A case for the preservation of abandoned places | Hacker News Reader

A case for the preservation of abandoned places

atlasobscura.com

52 pointsecliptik33 comments

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Are you saying, government with tax payer money acts responsibly?

Are you saying when they can impose burdens without cost to themselves, they won't abuse that shamefully?

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.

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.

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?...

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.

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.

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.

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.

Alas? Is this satire?

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.

I'd say if you are inundated with homeless people your whole society, walkable or not, is a huge failure and I'd expect unrest any moment - with fatal consequences. So I'd focus on that, instead of looking aside and building barbed wire fences to protect your ideal cities.

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...

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.

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.

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.

You know what means more to a community? Affordable housing.

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.

"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.)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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/

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