Transcripts For CSPAN2 Book Discussion On Abandoned America 20150119

This is about an hour and ten minutes. All right. Sounds like the mic is on. Thank you so much for coming out tonight folks on behalf of hidden city philadelphia. I would like to welcome you to this event the celebration his new book abandon america, the age of consequences. I would like to. Out that this event is actually being recorded. Everything that happens tonight will eventually appear on teesixteen. Book tv. But we need you to do is turn off your cell phones. Its like going to the ritz. And to remember that we are going to have a q a session after the event. After after matt is done speaking. And also when you have a question we we will be around with a microphone for you. Dont be dont be that kid calling out in class. You know, i have known that for a while now. The 1st time that i really i really understood kind of you know, just how good he was at what he does is when we made plans to go see the willow steam plan which is this really monstrous brick and rusty smokestack building on 1010 capitol hill street maybe 2 miles away from here. And i was actually late arriving. It was my idea. And when i arrived he was not their. I i got on my cell phone give him a call. Im already inside. I was like, wow. Pretty mildmannered but hes pretty hardcore. He has a stuff together. Hes not scared and willing to go and explore these amazing places and bring back these wonderful images for us to enjoy. There are a lot of folks who go out and explore the city, explore abandoned factories schools, asylums but what makes mad different is that he has always been interested in presenting the Historical Context of this place, interested in sharing with his readers on his website and the folksy take his workshops and sometimes in our workshop the hidden city daily the back story whats that what makes these places important and how he got to be in the state that they are today. I think that is really the difference between matt and what has come to be called to inform. I i wish that was not the term, but it is. Thankfully that is not what were talking about here tonight. So, you no he has been doing this work for ten years. This book is the culmination of all of that work over that incredible archive and the passion that he has brought to this project. You know, we are pleased to be able to present this event with him tonight. Thank you, matt. I am going to give it over to olivia to talk a little bit about next. Thank you guys. [applause] thank you so much. I would like like to thank hidden city for being one of the presenting organizations tonight. Hello hello and welcome to the encouragement. My name is olivia and i am the director of the philadelphia jewish film festival, Signature Program of the gershom and why. Before i introduce Matthew Christopher i would like to briefly tell you about the organization hosting tonights book launch event. The cushman wide began at the end mans Hebrew Association in 1875 and 1875 and served as a cultural educational, and social Meeting Place for the jewish community. In the 1960s and 70s a candy the reputation for bringing the avantgarde cultural thing to philadelphia. Being the 1st philadelphia venue to present the work of pop artists andy warhol, class oldenburg, dickinson , poet e. E. Cummings and legendary rock musicians the velvet underground and for all the hidden music fans are tonight a little bit of local trivia. It was on this very day december 111966 in this very building that lou reed 1st rocked out philadelphia. Some Matthew Christopher is in good company competent in presented his book launch at our historic institution. Speaking of matthew, it is pleasure to introduce them is the author of abandoned america the age of consequences as someone who is both close to him and through has been following his photography for years i know the incredible amount of work that went in to making this book a reality and im proud and impressed by what it is meant and continues to signify for so many fans of his work around the world. Whether it is a personal connection to one of the places that matthew has photographed or a deep a deep concern for the preservation of american Historic Sites or a love of the photographs themselves hearing from readers as far as australia, germany, uk, pretty much any country around the globe as well as the people as close as this round the feedback we have received has really meant a lot to matthew. Now for those in the audience who are not familiar with his work, i will provide a little bit of background. He began documenting abandoned sites a decade ago while researching the decline of the State Hospital system. While he originally had no formal education in photography, he has since completed his msa and fine art photography at Rochester Institute of technology and gallery shows across the us, featured on nbc nightly news, lectured on abandon species and Mental Health history for the Pennsylvania State Museum Preservation pennsylvania, both in Hershey Medical Center and others and his work has been in several publications and media outlets. United nations chronicle and many more. His website has gained International Attention and is considered one of the meat one of the leading collections of images of abandoned spaces on the internet. Without without further ado it is my pleasure and honor to enter his Matthew Christopher. Enjoy the evening and join us afterwards for book signings, food, and socializing. Thank you for being here. Five. Thank you for coming out tonight. I would really like to thank the handful of people that have made this what it is tonight because i certainly could not have done on my own. First and foremost, my family has really helped out a lot. In terms of the food, the tables and everything my family members of help set this up and running. Hidden city obviously has been fantastic. Pete and isabel in particular have done a great job on this. A littleknown fact, i did did my 1st photography workshop because of pdf navy yard. So that was all the work i did with that kind of came as a result of his work in setting that up. I also like to thank the gershwin for allowing us to use there space. I dont no if you noticed, but out of the table where the books are sold there is a raffle. That goes back to the cushman which encouragement which is where they pointed out wonderful Arts Organization thank you for allowing us all to be here today. I will like to thank my aunt and uncle who helped quite a bit in setting this up my publisher and the Preservation Alliance and olivia who has been wonderful and my support throughout all of this. Im sure their are a lot of other people but i know you would like to see the presentation, so i dont want to take up the whole time. I am i am grateful that you all came out tonight and it means a lot to me. Basically in terms of how i i have done presentations for those of you have seen them in the past i enjoy doing things a little more offthecuff. What i would like to do is show you a little bit of what some of the places are in the book and tell you about them as we go. The 1st place i would like to show you a little bit about is the packard plant in detroit one of the most famous and also the largest abandoned site in north america. Been out been out of commission since the 1950s, 1960s and its just kind of a stunning campus. It is a normans. Places where you go to the top of the building and it is hard to imagine there is a part of the world that is not abandoned. A very interesting set of buildings and right now basically this kind of happened after the book went to print. A peruvian developer bought them and apparently they are starting work on trying to rehab the which is one of those things i know a lot of people are skeptical about. I think it we will be amazing if they can return them to use. Just iconic and beautiful buildings. This is the Motorcycle Salvage shop in new york. This basically was one gentleman who ran a motorcycle repair business and collected just an ungodly amount of motorcycles and it. It is very interesting in part because after he lost control of the place in the later passed away all of these bikes were still in it. The floors were just atrocious. That was a frightening place to be in. There were these huge holes all over the place and particularly upon the 2nd floor has a photographer and being in the building my concern was that i only would i go through the floor and punch through the floor below that at all the bikes would fall on me, too. And actually it is interesting. Interesting. One of the things that has been the nicest things that kind of having a big social media radius, i would say is that i get to here from people who have had their stories in these places. One of the things that was really cool about that was that one of the guys who unfortunately many of these bikes were scrapped. One of the gentlemen who was involved with unloading the bikes from their contacted me about it. It was interesting. Im surprised you didnt buy i was going around and taking pictures and he was actually moving the bikes and machinery around. He said that he fell through the floor two different times. At one point when he was taking some of the pieces off some of the bikes that he was working in one spot all day, came back the next day and the whole section and fall to the floor. So just a very interesting place, unique, and did know it not only was cleaned out but then it burned. This is more of a regional one. Its one of the last golden age theaters in philadelphia very important i think in terms of sort of preserving a theater heritage because we are lagging behind a lot of other major cities in that area. The the guy who is kind of spearheading a preservation effort and has done just a tremendous amount to keep this building open and to get renovation done on it. Its pretty amazing. One of the reasons i included this place in the book is because i wanted to have a little bit of the balance so that it wasnt all just doom and gloom. I wanted to show why they are so important but also that their are people out there that are fighting for them. 4 degrees because she actually, her boyfriend for a time was a con man and he basically had a scheme he was telling people he was going to get these Church Properties and then rehabilitate them and do all these to do all these great things like ensuring that the uninsured and the housing and all these great things and he took money from the investors including the guy that is the owner of the Pittsburgh Penguins and then had a great time and he got arrested and went to jail and the shocking penalty so he is out now that im he is very remorseful about it. But this is one of the ones he was able to get and that was part of of berries and it sat there and then once he went to jail and it was sold it to somebody else and it was actually a i should have pointed that out. So this is a clothing factory and this was in baltimore and very interesting place actually just basically they started with the building originally was and then it became a clothing factory and they went under in part because the fact they dont wear suit jackets to work anymore but they had originally made highend clothing and one of the things people always ask me about is how is that although these codes were left because there were hundreds of hundreds of hundreds. It was pretty mind boggling. It was literally going through the codes and a lot of them still have their slipcovers on and they were still one really Good Conditions. But the thing that is interesting about that is basically when a site goes through bankruptcy proceedings they will often keep everything in so that it can be sold into pay off debt but particularly a place that owned that wasnt enough to sell enough of them. So thats part of the reason they were left for years and years. I could talk on and on about a lot of these places. That has been rehabilitated into a school. This place im going to use a pseudonym of harmony house which was a really interesting resource that basically was formed by the textile unit and actually the original people that purchased it some of them were the survivals which i thought was kind of interesting and then there were a number of people that went kind of went from being a regional textile thing to being sort of like the larger textile union when that happened, there were a lot of philadelphia textile companies that were involved in this place as well. There were a lot of people that were really kind of you know like the liberal roosevelt came to speak there. They were a progressive place in terms of how they approached race and womens rights and labor views. They were definitely more of a left leaning place they had a radical notion that people that were bluecollar workers should be able to go out and stay at this really nice resort and see great entertainers and read and hear officers and things like that. The ideology that is behind them is when you look at a place like thats what i see is this ideal. It was to enjoy the finer things they could go to with their family and i dont know our generation has that. Certainly the textile workers in bangladesh probably dont. This is another hotel that basically the area was originally a very sort of highend mineral spa and so there were a lot of people that would go there like the rockefellers. Oscar wilde had gone to the town. It would have been before the hotel was built but this is just giving you an idea of what the significance of the place was. It was kind of highend. And then as the cycles with the well to do there were other places they wanted to go instead and thats town slumped a little bit but then it had a resurgence with a love of jewish vacationers that were unfortunately shown that the other resorts. They went out and this is one of the buildings they used and so, there were synagogues and kosher restaurant in the town. Basically one thing id like to point out with this picture that is gearing off of the historical end of things ive area since you will see in my work i am so fussy about Straight Lines and making sure everything is balanced is because when you look at a picture like this but i would like you to know is that i just didnt have my camera. That definitely is a left in the staircase and it was pretty scary to go up. [inaudible] first of all im not going to tell you where the places are in the second, please let me take questions at the end. This would be the Grand Staircase and this is also at an angle. The building is in pretty atrocious shave and basically i am not surprised if it will collapse sometime soon. This is a regional site this is in philadelphia. At eastern state penitentiary areas older sister i would think it is the same radial kind of style. I cant say with 100 certainty that this is one of the new additions that you are looking at because the older addition had this kind of barrel ceiling like that like the tentative gery they all had to be ceiling about the light of god could shine down on you and make you think about all of the awful things that you did. So yes there is actually quite a bit in the book about how homes berg had an appalling past. You dont expect president s necessarily to have to have the test but theres a lot of testing that i went onto in great detail where they tested just about anything you wouldnt want to be tested on they tested people. They also had a bunch of riots into some of them were the more brutal and bloody and there was one instance the warden and i think it was his deputy were murdered in actually one of the earlier things was a Hunger Strike where they were unhappy about the quality of food and soapbased took them and put them in this building that no longer exists that had a bunch of radiators and steam pipes they close the windows and basically boiled them alive and so the governor actually came out and was really upset and shaken. And its a terrible thing and they didnt really do much of anything about it after that but it was a terrible occurrence even if there wasnt any repercussions for anybody about it. This is one of the ones i try to put into the unknown and are really iconic sites Everybody Knows about. Hubert would be one of them if you were from are from the area and you go along the corridor youve probably driven by it. Its kind of when you go bite the area that story is looming and it was a place that was closed and 76, so it has been abandoned longer than ive been a long and ive expected that he would always be there but unfortunately, or unfortunately depending on which way you look at it was torn down for scrap earlier this year. But basically they are using coal, steel and textiles are what made them go. But in these particular case it was an enormous part of the history and this is one of the biggest ones in the process of being stripped apart so this idea of having an evil event story machine that breaks apart as it goes down is something that i think is going to be only in the picture soon. This is one i wanted to put in the book. If you dont always get what he wants but here i am sharing it with you. In pennsylvania its just outside of pittsburgh and again i would love to tell you all of the stories about the different places but just so that we can move along one thing i will tell you is first of all obviously read about it, but the other thing, one of the neat thing is is that they do tours out there and theyve done a lot to stabilize it and make it successful to the public. So it is something that pays a ridiculously nominal fee. You cant climb up claim upon the crane or whatever but some of the stuff you can actually see there is a positive end of things where these Cultural Treasures can be shared with other people. They dont always necessarily have to be torn down and i really believe that kind of by sharing and appreciating these places it doesnt always have to be something where they are torn apart. Theres quite a lot in the past about leaving reubens for the sake of being reubens without having to make them redeveloped or whatever so its one of the few places that is lucky enough to kind of be able to be what it is and not have somebody say okay we are going to meet a Shopping Mall out of it which is what happened to the rest. So this is the west point powerstation or it was. It was the largest reinforced concrete building in the world that was to prevent fire which is where they basically consolidate all of the gas and electric and this place was just enormous. It had these huge turbines all over the place they were at least this big if not bigger and then an enormous area. It was just a beautiful building and then on top of the building there was a small railroad ran around taking cold the furnaces which was a first for me. That was a shock that it was a dreamlike thing but also one of the neatest surprises i ever had when i went to the building because i certainly wasnt expecting it to. In newcastle pennsylvania that was a dumb luck find. Sometimes people ask me about how i find places and i use we say research networking. It was really creepy. Not only when i got up to the plate i could really see what it was. It was just south of pittsburgh and i that was torn down and i think 2010. If you look that was the turbine hall and one of the things i really love about power plants is how enormous the spaces are. I was ready to go happy to go through this space with an engineer to tell me about how everything works. A picture in the book he is sitting there with his kind of crazy 80s action movie with a cigar out of his face with one of the things that they would stick into life the furnaces up. This is another power plant this is one of the ones that is under a pseudonym. It was a Historical Building an enormous building as well and one of the things that is interesting about it. For example, when westport was torn down and remediated it was supposed to be something that would be this waterfront development. Theres nothing ever happening with it and in fact the city that its an is getting handed it had. Its a good one to fall back on. This right here. There is isnt official but id say yes we were right, but this is where it went from being something that i would have to check my notes. One of the four people that you know, and thats why you dont really hear people buying of tuberculosis much anymore and so in this case, the place was so successful that it shot itself down essentially. You know if you think about it and you just go back down here we would have preserved considering how many people tuberculosis has killed since prehistoric times. Home battle labs is a significant place i would like to go into each and every one of the scientific discoveries that happened, but there are too many of them to go into a with Microwave Technology and i guess maybe to put it into perspective this is where they developed what was called to the home though which they use to verify the big bang theory. They filled out these petitions and there were these articles about it and everything into the they deal with the developer didnt go through. They have a new architect who is turning this into a mixeduse building and it will be saved so it will be pretty exciting. Its on the other hand. I could go a lot into the preservation of all and how it was. This is interesting to know about this for people that are reachable. They were in the scranton area and they had a company with all these bloody labor disputes they were going to go into the buffalo area where we can get things in on the canals and we dont have to be a width of the labor unions quite as much a. This is what i thought were originally the looms and if that were sort of famous mid18 hundreds. They looked to me like locomotives and i had been told they were the last ones left in the United States but i cant verify that. I havent gone all over the u. S. To check peoples basements or anything, but you know basically this is the only one that is left. They scrapped all of the rest of them. This is the hotel that was in belafonte and that was a Historic Hotel by the time i went into it and thankfully nobody was killed but it was pretty much left as is. I dont if you can see it but if you look where the stairs are going up and kind of coming back down towards the camera if you can see that hole in the staircase it was very end when you have carbonized word you have no idea how much weight is going to take so thats why it was in such incredibly Good Condition and this was the building right next door and this was a sad loss for the community they wanted to preserve this and they were angry at the developer that bought the building and usually ie and for Historic Preservation in all cases, but they had the worst black and white mall that i have ever seen and in part because the fire had burned holes in the roof so the theaters dont typically have windows or a lot of light coming in and when i went in it hadnt been rainy the whole place there was just this horrible white mold that was growing out of the bowls everywhere so really sad thing for the community but this is the new jersey plant and again im trying to sprint through so we can get through the qanda someone to give you an idea of some of the places so this was one of the larger battles and actually if you were to look right there you will see that there isnt a thing growing there and part of the reason is that heavy metals into pollution thats that not only could no plants live but the bacteria decomposed could have survived either so you have a bunch of plant money is in the area and they had been doing a lot to be mediated and again because i hear a lot from people that have been to these places are in the community is that they are sold as big backing ports and people are like it was never that bad and they are doing this great job of free media. I have to say when i was there it was that bad. It was like you go through the pennsylvania mountainside and then its like all of a sudden you feel like you are driving in utah on an asteroid or something. So again i feel like this is kind of an important one to show again a lot of these places whether or not youre somebody that worked at it or it if you are living in that area you are paying the price for it and in a lot of areas the idea behind it is this idea of a lifestyle that we need and the idea that these places still represent enormous problems for the communities and something we need to talk and think about. They were to try to raise funds for this when it was first built into the ship caught fire and sank. This was like an act of god he saved the leather bag. So that i always get them confused. That right there was during the demolition. They were sister churches formed by the same german immigrant population that moved out of the area so i got to see it when it was torn down pretty heartbreaking especially because i had tried for six years to get in there and photographed that when it was whole and i was very lucky actually thats why he was able to photograph it and i dont know if any of you know of the philadelphia salvage that he was the one that made that possible so wherever you are, thanks. This is st. Peters church in germantown. That is a Beautiful Church frank does find it and it is a happy story that is being saved. They are doing wonderful work and i was over there just a week or two ago we did a photography workshop literally the day before. We got to see at the last day before it was transformed. Its very different now although i am happy to say the beautiful that beautiful features they kept intact its pretty stunning actually and i am looking forward to going back and photographing and kind of having this in your face sort of thing for people that can save churches cant save churches that are in a bad condition because i thought this one was going to go. When i first put a draft that the realtor that had wasnt optimistic about it. Scary prison for people doing drugs. Thats where they lived and again we worried more about it in the book. One thing i will say is sometimes you will see shadows out of the corner of your eye. Maybe its you or its just a tree branch outside. But there it was like no. But also i would say i dont mean to present that as something that is humorous because i was there in the dead of winter and it was bitter cold and just the idea of being in a falling apart prison and then im pointing at the monitor but you see the bed with the little teddy bear and you just think that is the most heartbreaking thing and when i took these pictures up coming and maybe some of you are these people but there are these people like it serves them right, they were doing drugs. You have no soul. How can you wish that on somebody. But anyway, this was also the one that i just showed you is that the old county jail and again i would like to tell you more about it i have to keep scooting along. Anyway that is just the house of horrors. There were a lot of atrocious conditions. So this is where i would go onto to leave about how i got into this it because i want to get to your qanda i started researching the asylums and i got into philadelphia State Hospital which you see right there, life lifechanging experience i couldnt really explain that so i started feeling like photographs were a better way of conveying that but i never got good pictures which will haunt me until the day i die that i feel like it is important to document the stories and show these places and certainly with all of the asylums that are vanishing these are peoples lives and just a really terrifying and sad chapter as the places are torn down one by one, the opportunity to discuss them is also deleted a. Im going to skip right through the people i like. They are there if you want to ask me about them at some point. The other thing im going to end with i was going to read two chapters because i was recommended that doing this i shouldve read an excerpt of the book so im going to read you a little bit of Edison High School and then we do will open it up and run a little bit late but im sure you will all live right clicks i will stay here a little late. This is the thomas Edison High School in philadelphia. The Northeast High School in philadelphia is the middle school that was originally built in 1905 in fair health at the time of the publicly funded preschool for the working class was progressive and controversial and structured manyfold with flanking the entrance and the gargoyles was a Prestigious Institution that cost trade area students. Albert einstein, babe ruth Herbert Hoover and Ilia Ehrhardt were among the dignitaries that visited the school as the minority population increased in the 1950s they decided to build a new Northeast High School in a more suburban area. The old school was left to deteriorate due to systematically neglect. During the vietnam war the high school had the distinction of having the most casualties among its alumni. By the 19 90s it was infested with rats and fewer than 50 to do basic math themselves for textbooks were updated or nonexistent and outbursts of violence were commonplace. Name forced schoolchildren to get was taken over by a private contractor which was to provide education. Edison built a new building and closed the older one shortly thereafter in 2002 reading it to vandalism and tk. After the school had been abandoned for a decade, they broke out in august of 2011 causing heavy damage. While it took 18 engines to control the blaze and much of the roof was destroyed the list portion was unaffected and in the sections where the floor needed repairs and appeared to be structurally sound. In 2013 the building was torn down. The distinctive gargoyles were saved in the rear of the building is slated to be restored to the jews. The Development Partners in the real estate planned to restore the dollar store. Visiting Northeast High School during its demolition was a heartwrenching experience even with a possibility of saving it became increasingly remote as the years went by particularly after the fire that destroyed the roof of the front section of the building i always knew someone might be able to see what a phenomenal building it was. The workers went to the site with wheelbarrows still in Good Condition even after all these years dumping them into a high pile in the center courtyard. Mountains of hard wood floors into cabinetry and other things were stacked in the half block of either direction and thankfully the Salvage Companies were trying to reclaim as much but your real as possible as most of it was destined for the landfill. They went to see what could be reused and wasnt that rarity. Tearing down the site was and is one thing i will point out as we are looking at this picture is that im on the second floor as i am taking that picture. You can see the window frame for the lower floor i felt like an ant crawling around. I was tiny compared to the Northeast High School story and the beginnings. Trying to fathom how many people had been a part of this place for better or worse was humbling and in the end whatever it had been amounted to a tearing it apart. There was no reflection or ceremony just a bunch of guys whacking into it with hammers and power tools. It seemed more than anything to be a final moment of stupidity and failure in a long string of stupidity and the failure of tracing its origin wasnt even possible anymore on an oped anyone was bothering to do so. For a beacon of the commitment to Public Education would there would be another parking lot and another trashy store selling good without labor laws. Where are the state had been founded as a trade school to teach people skills to use in the once thriving industrial landscape of philadelphia it would be described to be replaced by a store that would contribute to the decline of the american industry in a place that joblessness and poverty was the norm during a part the area grant. As i photographed the building passerby industry to stop and commented and it was beautiful. What a shame. They will never build anything like that again. Hes probably correct. So with that im going to open it up to questions and one thing i will ask is that if you are going to ask a question they are going to bring a boom mic around so that the folks at home can hear. You mentioned mental hospitals. Have you ever visited norwich, which parts of that are currently being torn down . Thats right there is norwich actually and it is a shame that they are tearing it down because among other things with that auditorium. Its gorgeous. It is in the book. Are there other questions . Quiet crowd. The general salvage business, im looking at bricks and reusable items for whatever the case may be. Are you pretty much aware of what is salvageable and what isnt . It depends if you look at the Demolition Companies they really dont seem to care as much about that. They can make money from the Salvage Companies. They are two of the bigger ones in philadelphia that have been very nice to me in the past, so they both go in and in fact they were working when i photographed the middle school which i read the excerpt from but the priority was tearing the site down as fast as possible. So you know in all of the cases where they were working my experience has been that they are kind of trying to snatch as much from the jaws of the lion as they can but most of it gets tossed. What you say that your craft is mostly for historical purposes or also to present opportunities . Could you elaborate in terms of presenting the opportunity . You mentioned that there have been projects specifically with the theaters and repurposing buildings. Is that part of what you do or is that just something that happens . Im always an advocate for that. There are preservation groups and agencies i partnered with our people i try to plug and you will notice that people like the school reusing the building where the theater i really try to balance some positive light on the efforts that they are making. I would say that photography workshops that ive had that its a business for me so i would be the first to say that is something that isnt just a charity thing that i do because it would be impossible unless they were ridiculously wealthy but that being said in the last two years weve raised just shy of 50,000 for the various sites that we have it so i really do try to get back and put my money where my mouth is with these places but that being said its also not something that i have the knowledge or the finances to do. There are people when you talk about the sites by yearly earnings would be something that is a throwaway in half an hour on a gambling table. So i dont know if that answers your question how do you find these places and gain access . Finding them is to dumb luck the dumb luck researching and networking, or combination of the three and gaining access thats so different. Ive written detailed proposals to work with people on it. I played phone tag with people. There is one that i did in fact its funny because people in camera clubs and groups will be like had never been to the middle. Thats something they always ask me about. I dug that guy for a year and a half to get to the point where literally a year and a half i called him up maybe two times a month and have a talk with him and think that it was going somewhere and then he would back out at the end and finally i showed up at his house with my portfolio but i just want you to see how important this is to me and he actually left me in and then we did the first fundraiser for that place and then there was another one who took it even further and people were coming from japan because their ancestors had been the ones that have exported the soap. I sort of lost my train of thought there. I dont believe i answered what you asked. Sorry if i didnt. You have a lot of power plants in your presentation. I wondered, power plants dont generally have the majesty of the glamour of cathedrals. Were there any power plants that really struck you as worthy of rehabilitation . Oh yes they are magnificent. Yes, there have been some that were little trashy brick boxes especially if you are talking about power plants that are supporting structures for a college or Something Like that they can be pretty dull. But if youre talking about some of those that were built particularly around the turnofthecentury companies are amazing. There was one i had been to i dont really know if i can name it or not so im going to knock and it will probably be in my next book but its one of the largest rooms ever built and it actually looks somewhat like a cathedral and its like 180 feet from there to the floor. It used to have a huge chandelier hanging from its so yes i would definitely say they are deceptive because its the place you would think wouldnt be that inspiring but then you go and and your like they were keeping this themselves and they didnt let everybody in to see what they did . There was a question over here. Is there anything in philadelphia that do that kind of warehousing at least pieces of the building . Somebodys probably going to correctly and to tell me that i am forgetting something. The places that really come to my mind are the philadelphia of salvage. You can see a number of the schools so that is as close as i can think of at least. Im going to go with the gentleman in the back of. You mentioned a lot of buildings that have been burned down and torn down. How much longer do you think he will be able to keep recording them on film. Do you. A do you mean because how many of them were left . Thats a good question. I love philadelphia. I really do. Its my city into my home but i dont think we are doing a good job saving the communities. You look at all the churches getting destroyed every year and a. It was the extinction of any species or Something Like that. I think its important to appreciate them and that is part of the reason why we have these places and i try to have that balance of so many of the places that are lost in a statistically we wanted to have some people doing great work in the trend. You had a question. Spinach can you speak a little bit about your for the graphic . It looks to me like a lot of your photographs use ambient lighting. A i do multiple exposures and then i blended them together. Iran will blend different areas of the picture together. There are a lot of different ways to do this. I actually used hdr for quite a long time and thats more like a global adjustments now because i like to do that all by hand so im basically painting in the different areas of the exposure so if the windows were blown out then you can see the details because i will pick the area from a different exposure so again i could go a lot further into that but i dont want to lose everybody. This gentleman right here have a question. You studied the economic forces that lead to the abandonment of the theaters and other kind of buildings but in the future do you see any trends leading to the future structures that will be left abandoned Shopping Malls or hospitals . That is a great question actually. I think the one that had a lot of coverage lately the one that will be in the followup to this book i photographed it Mullan Cleveland but basically i had permission from the developer because they wanted me to wait until that was further along until they release to be okay for me to publish them but sure its certainly one people bring up. If you look further down the road, there will be a lot of white nursing homes. The sad thing for today is the schools and the churches are going left and right. Certainly you know how many schools are getting closed every year and thats pretty atrocious, too. It just depends on the time that you are looking at but one of the things that i think is interesting is there is a lot of pressure to tear down these great civic monuments that were built to stand the test of time because they have a wealth of copper and bronze and metal and if they can take a whole bunch of tax money to tear the building apart and get all the money from all the stuff inside and then you can make more money by building up that area again and remediating it and then this is all just tax money going down the toilet to destroy things that dont need to be destroyed so its kind of the disposable culture so in that sense anything that is of any architectural merit is in doubles by right now. Any other questions i can take maybe one or two more. Was there somebody over here did you have your hand up to ask is there a city that is evaluating the ruins or renovating them that you have been to . A city that is doing a good job respecting their ruins . That is a tough question because you see it on a casebycase basis. One thing i thought was interesting was in gary indiana which you know its a long way from the music man lets just put it that way it is pretty beat up right now and they have basically if you pay for a photography permit they talk about one of the betterknown churches and making it into a ruined garden which i think is about the coolest thing ever so theres actually a number of places where they are doing things like that even to the degree to further ruins to not be actual buildings but yes i would have a hard time thinking of a particular city because i think that everywhere the trends are kind of running in the same direction to level everything and what you are seeing is more and more people are becoming aware of the value of the preservation and so i think there are a lot of people that are younger that are kind of realizing that while these places are neat and its just like any other theater out there i would like to hope that so i think that maybe people were kind of waking up to this in a number of different areas and the question is how much is going to be lost by that time. And then i will take your question as well and then i will have to call it a day. With all of the huge factories the photograph, there must be a lot of individual dwellings. Have you ever turned to her i . Spinet absolutely. There are a number of places that cant communities. I tend to think that the factories are often times the Genesis Point of the community starting to collapse because when you take out the factory then where is the tax money for the schools and the libraries and then people start to move out of the town. I think theres a huge effect that happens and i seen that in times of major cities. Everyone talks about detroit as the poster child but if you look at cleveland or buffalo or rochester or baltimore you can throw a dart at the math of the u. S. And to pick a city that is nearby and likely you will be looking at somewhere that is reeling from the loss of the industry so yes i have done that and that will probably be something i have in the followup is a section distressed homes in and of itself. I was quick to take one more and then we will usher in. I have explored buildings professionally for the last few years swaim interested in the protective gear that you either use or are forced to use as far as your arrangements. That is a good question. I dont wear as much as i should end in a lot of these places ive gone from unprotected the number of environments that actually kind of surprised they dont have superpowers right now. Thats kind of what i was going for. But, you know, who is to say maybe it will be. But actually, thereve been a number of places. There was one i had to wear a tie suit. That actually made me say im cold and im not going into this place. Its literally the bowels of hell so theres been a lot of environmental contaminates. Theres a whole bunch of other ancillary ones. Get a hazmat suit and get out of there. The allknowing came back with those that were virtually used as a chemical weapon in the first world war. It was like a summer afternoon or then what looked interesting was being enough plant whether i had a respirator or not. I would have been like someone is on the grass. So thats what i thought of the regular presentations i go over a little bit more of what the dangers are idiots that do as i say, not as i do. But anyway, so i think im going to end on that way. Thank you all for coming out. Thank you. I really looking forward to talking to you guys out in the lobby. My sister is holding up the raffle. I think why dont we do the raffle in maybe 15 minutes. So, if anybody wants to at the last minute to buy a ticket for the raffle so that they can either win one of two prints or a gift card and the proceeds i will be out there signing books and hopefully speaking to seeking wine and food if i can. Spinnaker joining us on booktv to the book critic on a program called fresh air. So, it was our book viewers will know that program but youve become an author as well. My book is called so we read on. Its about the great gatsby. Its about the greatest american and unamerican awful and ive rated over 50 times and this book was born out of my