Photograph by Thomas Crone
A year ago, we declared September to be National Urban Exploration Month, a designation we hoped would catch on nationally—even globally! Regardless of whether that’s too ambitious, we’ll spend this month’s Wednesdays exploring abandoned, underutilized, or otherwise interesting sites around town. Check back each week for new installments.
Early in the morning on Thursday, July 26, a warehouse caught fire in the 3400 block of Juniata, just a block-and-a-half east of the South Grand business district. The building began to rock with explosions, and a succession of fireballs shot high into the air. The timing was interesting: It was almost exactly 3 a.m., right when the bars were letting out up the street.
So mixed together in the streets and on the sidewalks were people knocked out of bed by the commotion and those who hadn’t yet gone to bed, revved up from their night’s drinking. The three-alarm blaze brought multiple first-responders, with the police and fire departments quickly arrive on the scene. Curious onlookers pressed as close as possible to the action; every time a group would get too close, they’d be sent back. Undeterred, they would slowly creep closer, before being yelled at to retreat once again. This happened again and again, with an eventual detente forming between the cops and the overnight gawkers.
In time, the fire was put under control, but not before a neighboring four-family flat took damage as well, both from the fire and the attempts to extinguish it. The next morning, with power restored after a few hours of no electricity, the entire neighborhood still smelled of smoke. A single fire engine sprayed the smoldering remains of the warehouse, before packing up around noon.
Over the last couple of months, the charred remains have fallen away. As of Sunday night, a couple of earth movers were still on-site, but most of the essential work had been done. Two piles of rusting scrap metal sat atop a large field of dirt. The walls came down a few weeks ago. That opened up the sightlines a bit, giving passersby a chance to look through to the alley, where garages and cars had been engulfed. Two vehicles still sit back there, burned to immobility. It was interesting to pass by the block for the first couple of weeks, but eventually you get used to sizable bits of destruction—even when they sit just a few-dozen yards from your front door.
This particular situation was dealt with swiftly and certainly. Within another week, there will just be an empty field there, probably covered with grass seed and straw. Other neighborhoods, other whole municipalities, don’t get to choose between unsightly burned walls and a pleasant open field. Whether there’s no money or soft civic will, buildings stand for decades, unable to be demolished, serving as eyesores, if not worse. Of course, those are some of the most interesting places to explore, the ones that are way, way gone with no hope of rehabilitation. Some eventually do tumble; the Carondelet Coke plant comes to mind. Others sit, seemingly for good; the list of these is long.
These kinds of moments remind you about context. It’s not optimal to have abandonment in your immediate vicinity. Just around the corner from my place is a laundromat-turned-flophouse-apartment that’s been vacant and open to the elements for the better part of a decade. Ideally, there aren’t empty holes in your neighborhood, spots that might languish for years before being rebuilt. But it's that intermediate stage that's ideal for exploration.
