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Editor's Note: This is the second edition of “Second Helpings,” or St. Louis experiences enjoyed by our blogger for a second time. Check back each Wednesday in January for a new installment.
Recently, there’s been talk of some tax credit availability coming into play for the Majestic Theatre, a beautiful old structure in the heart of downtown East St. Louis. In fact, the building’s one of a handful of abandoned buildings that hint at the past glories of the Illinois town, while giving serious pause to notions of what’s come. Although a few of the buidlings have been stabilized and might even have a tenant or two—the Majestic, for example, has a beauty supply store on the ground floor—the Murphy’s been allowed to molder for a good, long while.
The immediate eastern neighbor of the Majestic may not have the eye-popping “wow” factor of Majestic’s interior, but there’s still a lot to like when you stop to examine was there.
To search the web is to find a few examples of what the Murphy used to be. These days, almost all of the shots feature one of two main themes. One’s on the front of the structure looking over Collinsville Road: two nudes, pieces of architectural whimsy that show off the craftsmanship of a different age. The other image comes from the back of the building, which features a cascading series of walls, several floors worth of potential crashing just waiting to happen. Although the back of the building’s certainly the most dramatic example of the building’s wear, the inside’s also a testament to what happens when structures aren’t sealed up and are allowed to take on decades of rain, ice, cold, and heat.
For those inclined to examine the interiors of closed off buildings, you have to set some ground rules. If you’re traveling solo, for example, you’re probably best off hands-free, allowing to grip whatever needs gripping, whenever that moment comes.There are times when great photos go by the wayside as you quickly shimmy through a space. Right now, the guts of the Murphy resemble puzzle pieces, entire walls flipped slightly sidelong as they fit against their neigbhors. With all due respect to smart and respected bloggers on the topic, the insides of the Murphy are about as bad as you’d think. Actually, they’re worse.
It also happens that at least some of the local homeless, who used to shack up in nearby buildings like the Catholic Community House and the Spivey Building, have at least a part-time presence in the rear of the building, based on recently discarded fast-food bags, bedding, shoes and other garb. Interestingly, the majority of that’s right inside the primary entry, along the rear building wall, so you have to step lively over a series of mattresses and the like to get any further. After that, you’re greeted with something that UE types know well: cold. The inside of a long-abandoned building in the wintertime is a place of unyielding chill, and the combination of damp, frigid air and cracked walls are enough to send even a tested explorer back outside for a moment of contemplation.
The Murphy Building from Thomas Crone on Vimeo.
Maybe it’s old age, but my appetite for staying long inside this building—accessed a few years back with some friends and yielding some interesting shots—is pretty minimal. In, out. Take some exterior shots, ponder the future of urban America, visit with homeless Cletis on Collinsville Road (“Three bucks? You can’t give me 10?”), and onto the next adventure. Return the next day, go in again, give in to same result, call it quits.
Those with more stomach for this sort of thing can easily enough find their way to the Murphy. It’s right there in downtown East Saint Louis, part of a Mount Rushmore of urban exploration sites that are all fanned out from a common rear parking lot connecting the Murphy, the Majestic, the Catholic Community House, and the Spivey. A bit surprisingly, the lot’s busy in the afternoon and evening nowadways, since Denese’s Place, just a couple addresses down on Collinsville Road, has a back door, and plenty of folks park there in the shadow of some truly sketchy structures.
Again, I’ll leave it to smarter folks to take guesses on how the Majestic’s story is going to play out, whether, or not tax credits will be enough to bring the old girl back to life. It’s a beautiful one, even if clashing with modern expectations considering the myriad, inlaid-tile swastikas on the front of the house. But if the neighborhing Murphy gets a second lease on life... well, I’ll be suprised.
In fact, let’s lay this grim prediction out there: If untouched, at some point in the relatively near future, someone’s going to die thanks to the Murphy. Not just a random, unlucky, homeless person shacking up undernearth a series of 1,000-pound concrete sliders. Even the front of the bulding’s got some looseness: a cornice piece on the right, front side of the building’s clearly coming apart and looks like it could reach Collinsville Road depending on the geometrics of the moment.
Recently, the phrase “abanondment porn” has been bandied about liberally. And even someone with a penchant for slipping in and out of our urban wreckage can see why some folks find it a morbid way to take in the world. But there’s value in checking out, personally and viscerally, that which has been taken away from us, due to white flight, changes in manufacturing and shipping trends, suburbanization, and what-have-you.
The Murphy used to be an office building with obvious elan. These days, it’s a death trap just waiting to claim someone. It gave me the creeps and twice (and thrice) through is enough for me. Bad vibes city, baby.
