Sensible Erection | 100 Abandoned Houses

Wednesday, 11 March 2009

quote [ Currently residing in metropolitan Detroit, Michigan, but having lived in Colorado, Oregon, and Wisconsin, I have developed an interest in the interaction between man and environment. ]

There are some houses here in these pretty pictures that I personally like.

[art] [by Lord of the Barnyard@2:13amGMT] [+10 Interesting]

Comments

-_- said @ 2:43am GMT on 11th Mar [Score:2 Insightful]
I've got the tools, the experience, and the resources.
I just don't want to live in Detroit.
I seriously considered Cincinnati Ohio (look that town up on Realtor.com), but I just don't want to live anywhere with such ingrained racism as the rust belt cities.
Sure, it's the fault of the white folk what came before me, but I don't want to "fight that fight".

Still though, there's more than one house in this series that tempts me to move to Detroit just to save them.
Poor beautiful houses, dieing through no fault of their own :(

Betty said @ 3:37am GMT on 11th Mar
Amazing how beautiful some of these homes are. It's really too bad the city and its people couldn't get their act together to save their city and these homes.

manoreason said @ 4:44am GMT on 11th Mar
Indeed. I would take many of these over most contemporary McMansions any day. When did Americans lose all sense of architectural taste? Bring back Frank and the prairie homes!

HoZay said @ 8:48am GMT on 11th Mar
There are thousands of great houses in jeopardy all over the midwest, including prairie houses. Places in much better shape than Detroit still can't stop the slide. I struggled with it for several years, saved a few houses, saw a lot more lost. The system is against you, even when there's a friendly city council, there will be unfriendly building officials, bankers, insurance companies.
I love the high ceilings, huge windows and doors, but the heating bill is just insane.
Also, when you're an old-house person, you soon find that many of the other old-house people around you are loons.

Lord Hypnos said @ 1:13am GMT on 12th Mar
Who we really need is Howard Roark.

manoreason said @ 2:48am GMT on 12th Mar
That would be cool. It would also be cool if the builders of today's McMansions took to blowing up their houses in protest.

Angry face

Please blow me up.

Dragons_wine said @ 5:22am GMT on 11th Mar
I feel the same way.
If weren't in Michigan I would snatch up 29 and never let it go.

-_- said @ 2:21pm GMT on 11th Mar
I Knew exactly which one you had to be talking about :)

loomspace said @ 3:29am GMT on 11th Mar
No inside shots? Boo!

ring riot said @ 3:40am GMT on 11th Mar [Score:5 Interesting]
So I was sixteen and there was a field a block or so from this "instant house" my family lived in that sat inside a test tube of a neighborhood called Marlton, New Jersey - hesitating to even call it a neighborhood; more like a coiled turd shat from a giant Jersey Devil near Cherry Hill. At the end of this field (a field where I once found a hole, a warren of rabbits, mother and children mangled from a fresh tractoring - but for one baby rabbit, still alive, whimpering, its brain exposed - took it home, called everyone I could think of, asking what to do and getting the same response; this ending in folding the suffering thing into a towel and
crushing its head with a hammer; it was a dead field, nothing grew on it; who knows why they ran a tractor through it, especially at the edge of the field, where this family of rabbits - if they were just a foot or so
further away - might have prevented me from eventually telling you such a fucking horrible story in this digression), which stretched about half a mile across (in memory; in reality, it was probably half of that), there was a three story abandoned house - a shadow of a house, cartoonish, old, wretched, lonely - even though it sat on the edge of the road and had once been home to someone, it gave the impression it had raised itself; from the field, from the earth (as opposed to say, a giant Jersey Devil); like it wasn't built for people, but for ghosts. Spent three nights in it once, up from a parody of a narrow staircase, in a small room with a sleeping bag near the window, latched the door. At night, the wind wove through, pulling at everything until a sound like - well like both crying and laughing started up, and it pretty much took all I had not to bolt out of there, vault down those stairs and run home. But I stayed. Tried to write a ghost story or some godawful thing probably hiding in a drawer now. The point is, a friend of mine burned it down one day. Not intentionally. Well, sort of. We walked through it one afternoon, and dickhead pulls out a lighter. Starts lighting the edge of a frayed and dusty curtain, patting it out, lighting it, patting it out, giggling like - well, like he always did. I'm in the other room and dickhead decides he's not going to pat it out this time. In about three seconds, both curtains explode into flames and he screams. I run in, see that there's fire racing across the ceiling, and scream, too. So here's both of us screaming and running out of the house (in a way of running and screaming you can only really do when you're fifteen and have just set fire to an abandoned house) and dickhead finally stops about a hundred feet from what is now an old, lonely house with flames escaping its windows, looks at me, and says after catching his breath, "Fuck, I didn't think it would catch fire." I looked at the house burning, and looked at the lighter, still in his hand. My apologies again for rambling. It's late, I'm a bit drunk. But whenever I see an abandoned house, I think of (sorry, didn't finish the story - we went home and no one ever found out who did it. The fire department came, but by the time they got there, there wasn't anything left, not even any ghosts. Nothing to do. It was a black stain on the field for months; not much of an ending to the story, but its true) that house, watching it burn down, and what my friend said, and I think about why he might have done it until I come up with the same answer each time: to watch a house burn down. It's not that he was a bad person, or troubled any more than any fifteen year old would be (at least one who lived in Marlton, New Jersey). I think he just wanted to make something
happen. Anything. Best I can come up with. Anyway, the house looked something like this:

Ted213 said @ 4:27am GMT on 11th Mar [Score:1 Underrated]
thank you for writing that :)

leswilkerson said @ 6:04am GMT on 11th Mar
He wanted to destroy something beautiful.

That, or your friend was William Faulkner. Except without the barn. And the rest of the story that doesn't really apply here.

You said you were drunk, no? ME TOO!!!! :D

HoZay said @ 7:41am GMT on 11th Mar
When I was fifteen, I drove the tractor. The bunny destruction was an unfortunate side effect. I'm sorry you had to see that.

ring riot said @ 8:33am GMT on 11th Mar
Grrrr....

Narrenschiff said @ 8:13am GMT on 11th Mar
Damn, well written.

-_- said @ 2:22pm GMT on 11th Mar
beautiful.

lost said @ 11:17pm GMT on 11th Mar
My turn for a finding an animal in a field story!

When I was REEAAL young I lived in some projects in Dayton Ohio. One day I was wondering in the concrete/weed amalgamation that was the general backyard. I heard whimpering. Exploring a little bit I found a litter of baby black lab puppies. Lying next to them was their dead mother. Not sure how she died. Maybe I knew then but I dont recall anymore. I started walking closer to the puppies when one of the puppies jumped in front of the others and started barking and growling at me. He was protecting the others.

I went and got my parents and they decided to go around and tell everyone in the housing project that there are some free puppies to a loving home. Being in a poor neighborhood, the puppies went quick...hopefully to a loving home. Before anyone got there My parents asked me if I wanted one. I picked the one that was protecting the the other puppies. I named him Chaka...I cant recall why.

Good ole Chaka. He was an awesome friend. Ther ewas no question whose dog it was. The most gentle and loving animal when in good company but he knew when to be a mean-ass dog.

One time a group of kids jumped me after school. I ran home. My parents where at work but Chaka was chained up in the backyard. (more on being chained up in a second).

I ran to Chaka and the kids stopped at the edge of my yard hurling insults and daring me to come in fight. I threatened them that if they did not go I would let the dog go. They laughed and said go ahead. They did not believe the dog would do anything. I had my doubts as well because all he was doing was looking at me and wagging his tail. I had issued the threat, however, and had to follow through. I undid the chain.

Instantly Chaka ran towards the kids barking like a fucking hell hound. He chased those kids for about 10 minutes. It was incredible, he was fucking faking! Acting all puppy-like until the moment of truth. Well, thats what it seemed like. God I loved that dog.

So anyway, we had moved and Chaka wasa pretty big dog so my parents had to chain him up out back. I hated it. I wanted him to stay in the house with us but my parents said that he had to live outside now. I cried about it a lot. I knew he was unhappy..

Eventually he started escaping. He would run away once in awhile for a few days. One time he came back after about 3 days. I was so happy to see him a jumped on him and gave him a big hug. While I was hugging him I noticed that he was soaking wet. Then I noticed the smell. Fucking gasoline. Someone had tried to light Chaka on fire. What the fuck. It was probably the same fuckheads who threw my cat into traffic about 6 years later.

We washed him off and chained him back up. One day he escaped and never returned.

Maybe three or four years later me and some friends where out back when all of a sudden "Chaka" came running in and playing with us! Holy shit! CHAKA! MOM! DAD! COME QUICK ITS CHAKA! I was soo fucking happy! Chaka had come back home!

My parents came out and stared in disbelief. They went to the dog. They smiled as I played with my long-lost friend. After awhile I looked up at my Mom. Isn't it great MOM! Chaka came back after all these years.

By this time my parents got a good look at the dog. Sadly my mother looked down at me and said, "Honey, This can't be Chaka. Chaka was a Male, this dog is a female."

NO! It's CHAKA I cried! ITS CHAKA!

But it wasn't. I looked at the dog and slowly realized she was much smaller then chaka was. The snout was smaller. Chaka never hung his tongue out of the side of his mouth like this one did.

I stopped petting the dog and dropped my head. The female dog walked up to me and placed her head in my lap. I sat there and hugged that dog for what seemed like hours. Then the dog got up nipped playfully at my hand and left.

My had since gone in to make dinner and came back out to tell me to get washed up. All of a sudden I yelled at her like I did all those years ago. WHY DID YOU CHAIN UP CHAKA?! And ran into the house.
...
See, its kind of like your story, It has dead animals in a field, fire (the possibility of fire) and ghosts!

Anyway, its been awhile since I talked about Chaka. Now I need to get back to work.

ring riot said @ 11:38pm GMT on 11th Mar
Aw, you guys should have adopted the female one!

ckfahrenheit said @ 4:06am GMT on 11th Mar
29:

D8

f00m@nB@r said @ 5:03am GMT on 11th Mar [Score:1 Funny]
you sunk my battleship!

Misanthrope said @ 4:10am GMT on 11th Mar
Wonder which one houses brad pitt.

Misanthrope said @ 4:12am GMT on 11th Mar
Also, like I have stated many times, Michigan is somewhat of a hellhole.

f00m@nB@r said @ 5:03am GMT on 11th Mar
yes

wieder said @ 4:18am GMT on 11th Mar
This will be an incredible archeological dig site one day.

darthcrank said @ 4:50am GMT on 11th Mar
beautiful brick homes that would be mansion district homes where I live...
such a shame....

zsander said @ 5:13am GMT on 11th Mar
#20 and #29 look like Tyler Durden's place...

leswilkerson said @ 6:05am GMT on 11th Mar
What a Goddamned shame...

b said @ 7:21am GMT on 11th Mar
it's kinda crazy in a way (and i know the reasons are myriad) living in a city like vancouver, or any bigger city really, and having a large homeless and affordable housing problem and then to see something like this, where there's literally hundreds of homes with no one living in them.

Spleen23 said @ 7:25am GMT on 11th Mar
All the whites moved out the city to the suburbs years ago, and the black followed out right behind them leaveing the city to rot away from the inside.

Now the people who work in the city and can afford to fix up the houses in the inner city don't want to live in such run down neighborhoods, and the people who would be willing to live there can't afford to commute out of the inner city to where they can find work.

One of the many bad ideas the city came up with was starting a major effort to stop the fires on devil's night, it was the only thing clearing away the beyond all hope building ever since then.

Top Dollar said @ 8:42am GMT on 11th Mar
I want you to set a fire so goddamn big, the gods'll notice us again, that's what I'm sayin'. I want all of you boys to be able to look me straight in the eye one more time and say: ARE WE HAVING FUN OR WHAT? Hey, you! What's your name? Skank? You don't feel that?

wyckedfae said @ 6:08pm GMT on 11th Mar
Goddamn I like that man's voice.

My favorite part of the movie:

"How does that make you feel?!"

"Like a little worm on a big fuckin' hook!"

"Like a little worm on a big fuckin' hook... Your momma must be damn proud of you."

Well, that, and: "I think we broke her."

sacrelicious said @ 6:27pm GMT on 11th Mar
Micheal Wincott is one of those actors that I love to see onscreen whenever possible, but just doesn't seem to be in that much stuff.

wyckedfae said @ 11:03pm GMT on 11th Mar
I think it's because he gets dicked with roles like Alien: Resurrection.

sacrelicious said @ 4:37am GMT on 12th Mar
hey, that movie was fucking awesome up until his character died!

kang said @ 10:36am GMT on 11th Mar
"All the whites moved out the city to the suburbs years ago, and the black followed out right behind them leaveing the city to rot away from the inside."

Historically referred to as "White Flight."

"One of the many bad ideas the city came up with was starting a major effort to stop the fires on devil's night, it was the only thing clearing away the beyond all hope building ever since then."

You should also mention how Detroit wishfully renamed Devil's Night as ... Angel's Night.

Stack Nymph said @ 8:00am GMT on 11th Mar
Geeks of the world unite - Lay in a fat pipe, wall it off, we all move there, and turn it into tech city. Programming, tech support, design, pr0n. Abandon Silicon Valley!

sacrelicious said @ 9:36am GMT on 11th Mar
but silicon valley is so much sunnier and has nicer weather outsi--

oh right, tech geeks. I see no problem with this proposal. carry on.

Stack Nymph said @ 11:12am GMT on 11th Mar
Exactly, it's wasted on them. Sunlight is just there to power the solar panels and grow the ingredients for pizza.

sacrelicious said @ 8:39am GMT on 11th Mar
now more than ever: squatters rights!

granitewitch said @ 2:45pm GMT on 11th Mar [Score:3 Insightful]
This is kind of a long and involved ramble without a punchline, so bear with me.

I live on the south side of Richmond Virginia, just outside of the city limits. I can travel ten miles from my house and either be in the city itself or in the middle of nowhere.

As I have been laid off yet again, I have a fair bit of time on my hands. As one can only do job hunting for so many hours per day, I find myself needing to get out of the house on my own a bit. Being unemployed, I have no money coming in, so I have to do things on the cheap.

One of the things I decided to do was play around with photography. So one day I got in my car and drove out along one of the main roads here in the direction of countryside, as I knew that there were some old farm buildings to be photographed out thataway. Here is one picture I shot, and here is a detail from the same building. Pretty cool, huh?

So after poking around in this building a bit and finding that it wasn't safe to go upstairs or even through some of the downstairs, I decided to look further out and see what else I could find. And sure enough, as I went by a bit of a hill that they had cut into for the road, I saw the peak of an old structure back in the trees. So I backtracked and found the old driveway and parked at the end, and continued on foot.

As I approached the house I became a little more hesitant- I could see curtains in the windows and other signs of habitation, yet the place was clearly not inhabited now. I stepped between rotted pieces of furniture on the front porch to the front door, and saw that it was standing open behind the screen door. Not sure what to expect, I stepped inside.

The house is full of furniture, clothing, dishes and glassware, much of it kind of scattered about- someone had obviously ransacked the place looking for anything of value, then left it where it was to decay. The roof has holes in it, so the ceiling has fallen in throughout much of it and the floors have begun to rot through- and throughout it all are someone's abandoned possessions.

I was morbidly fascinated by this and looked around very carefully, and realized the following:

-the house had been inhabited by an elderly black couple. I found women's clothes as well as men's, and two photos of little black kids- apparently their grandchildren. And amid the wreckage I found his social security card- but instead of being paper like mine, it was a small aluminum plate. I don't think they've issued those since the beginning of Social Security.

-the woman had predeceased the man. Her bedroom (they stayed in separate rooms) was in advanced decay, with much of her stuff gone. At a guess I would say she was gone between one and three years when he died, judging from the state of the house- it had been rather messy before it was ransacked.

-the man was one of those old black handymen that you rarely find anymore, the kind who drive an old pickup with some tools in it and can fix anything that ever worked in the first place. Behind the house sit a number of old vehicles, and his pickup truck- with some tools in the cab, along with his last load of laundry, still in the basket.

-he died there in that house, most likely in his sleep. There was still food in the kitchen and old bedding on his bed, his razor and toothbrush are still in the bathroom, his glasses were on the kitchen table, and I found what appeared to be his cane lying next to the bed.

Apparently they took out his body, his relatives rooted around for anything they might want, and left the rest to decay where it was. In his bedroom are about a hundred ties and at least fifty suits, still hanging. All of his books, his records (there was still an LP in the record player), his papers, everything he had, are still there in the rot.

I don't know what kind of karma the old man had to be treated in this way- Google turned up nothing at all on him, not even an obituary. Were it not for his Social Security card, I wouldn't have any idea of his name- and in another few years there won't be anything to show that he ever existed. His family obviously doesn't care- and that's what really sent a chill through me, so that I had to get out of there, fast.

And yet... well, I did take a few things from there, which I will cherish and use. I took his Social Security card, his glasses, his cane and a few hand tools that I can put to use. I'm going to see if I can find out who currently owns the property so I can contact them and ask if I can take the rest of his stuff out of there for the Salvation Army. If his family doesn't care about him or his stuff, then I will. Someone needs to. No one should die so ignominiously.

And an interesting note to this: when I picked up the cane it rattled a little. I found that the brass tip unscrews, so I tightened it- and still it rattled. So I twisted the top, and it unscrewed in my hand and came off. I turned the cane upside down- and a long piece of wood emerged, with threads on one end and a cap on the other. The cane is actually a full length pool cue, with a very elaborate dragon carved into the handle. I'm going to take it with me one night and shoot a game or two in his honor.

RIP, Emmitt.

HoZay said @ 3:26pm GMT on 11th Mar
The house is of a style that was built before the Civil War.

lost said @ 10:40pm GMT on 11th Mar
What?! No interiors?

landsky said @ 2:15am GMT on 12th Mar
Detroit has some fairly nice looking older homes at decent prices.
Historic Boston-Edison section of Detroit.

landsky said @ 2:16am GMT on 12th Mar

landsky said @ 2:17am GMT on 12th Mar
Detroit City Council president Ken Cockrel and president pro tem Monica Conyers - during a televised City Council meeting, Conyers calls the then City Council President Ken Cockrel (who is currently the interim mayor since the former mayor was sent to prison) "Shrek".