential information would just never happen here, it's crazy.
The whole thing looks post-apocalyptic.
I know that pictures never tell the whole story and that most of Detroit will not be like this, but the fact that ANY of it is, is shocking.

Many of those pictures brings to mind images of Miss Havisham's house in Dickens' Great Expectations. Regarding the library and the police station, one gets the impression that the city was either too cheap or too poor to even spring for a U-Haul to remove the contents of the building before abandoning it.

For years I've heard people deride European cities such as Paris as being old and dirty. But it doesn't say much for us as Americans when many of our own cities have reached a comparable -- if not worse -- state of decrepitude often within the span of a mere couple of decades rather than centuries.

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

Tellingly, our new governor had his victory celebration at the newly reopened Book-Cadillac Hotel downtown.

I have a 1928 issue of National Geographic with an ad for the Book-Cadillac Hotel. In its heyday Jean Goldkette and his Orchestra used to play there.

In NYC and Chicago lots of great old buildings were lost but there they were razed to erect new buildings; irreplaceable buildings were replaced with glass boxes. Nowhere near as sad as Detroit but sad nonetheless.

At least many of New York and Chicago's old buildings were replaced by buildings, albeit architectural atrocities. Much of the old buildings in Downtown L.A. were replaced by parking lots which make up some 25 percent of the Downtown area!

 

[Icthruu74]

Its part of the "American Dream" mentality as well. Why live in the city when you can move to the suburbs? This leaves only those that cannot afford to move out in the city.

Then it comes down to those who do currently live in the city were born and raised there, more than likely in great poverty and with little hope that things would get better for them. You have to break that cycle.

And I agree, its a shame that we are pushing our children to go to college for jobs that no longer exist.

 

[Foofoogal]

When I went to Edinburgh Scotland they had a brand new mall built within very old buildings. It amazed me.
The main problem I see is the younger always want new. Most all cities in USA have an old town and a newer town.
9 times out of 10 the older part eventually gets high crime or appears so but many times the new actually has a higher rate of crime.
The sheer fact we have so much space is the problem. We just shuck the old to make a new place.
With Scotland and places like this there is limited space and resources.

The modern does have pros though so I understand (energy efficiency, etc. ) but I do wonder how we got like this.

 

[David Conwill]

The main problem I see is the younger always want new.

I disagree. Around here, at least, those who grew up after WWII don't have much respect for what came before and tend to be the engines of sprawl (I alluded to this before in this thread). Those born since the Carter administration, though, seem to prefer a rehabbed downtown to a suburban shopping mall, regardless of whether they are otherwise vintage enthusiasts.

-Dave

 

[W-D Forties]

The reason why? Parents, teachers, and counselors insisting to their kids "YOU aren't going to work in any factory! YOU are going to college!" Even though when they actually come out of college there's a pretty good chance they aren't going to work in the field they trained for. The result is a workforce that's overeducated and underemployed, stuck increasingly in the service industry -- but unwilling to reach "beneath itself" to take up a blue-collar trade. Even if the alternative is making Orange Juliuses at the mall. Modern culture is that poisoned against the idea of people who work with their hands -- unless they're dilettante "artisans." If you wear overalls to work and punch a clock, you're pretty much considered the scum of the earth by the suburban wine-and-cheesers.

The situation in the UK is very similar, only worse because our generous state handouts make it uneconomical for many to work at all, let alone for minimum wage. I know of people who refuse to look for anything they consider 'beneath' them, despite the fact they have no qualifications at all. These are often the ones that complain of 'immigrants stealing all our jobs', the very jobs they won't even apply for.

The view that everyone can and should go to university has created a whole generation of degree-standard shelf stackers. My nephew has just graduated from uni with a masters degree. He is the morning cleaner at my sister's office.

 

[kaiser]

I disagree. Around here, at least, those who grew up after WWII don't have much respect for what came before and tend to be the engines of sprawl (I alluded to this before in this thread). Those born since the Carter administration, though, seem to prefer a rehabbed downtown to a suburban shopping mall, regardless of whether they are otherwise vintage enthusiasts.

-Dave

Dave you are onto something here. The generation that grew up after WWII are the generation of tha Automobile. Urban sprawl is exactly what they wanted as it was made easy via the Automobile, and the decline in mass transportation that most big cities offered at that time. What is Detroit ? The birthplace and home of the Automobile in America. Urban sprawl was inplace in Detroit rather early when compared to many other mid-western cities. Just look at the shear size of Detroit, you have got I would guess about 60 miles or so from the southwest end, to the northeast side of the Detroit metro area. Not easy to do with a bus or a tram.

The generation that has come of age since the mid 1970's has not been so taken by the Automobile, nor the lifestyle that goes with it. This may be because of the fact that they have suffered a bit more due to the lack of the good paying manufacturing jobs that made a house in the suburbs possible, along with the Automobile that was a definate requirement to be able to comfortable live in a house way outside of a city center. I have friends in a couple of big cities in America that have children that are in their mid 20's that do not even own a car. Totally unheard of for my generation ( I was born in 1959 ).

 

[Foofoogal]

I disagree. Around here, at least,

I didn't mean the ones that are young now only. I meant young in general. The 1950s, 1960s, 1970s etc. young.
Newlyweds always seem to want new. Personally our first home was built in the 1930s but mostly as it was what we could afford at the time. Solid as could be though.

 

[Foofoogal]

I am from Texas so most everyone has a car. I went to Germany and do understand about buses and trains and such. In Texas they are few and far between except in big cities.

Sort of hard to walk across Houston that is: As of the 2009 U.S. Census estimate, the city had a population of 2.3 million within an area of 579 square miles (1,500 km2)
Not even counting areas around the city.

 

[AtomicEraTom]

Around here, the only people that don't own a car are either bums or lost their license for drunk driving. Besides that, everyone drives.

My parents were the opposite of most parents. While most of my friends were being pushed to go to college, I was being told that that piece of paper doesn't mean anything and that the factory is a good, honest living and has always put food on the table in my family. With the economy the way it is, I'm glad I got that preaching. I work with people with 4 year degrees and I make more than them.

 

[DanielJones]

Man it just breaks your heart to see such beauty and artistry go to ruins like that. Tossed aside like so much rubbish and just forgotten about. What's amazing to me is all the stuff that was left behind. Furniture, pianos, books in a library, photos and files in a police station. It's like they just walked out, shut the doors and closed their eyes to the whole thing. Just hard to see labors of love & history go to waste like that.

Cheers!

Dan

 

[JimWagner]

Just to be contrary I'll take a different position.

Business buildings are built to conduct business. If there's any artistry at all it's about impressing prospective customers. Once the original business determines that business would be better in a possibly newer and/or larger building maybe located somewhere else it moves on. Or the business falls on hard times and fails. Now comes the cycle of subsequent owners buying/renting the older building because that's what they can afford. Each subsequent business tends to continue the downward cycle until the building is pretty much useless for anything.

It costs more to refit an old building like that than it does to just tear it down and start over. HVAC is shot. That old building was built long before modern data wiring was required. The insides have been gutted and redone too many times and the floor plan is not what modern businessmen want. But if all the surrounding buildings are in the same shape, and likely they are, then who in their right mind would put a new business there?

Seems to me that most of the hand wringing over old buildings is done by people who aren't businessmen, have no money to do anything with those buildings themselves, and think "Someone" should do something. If something really could be done it would be.

The absolute worse case scenario for me is when the government decides to pour our tax dollars down the drain trying to "revitalize" those areas of urban blight. All that really happens in those cases is that the tax payer gets robbed (again) and someone else lines their pockets.

Either let those places become ghost towns or tear then down, clear the land and be done with it. Until next time the cycle begins.

 

[David Conwill]

Dave you are onto something here. The generation that grew up after WWII are the generation of tha Automobile. Urban sprawl is exactly what they wanted as it was made easy via the Automobile, and the decline in mass transportation that most big cities offered at that time. What is Detroit ? The birthplace and home of the Automobile in America. Urban sprawl was inplace in Detroit rather early when compared to many other mid-western cities. Just look at the shear size of Detroit, you have got I would guess about 60 miles or so from the southwest end, to the northeast side of the Detroit metro area. Not easy to do with a bus or a tram.

The generation that has come of age since the mid 1970's has not been so taken by the Automobile, nor the lifestyle that goes with it. This may be because of the fact that they have suffered a bit more due to the lack of the good paying manufacturing jobs that made a house in the suburbs possible, along with the Automobile that was a definate requirement to be able to comfortable live in a house way outside of a city center. I have friends in a couple of big cities in America that have children that are in their mid 20's that do not even own a car. Totally unheard of for my generation ( I was born in 1959 ).

Ironically, Detroit held onto its streetcars longer than most. They weren't eliminated until the mid-1950s.

I love cars, but would vastly prefer they were a luxury (as they were pre-1920s or so) rather than a necessity. It would be great to be able to hop on the Interurban to get between towns, then ride the streetcar once there.

-Dave

 

[1961MJS]

Just to be contrary I'll take a different position. ...
The absolute worse case scenario for me is when the government decides to pour our tax dollars down the drain trying to "revitalize" those areas of urban blight. All that really happens in those cases is that the tax payer gets robbed (again) and someone else lines their pockets....

Hi Jim

I agree. PERSONALLY I think that the best move that the Federal Dept of HUD could make would be to start offering to tear down old buildings, and replace them with grass. Let someone build what they want to there. Detroit would be a great place to start, being as close to downtown Berlin in 1945 as anything I've seen.

An alternative for the Feds would be to start providing the service of removing asbestos from the buildings for the owners. That would make the buildings worth a lot more, would provide something for the welfare corps to do for our tax dollars, and would be a valuable service to our citizens...

Later

 

[rue]

I don't even know what to say after a few of these comments, except that it was cheaper to bring back our 1908 house to it's former glory than to keep up with an 8 year old house that was falling apart. To say "just tear it down" is why we eventually won't have any history left. How sad.

 

[1961MJS]

I don't even know what to say after a few of these comments, except that it was cheaper to bring back our 1908 house to it's former glory than to keep up with an 8 year old house that was falling apart. To say "just tear it down" is why we eventually won't have any history left. How sad.

Hi Rue, also correct. Unfortunately in Illinois anyway, if you turn off the power and / or water in a building, it legally must be brought up to the new ADA standards before you can inhabit it again. Can't do that with any of the old buildings. The high school built in the 1920's was torn down, and the restaurant behind my parents house will have to be torn down too, for the same reasons. The Superintendent had the power turned off in hopes that the state would build the district a new school or some such cr#p. The restaurant was sold to a classmate's hubby, who blew most of the money for the place on Meth...

The 1908 home was built with 1908 timber, much of which was slower growing and therefore much more dense than modern timber. The old trees were grown in a forest so they didn't get as much sunlight, therefore a 50 foot tree was much older than a 50 foot tree now. It may have also been built with hardwoods instead of soft pine.

Later

 

[rue]

Hi Rue, also correct. Unfortunately in Illinois anyway, if you turn off the power and / or water in a building, it legally must be brought up to the new ADA standards before you can inhabit it again. Can't do that with any of the old buildings. The high school built in the 1920's was torn down, and the restaurant behind my parents house will have to be torn down too, for the same reasons. The Superintendent had the power turned off in hopes that the state would build the district a new school or some such cr#p. The restaurant was sold to a classmate's hubby, who blew most of the money for the place on Meth...

The 1908 home was built with 1908 timber, much of which was slower growing and therefore much more dense than modern timber. The old trees were grown in a forest so they didn't get as much sunlight, therefore a 50 foot tree was much older than a 50 foot tree now. It may have also been built with hardwoods instead of soft pine.

Later

I know this, but screaming "tear it down" just makes my blood boil and if there's one thing I'm passionate about it is our architecture. It makes me so mad that people just don't care anymore and I start using very unladylike language. I appreciate what you're saying though.

My problem is where does it stop? When will people stop building crappy new homes and buildings and tearing down the ones that will be here for centuries if taken care of. How about the White House? The Capitol Building? They're old and I'm sure there's some knob and tube in there somewhere, should we tear them down? I didn't think so.

I'm sure I'm not making any sense, but waste always makes me mad and if I could do something about it I would.

 

[Foofoogal]

http://www.unitedcountry.com/HistoricProperty/Arkansas/results.htm

$20,000.00 will buy a lovely home.

Fort Smith has many gorgeous old homes like this.

 

[Tomasso]

Seems to me that most of the hand wringing over old buildings is done by people who aren't businessmen, have no money to do anything with those buildings themselves, and think "Someone" should do something. If something really could be done it would be.

True, in reality it has to make economic sense to renovate or change the use of a building. There have to be prospective tenants for the 'new' property. For decades developers in most major urban centers have been successfully transitioning space from office to residential and in some cases from light manufacturing to office/residential. But you have to have tenants willing to occupy the space. NY, Chicago, Boston, etc....have a demand for this product;sadly Detroit does not.