[HN Gopher] A case for the preservation of abandoned places
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A case for the preservation of abandoned places
Author : ecliptik
Score : 42 points
Date : 2024-02-09 16:19 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.atlasobscura.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.atlasobscura.com)
| lapetitejort wrote:
| I'd never considered exploring abandoned places until I randomly
| had the opportunity to explore perhaps one of the last batch of
| Woolworth's to be closed on the Eastern seaboard. The entire
| several story building used to be a shopping center, with a
| restaurant in the basement, fed by a kitchen and dumb waiter.
|
| The street level had been retrofitted for shops, but the basement
| and upper floors were still abandoned and left essentially as is.
| I had the opportunity to work with one of the street level shops,
| and they had a key to the basement. I did my work there, and then
| got curious because the same staircase that went to the basement
| also went up. I very carefully and quietly crept upstairs,
| attempting to stay away from windows (which had been painted
| over, but you never know). I found a giant stove used by the
| restaurant, several rooms of shelves, gutted bathrooms, a
| completely analog cash register, and posters from halloween and
| Christmas events (which I dated to be around mid 90s). I felt
| scared the entire time, from getting caught (considering I didn't
| want to ruin my relationship with the shop) to anything bizarre I
| might find. I didn't record it and deeply regret that.
|
| In the grand scheme of things, a middle class shopping center
| might be far down the list of places to preserve. Or perhaps not.
| Grand cathedrals inspire awe, but the mundane places visited by
| magnitudes more people are forgotten.
| bitwize wrote:
| Sounds like a good way to come face-to-face with an SCP, or
| maybe to become an instance of SCP-xxxx-2.
|
| Come to think of it, I wonder if some of the fascination with
| SCPs, liminal spaces, "The Backrooms", etc. comes from the fact
| that there _are_ so many abandoned business and retail spaces.
| Places that were bustling with activity in the 80s and 90s but,
| by the time they were discovered by millennials and younger,
| were already abandoned and devoid of their context.
| keiferski wrote:
| Excuse the self promotion, but: I spent quite a bit of time
| researching and thinking about the liminal spaces phenomenon.
| You might enjoy the resulting blog post:
|
| https://onthearts.com/p/what-are-liminal-spaces-and-why-
| are?...
| its_ethan wrote:
| Is it fair to say that maybe grand cathedrals are preserved is
| because they continue to be used? for services or organ
| concerts, or food pantries - whatever. They are also generally
| owned and maintained in a way that a bankrupt shopping center
| is not.
| dbreunig wrote:
| You know what means more to a community? Affordable housing.
| Nifty3929 wrote:
| Or just housing. Or maybe a park or school. Or hospital. Is an
| abandoned theater really the most socially beneficial use of
| some piece of land? Actually in some cases maybe it is. But not
| very often.
| ghaff wrote:
| "Despite setbacks and heartaches, major construction on the
| Lansdowne Theater finally began in 2023, and it is expected
| to reopen as a concert venue in fall 2024. Matt Schultz
| projects that the restored theater will attract 100,000
| visitors yearly, spurring millions of dollars in business
| growth, tax revenue, jobs, and investment."
|
| (The headline is a bit misleading. Most of the article is
| about efforts to revitalize the theater.)
| SoftTalker wrote:
| If someone or some group wants to buy an old theater and
| try to revitalize it, fine. But if someone wants to buy it
| and tear it down and build apartments, or convert the space
| into a restaurant or something else, that should be fine
| too. Most local theaters are not historically significant,
| they are just old.
| ghaff wrote:
| I don't think I wrote anything different. I would need
| considerable convincing that an abandoned theater should
| be left to rot empty because no developer wants to
| faithfully restore it as a theater as opposed to building
| something else there.
|
| In this case, someone did eventually undertake restoring
| it so it's not actually abandoned.
| lc9er wrote:
| Living in Philly, I can pretty confidently say there's a 0%
| chance a theater in Lansdowne, even a nicely restored,
| historical, theater, will attract 100000 visitors in a
| year.
| ghaff wrote:
| Oh, I'd expect the person whose baby this is would be
| over-optimistic. But I'll still maintain that a restored
| downtown concert space with some historical significance
| isn't a _bad_ thing.
| lc9er wrote:
| Agreed. I definitely came off a bit cynical. We just have
| an abundance of exceptional performance spaces in Philly
| and the nearby suburbs. Hopefully, this is a benefit to
| Lansdowne.
| dylan604 wrote:
| The old Sears catalog distribution warehouse in Dallas was
| converted to multi-family housing. As part of the agreement
| with the city, it is required to offer a certain number of
| units as Section 8. They don't advertise this, and most people
| don't know it. It's just part of the games developers/owners
| play.
|
| To add to the exploring old buildings part of this thread, this
| converted building has lots of space for this. There is a
| basement, and then a sub-basement. The original warehouse was
| powered by DC, and the generators were located in this sub-
| basement. These things were huge. So large, that in order to
| remove them, they had to be cut into pieces. The building had
| been expanded, with the new addition being made into an actual
| retail Sears store. They had 2 underground floors, and being a
| show room had terrazzo flooring. These underground floors have
| now been converted into parking which totally hides the design
| of the terrazzo, and very few people even look at the floor of
| a parking garage to even notice.
| Aurornis wrote:
| I had a fascination with abandoned places when I was younger.
|
| Sadly, a friend of a friend was exploring an abandoned building
| when the floor gave out underneath him. He has a permanent
| disability as a result. The group thought the structure was
| sound, but hidden water damage had weakened part of the floor
| enough that it gave up under his weight.
|
| After that, I started appreciating abandoned places only through
| photos from others.
| digging wrote:
| Worst I've had is friends with extensive poison ivy or ripped
| clothing, but your story is a valuable one. Abandoned places
| are inherently dangerous for multiple reasons, as much fun as
| exploring them can be.
| serjester wrote:
| I can relate as I also spent countless hours exploring
| abandoned places when I was younger. Similarly, I watched a
| friend fall through a floor exploring an school, but luckily in
| our case no injuries came of it. The risk is under appreciated
| but when you're a teenager you don't care. Amazing memories
| though.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| I'm pretty against preservation of abandonded properties for
| historical sake. If it's truly unique or very historically
| significant, maybe -- but then it probably would not be
| abandoned.
|
| Local theatres, old houses, old industrial sites that are falling
| apart -- no. Let someone buy the property and do something
| productive with it. Local historical commissions that prohibit a
| person from improving his house just because it's some old style
| of bungalow cause way more harm than benefit.
| moshun wrote:
| On its surface, your argument makes sense. However it ignores
| the real reasons that many of these places are abandoned in the
| first place: economic depression.
|
| Social and cultural value doesn't often directly equate to
| economic value which means your proposed policy to tear down
| abandoned property and pop up strip malls, parking lots and
| luxury apartments owned by foreign investors will likely leave
| us culturally worse off every year that passes. Perhaps we can
| do better.
| behringer wrote:
| Sure. Let the squatters have it if it's worthless it doesn't
| matter. And while you're at it ban foreign ownership on
| property.
| some_random wrote:
| How does legally requiring people to leave up unused
| "historial" buildings prevent foreign investment, strip
| malls, or parking lots? These seem like completely different
| issues to me.
| Fuut wrote:
| Those things are 'mittel zum zweck' German saying for it's
| just a necessary medium for the intended purpose.
|
| You don't go to the Cinema because of the building, you go
| for the movie, friends,. atmosphere etc
| yterdy wrote:
| It's also short-sighted; present-thinking to a fault
| (unfortunately, all-too-common). As an example: many of the
| Gilded Age mansions that helped revitalize Newport, RI
| tourism (and, essentially, the local economy as a whole,
| after the Navy mostly left) were basically abandoned for many
| years. Nobody cared about preserving the decadent detritus of
| robber barons (because, as you said, people were more
| concerned with common economic troubles). Attitudes change
| and lines go up; the jazz fest brought deep pockets and
| people remembered you could summer somewhere other than the
| Hamptons. On the other side of the coin, before Enes Yilmazer
| and after LOTRAF, they served as a publicly-accessible view
| into filthy rich-itude. Maybe we head towards another
| depression at some point, and people decide preserving these
| iconic relics isn't worth it anymore. But that's not an
| absolute state, just a product of shifting dynamics which we
| can't really scope out fully without some distance.
| pfdietz wrote:
| If age or historicity of something lends it value, then the
| government can pay to preserve that. It's not right to force a
| private owner to shoulder a cost that has a public benefit.
| Forcing the government to pay for it will cause the government
| to more properly balance costs and benefits.
| tigen wrote:
| This particular building doesn't seem very nice to me but I agree
| with the hope of making non-cookie-cutter places.
|
| It seems to mostly revolve around (not) designing cities for
| cars. The typical suburban towns and cities in America are almost
| not towns at all, more arbitrary geographic boxes drawn around
| anonymous wide streets, traffic lights galore, parking lots,
| driveways.
|
| In my area there are occasional attempts to improve downtown
| areas or build new "Euro inspired" developments. This has varying
| success but they tend to be isolated caricatures, more like
| shopping malls than communities people live in... there isn't a
| coherent regional long-term plan. And there is always a pressure
| to deal with traffic, adding more housing/density creates more
| and more traffic and parking needs. There's a bus network but it
| also gets stuck in traffic doesn't properly deal with the far-
| flung regional destinations caused by the fundamental lack of
| density.
|
| The cars also cause a general feeling of danger. Even in quiet
| neighborhoods kids are at risk of death from a passing car.
| acchow wrote:
| Ah, the "fake downtowns" are cropping up everywhere. The
| sururbanites want walkable spaces, but they want it to be on
| private land wherein the homeless are banned.
| srackey wrote:
| It would be a lot cheaper to just ban the homeless from
| public spaces. You'd also get overwhelming support from the
| public -- alas, it will never happen.
| DiggyJohnson wrote:
| I see this above-it-all take all the time: but do you prefer
| to live in a community inundated with homeless people? I
| currently live in a great downtown in a second-tier city, but
| the homeless pose one of the greatest risks to both property
| and peace of mind (getting yelled at). I don't mind too much,
| and since getting to know many of them things are fine, but I
| still mind when I'm accosted by a crazy person on my way to
| the car in the morning.
|
| Am I weird? I want these people to get help, and don't blame
| them for their situation. But I would prefer they got that
| help and I didn't get yelled at or panhandled or worry about
| leaving my backpack in the car.
| angarg12 wrote:
| It's not uncommon in Europe to restore old and historical
| buildings and turn them into modern homes. I think it's a middle
| ground between preserving an old build as-is, and serving the
| current needs of a city.
|
| Here [1] is an example of an old brewery turned vanguardist home
| in Barcelona. IMO one of the coolest homes I've seen.
|
| [1] https://www.idealista.com/inmueble/101990029/
| tmnvix wrote:
| Of all the places I've visited in my travels, Humberstone, Chile
| would rate right near the top. An abandoned mining town in the
| Atacama, it is extremely well preserved and a UNESCO World
| Heritage Site.
|
| I'd encourage anyone visiting the region to go there. It's not a
| busy place. Myself and my girlfriend were the only people there
| on the day we visited. Just don't miss the last bus back to
| Iquique. We nearly did. The thought of spending the night there
| was terrifying!
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-31090757
|
| Edit: This article has more interesting photos
| https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/chile-s-largest-nitrat...
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