Posted September 15, 2003

Stuff is only present in a building because the building is being used; stuff always implies use. No one brings anything into a building that isn’t going to serve some function, even if only aesthetic. Thus, use is key to a building’s life. When people bring stuff into a building and frequently use it, the building keeps itself working toward supporting that use. People come in regularly and notice damage, and presumably fix it. They keep furnaces and air conditions on. They clean. They keep the building from becoming dirty and broken.

When people stop using their stuff as much, the building decays a bit. A bedroom unoccupied for a few months will smell odd and become dusty. Unchecked, the paint will peel, the carpeting will crumble, and bugs will take residence. Attics and basements witness such decay on a daily basis. In the basement of the building in which I currently live in south city, the small room under the porch is almost completely unusable because its use has been continually neglected for years. Its floor is covered in a cake of dirt, brick and trash that is almost a foot high. Spiders are everywhere, and roaches breed there. The room smells strange and natural. I cannot begin to clean the space because I am not sure what needs to be done first, where I could dispose of the trash and what I would do with the room. In five years, the room will seriously impair use of the rest of the building, because it will breed more and more roaches each year, which will in turn attract vermin. Someone will likely intervene before then, but if not, ecological forces will root themselves there.

Of course, this basement room is a small part of an otherwise functioning building. I have been involved with rehabbing two three-story, over-100-year-old buildings on the near south side of the city. Both buildings have large, unoccupied third floor spaces that generate a lot of dust. This dust, of course, trickles downward and dirties even the neatest renovation jobs below. The buildings are difficult to use at present because the disuse of the third floors is creating a crisis in the building: is each building going to work again, and halt the decay, or is it going to let the dust continue to spread? Time works against reuse because buildings that are very old experience change very rapidly. A building that is over 100 years old contains lots of dirt and trash in hidden spaces -- behind walls, around pipes -- that attracts mold, bacteria, bugs and rats. Without gutting the building, the weight of ecology will threaten any use at all. One must work fast and replace almost every building material to restore use.

Yet such work is fun because it is very instructive. Experiencing a building crisis reminds one that buildings are not mere instruments that can be adequately maintained by a quick vacuuming every two weeks. Humans have built complex habitats that are only usable as much as we use them; that is, our building technology is meaningless without us. We don’t build monuments for the ages except by accident. Most often, we build buildings that die when we lose interest in them.

In Saint Louis, such buildings are everywhere. I only have to walk three blocks over to pass the Avalon Theater on Kingshighway, closed only since 1999 but already sprouting woody growth in the cracks around its foundation. The Avalon is sturdy enough to make it through another three decades of crisis at least, but its shingle roof won’t be holding back raindrops for much longer. Fluctuations in building temperature in the absence of heating and cooling will cause the roof trusses to expand and contract, and gaps will appear. Water will do the rest of the work. Yet the Avalon is in good shape for a vacant building, and will probably not grow a tree in its auditorium for another ten years. But, then, wait and see! I’m only an observer in the ecological process going on there, and I watch from the outside far from the telltale smells and sounds of decay.

In August 2003, I have the chance to experience a very interesting space in which ecological forces have had made rapid progress: a former residential care building in an older suburb. On a routine day of inspecting several sites in the area, Angela tells me that she has discovered an abandoned building near another institution. Later research indeed suggests that the building is a former instutional building originally named L. Hall that briefly became an alcoholism treatment center in the 1970’s before becoming a residential care facility for patients with vocational, developmental and physical ailments. I find out that this building is indeed worth visiting, but not for the reason I figured.

Angela pulls up in front of the building, which is in a quiet subdivision of one-story frame homes. We don’t know the name or the former use of the building, but we know it is institutional and probably residential. The unassuming two-story red brick building sits back from the street on a partly-shaded lawn. No windows are boarded and none seem to be broken. No telltale signs of vacancy are visible, except for the ubiquitous “No Trespassing” sign affixed to the front entrance. There is no trash on the lawn and no graffiti. The neighborhood is quiet. Is it more noticeable to park in front of someone’s house down the block and walk up or to park in front? While pondering this question, I notice that the double front doors are unlocked and ajar. Entrance is thus a matter of walking right in. We leave the car in front and go inside.

Immediately, we notice that something is not right. Yes, this is an abandoned building. Yes, this building is easy to enter. But something else is unsettling, and that is the presence of mildew on almost every wall within view. Within seconds, my nose twitches at the smell of mildew and the heaviness of air. This building is moist, although beyond mildew no ready source of water is recognizable. The front lobby is modestly furnished with a couch and a busted large-screen television; on one wall is a window reminiscent of a hospital admissions counter. Behind the window is a small room that is obviously the former space of a receptionist: a counter, slots, knobs for keys to various rooms. Everything seems very new for an abandoned space.

The center hallway opens onto many small rooms that contain beds, dressers, chairs and other trappings of institutional residence. I have no doubt that this was a nursing home of some kind. The rooms are carpeted, but each is still uniform in ways that are depressing. Some rooms have the blinds drawn all the way, and are darkly funereal. Some doors are locked. Most doors are marked with the names of their last occupants, usually in pairs. (Seven of the 62 rooms were private.) Sharing the small rooms seems like a very confined way to end life. The respite offered by the television area and the larger basement community room that we later find seem insufficient to comfort elderly and disabled people. In that regard, this place follows the stark institutional layout of the Infirmary and other homes in St. Louis: there is a disregard for composing truly communal spaces that offer some spatial freedom not offered by the bedrooms.

There is a large back lawn here with the remains of a barbecue grille, but most of the lawn seems to be grassy and unplanned. Besides, the lawn drops off to railroad tracks. Few residents probably were allowed to wander around the grounds freely. This landscape could be pleasant, as it offers a serenity that is uncommon in the older suburbs of St. Louis County.

Yet the L. Hall building encourages isolation in its neat floor-plan, which seems to have never been changed or adapted in its many years of use. It’s a place of right angles, wallpaper, mini-blinds and wall-to-wall carpeting. The only encouraging thing about the building’s design seems to be that each room has a nice window with a good view of its suburban surroundings. Of course, the design’s rigidity is being challenged as the place decays. Not only is the neat wallpaper mildewed, but the reason behind this threatens the restoration of order of the space.

When we walk up the stairs, we come to a closed fire door at the second floor landing. First we pass it and go to the roof door, which is propped open with a folding chair. It opens onto a common flat tar roof, very hot in the 90-plus-degree summer heat. We descend to the second floor and one of us opens the door. That’s when we see just what is the matter with the building: the door is sweating. Literally. Beads of sweat run down the door, from top to bottom. We carefully enter the second floor hall and are instantly overcome with the most humid stagnant air to exist in a St. Louis building. Glancing quickly around, I notice that almost everything at this end of the hall is green with heavy mold. The walls are green, the carpeting is green, the buckled tile floors are molding. The air is hot and damp, and seems dangerous. I try a hall window, but it won’t budge. I go into what seems to be an examination room and try to open a window. The cords have been cut. I go into the next room and find the same problem. The second floor, it seems, is completely sealed.

As we begin sweating profusely, our breathing becomes harder. Yet we cannot resist inspecting and even later photographing this nasty space. We walk on the moldy carpets and step in moist piles of a white substance that I identify as the plaster from the ceiling, dripping off like milk in the humidity. Angela notices stalactites of plaster in one spot in the hallway ceiling, near a ceiling fan so burdened with the moisture that its fake-wood blades have warped downward. The fan looks like a drenched little spider. Not surprisingly, there are not any holes visible in the ceiling. Likely, the roof is in such great shape for its age that it is a barrier preventing air transfer.

The moisture here is entirely due to the building’s internal decay, and not because the elements are constantly pouring in. Amazing! The building is changing itself daily. With the fire doors on the stair landings closed and few windows open, the second floor is a veritable sauna that retains every drop of moisture. If the roof was leaky, the second floor would quickly be a forest, and then it would be the first floor. For now, it’s a mild rot on the building that is feeding the growth of mold, bacteria and mildew. It’s too humid for plants or rats to live up here. I don’t notice any insects, not even horseflies, which usually like damp areas of old buildings. Yet horseflies, like mosquitoes, hate stagnant air as much as they love humidity. They won’t be flying around up here.

We look into the rooms and find that many items in the building haven’t decayed as fast as they should. Office furniture is mainly intact, including cheap pressed-wood furniture like a copy of the same model of desk at which I would later sit to compose this chapter. Polaroid photographs in a room to the side of the former social services director’s office are remarkably intact. That room, like a few others, is cooler than the rest probably due to its heat-absorbing ceramic tile floor and walls. The records room, however, follows a different course. While its metal filing cabinets appear sound and almost orderly, it offers evidence of the slow effects of the tepid air on all items. The files inside are extremely damp, although not wet to the touch. Pages stick together. Stapes and paper clips are thoroughly rusted, leaving brown stains on paper. The rooms smells of the slow rot of dying paper. Needless to say, the window can’t be opened.

Yet the records are intact enough to reveal a few facts, such as the most recent names of the facility (which I will not disclose here). There are still complete patient and personnel files, some dated as recently as 1998. We look through them, and notice that some patients have records of criminal and psychotic behavior. This place was no mere retirement home. There are letters from the state Department of Mental Health indicating a patient’s suicidal tendencies. Odd that people would leave these files behind. I can guess that storage of these records would require space that a bankrupt company might not be able to rent, but doesn’t state law require the keeping of records for a certain amount of time past the closure of an institution? What about liability suits that may still arise? How convenient for shady administrators that the records are too damaged to be admissible. Of course, if they were truly shady they would find a faster way to destroy records than leaving them to the swelter of this second floor.

Visits to the administrator’s office and the nursing director’s office don’t turn up much except a phone book that verifies that one of the named facilities operated at this location. We walk down the hall and find that a few rooms have cracked and broken windows, so some air is circulating far from the green hallway. A storage room that is a mess of stuffed animals, cushions and personal effects has little mold because it’s missing half its window. But its door doesn’t stay open and admits no air into the hall. The large restroom is cool with a slight breeze forced through broken glass. Under the broken window next to a radiator is an old, only slightly damaged VHS copy of Big Trouble in Little China. In the restroom, I find a piece of paper reading “out of order -- do not use” taped to a stall door. On the back of the paper is a list of names to remove from the security codes in February 1999. Could that have been the last month of building operation?

We cool off a bit by heading down to the basement, which has its own problem with water: there’s two inches or more of standing water throughout the basement. Even though rain has been typically scarce this summer, and no rain has fallen in at least a week, the basement is as wet as it can be. This explains the building’s overall moisture problems, which have thus far been inexplicable given the general closely-sealed nature of the place. If water is in the basement constantly from some source -- and I do not attempt to discover a source -- then its evaporation will continually send damp air through the first floor up to the second floor, which is so poorly ventilated that it can only allow a small amount of the moisture to escape. Most of it just collects on the second floor. The water in the basement covers a large floor area and bears the markings of some problem with the water table or with utility backup. No simple leak could cause this strange phenomenon, which in turn causes the second floor to turn green after the first floor gets a little moldy. (And, sure enough, there is a second over-moistened, damaged ceiling fan on the first floor.)

When people cease using a space, it gradually accepts a new life. At L. Hall, that new life is only about four years old and already has disabled most of the building. Reuse of the building would entail a complete gut rehab, and even that might not remove all of the damage the water has created. Mold and bacteria have a tendency to hibernate in buildings for months before being detected. I recall the story of the towering downtown Thomas Eagleton Courthouse, which acquired a lethal mold problem in 2000 due to workers’ installing drywall before all of the windows were in place. The drywall absorbed enough moisture to attract heavy mold growth, entering into what contractors call "sick building syndrome." All of the drywall on several floors had to be removed and the mold abated.