Building Ghosts From 15 Years Ago

I’ve been digitizing old rolls of film* and I came across a bunch of pictures I took, between 15 and 20 years ago, of building ghosts. Most of these ghosts are no longer visible: the current building boom in the city has resulted in the disappearance of a lot of vacant lots and parking lots, and the walls I photographed are now hidden behind new neighboring buildings. Of course, that doesn’t mean the ghosts are gone. They’re just lying in wait…

The picture above is a fairly standard ghost. The darker horizontal stripes are the floor levels of the demolished building, with the joist pockets visible. The light-colored vertical stripes are where chimneys used to be. This building has a double roof line: the uppermost floor had a mansard in front; the floor below appears to have also been waterproofed as a roof. The more likely scenario is that the building was built with a mansard which was demolished and the old top floor converted to a roof. It’s also possible that a flat-roofed building was extended with a new top floor that had a mansard front. Looking at the old land-use maps can answer that question, but I prefer to separate that kind of research from on-site investigation.

A lot of little details are visible if you look hard enough. There was some kind of balustrade, probably stone, at the ridge of the mansard. The front facade was not well-connected to the side wall, with irregular toothing of the brick. There was apparently a stair, with a sloped-roof bulkhead, leading to the roof rather than just a ladder. The big stain above the ghost suggests that one of the chimneys was active even though there’s no sign of an extension going up.

Then there are ghosts that are less ordinary:

The white is the plaster from the interior of the demolished building. The dark horizontal stripes were the floors; the dark vertical stripes were room-dividing partitions. This is plaster work of some pretension, well made and with moldings to create panels on the wall.

Somehow, I find this to be much sadder than the plain brick ghosts.

* If that group of words isn’t clear, ask your parents what it means.