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Years ago, after delivering a lecture at Michigan my return flight was snowed in. I was forced to crash at an acquaintance's place in Detroit. As a New Yorker who had never seen an abandoned block, let alone an entire abandoned neighborhood, I was shocked at the zombie-movie level of desolation in that city. Underscoring the lack of a human presence were, get this, packs of wild dogs running around on the streets.
Perhaps no other U.S. city has had such a Roman rise and fall as Detroit. The once-bustling auto manufacturing center had been America's fourth-largest city, boasting a population of nearly two million residents in 1950; today that number has dwindled to just over 700,000. While the city has taken measures to revive the local economy, thousands of houses have been abandoned in the region, from modest one-family homes to stately manses.
Photographer Kevin Bauman started documenting the decline of Detroit in the mid-'90s, as seen in his 100 Abandoned Houses project. Don't let the title fool you—Bauman estimates the actual number of neglected homes is closer to 12,000. "The abandoned house problem," Bauman writes, "is not likely to go away any time soon."
Comments
Sweet, you're only the 800th person to do something like this. Thanks. Way to kick a city when it's down.
I wouldn't call this article or the photos as "kicking a city when its down" it is what it is. I grew up on the outskirts of the city and moved downtown during college. Its a different world looking out than looking in and I would say that just living there influenced me as much as any class I took. One thing that I keep hearing that rings true is that all the economic woes that are affecting cities around the country and even the world happened to Detroit first. Detroit doesn't just represent the fall of an industrial empire but the reminder that no thing lasts forever, that if we become stuck in our ways or 'comfortable' with the status quo we have doomed ourselves. The abandoned houses may be a reminder of systemic failure but the open space of the urban desert is a blank slate and there's some pretty interesting stuff going on...
It's sad to see all these abandoned houses, but I think the project is beautiful.
What a prosperous country we live in that we can afford to abandon a whole city to build more fashionable neighborhoods a few miles to the north. Perhaps when this golden age will comes to an end a new generation will rediscover why the city, with it's smaller (and sometimes shared) dwellings, public spaces and easy access to the water was built there in the first place. Unfortunately they will have to demolish the remains of 100 years of housing and urban development, much of which is too far gone to repair.
"As a New Yorker who had never seen an abandoned block, let alone an entire abandoned neighborhood, I was shocked at the zombie-movie level of desolation in that city."
Somebody never saw the South Bronx (or the Lower East Side) in the 1970s.
Go read Will Eisner's graphic novel Dropsie Avenue: The Neighborhood and find out what the lifecycles of urban real estate are like.
I love the photos he takes. His pictures are beautiful! I came across more photos of abandoned houses, buildings and so many other areas of the city. http://detroit138squaremiles.com/ Julia Reyes Taubman, the photographer, seems to be really passionate as well. I love that so many photographers are interested in what is going on right here in Detroit.