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Thursday
Feb042010

The Disappearance of a City Before Our Very Eyes

Photo by Kevin BaumanAnybody who's grown up in the Detroit metro area is well aware of the precipitous decline and fall of what was once a vibrant and powerful city. Back in 1950, Detroit was the fifth largest city in the country in population, home to a dominant auto industry that was the envy of the entire world. It would have been literally inconceivable to Detroit residents back then that their city would eventually become so depopulated that abandoned homes would far outnumber occupied structures in many sections of the city, with wild pheasants and feral dog packs a common sight.

To those who appreciate domestic architecture, one of the most distressing aspects of the physical decline has been the abandonment and resulting destruction of many hundreds of formerly fine brick homes in Detroit, as well as many thousands of smaller wood-frame residences. There have been a number of web-based chronicles of the ongoing process of dissolution, and my good friend and fellow designer Michael McGowan—a former Detroiter himself—let me know about a particularly poignant site, http://www.100abandonedhouses.com/. The simple, direct color photographs were taken by Kevin Bauman, and the experience of viewing them is both mesmerizing and depressing.

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