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Well, since it has been in the local (Michigan) news recently, I figured it was time for a photo thread.

 

The 4-story Roosevelt warehouse was designed by Albert Kahn and originally functioned as Detroit's post office. When the post office relocated closer to downtown, the building became the depository for the Detroit Public School System. In the late 1980s, fire swept through the upper floors, destroying millions of dollars of school supplies. What wasn't destroyed by the fire was abandoned.

 

Recently, the Detroit News featured a sort of expose on the paper's front page discussing the delayed police response to a dead body that was found in one of the building's elevator shafts. Hayward posted about it here: http://www.urbanohio.com/forum2/index.php/topic,18296.0.html.

 

Anyway, on to the tour...

 

1. The first floor was pretty innocuous:

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2. Workbooks and other school supplies piled 6 feet high:

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3. Help to keep children safe in school:

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4. Piles of textbooks:

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5. Curled pages:

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6. The fourth floor is carpeted with books:

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7. A broken hallway:

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8. 20-foot tall trees grow out of decomposing books on the fourth floor:

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9. Books upon books:

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10. A collapsed wall on the third floor:

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11.

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12. A puzzle on the second floor. The second floor was filled with kitchen supplies, paints and crayons and craft supplies, records and spools of video, puzzles and games, etc.

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13. Pallets of science books that were never even unwrapped:

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14. A lonely volume:

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15. Graffiti panorama on the third floor:

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So sad yet great photographs Nolan!

"You don't just walk into a bar and mix it up by calling a girl fat" - buildingcincinnati speaking about new forumers

Just when I thought I had seen the worst of Detroit in the Michigan Central Station thread, this comes along.  Seriously, I have seen people defending Detroit and its relevance in today's world, but I really think that the city is dead, and without hope.  Hopefully I'm wrong, but I have yet to see otherwise.

Cool pics, I have been in that building so many time.  Whenever I'm taking a new urbexer around I like to show them that one.

Awesome Photos.  Terrible building

 

Seriously, I have seen people defending Detroit and its relevance in today's world, but I really think that the city is dead, and without hope.

 

From a realistic standpoint, you are correct. Not to say Detroit won't come back someday with a healthy population of under 30,000.  But for the people who imagine Detroit to be a New Chicago someday....Forget it.

 

Awesome photos, excellent testimonial to a society teetering on the brink of collapse.

I'll second the haunting comment. Great pics thanks for posting them.

 

These pictures are heartbreaking, to think that they abandoned all of those books and supplies, in Detroit of all places.

 

 

Have you ever seen the movie "I Am Legend"? :(

excellent photos.

 

cue guy montag & the rest of the firemen from ray bradbury's fahrenheit 451.

Thanks everyone!

 

Exploring the warehouse is a pretty unsettling experience: walking on melted bottles of finger paints and watercolors; wading through seas of tennis balls, salt and pepper shakers, and film reels; climbing over piles of rotting books. The experience itself is post-apocalyptic (totally "I am Legend" jpop), but even on a practical level, the idea of millions of dollars of school supplies being abandoned by a school system that can't keep itself afloat is really upsetting.

 

I realize that the smoke and water damage after the fire would have made most of the books unsalvageable, but a lot of the other supplies, particularly on the second floor, could have been saved. Many of them were untouched by fire, and they are junk now only because they've spent the past two decades weathering the seasons. Up until last year, the paints were still lined up in orderly rows on shelving units, until scrappers stole the shelves. Maybe Detroit Public Schools got more insurance money just writing the place off, but it still strikes me as a bit outrageous.

 

I guess that in the end, the Roosevelt warehouse is just another symbol of a city falling apart.

What's more outrageous is all the recent school closures where they just leave the places sitting open.  Confidential records strewn about.  Kids social security numbers exposed to the public eye.  Perfectly good computers just sitting in rooms exposed to the elements.  It's all wrong, more wrong than the shady companies they hired and paid that were "supposed" to seal these buildings.  It's such a mess. 

educational apartheid (yet self-imposed) on display

 

i've always considered detroit to be america in fast forward

Oh my.

 

How did I overlook this thread!?

educational apartheid (yet self-imposed) on display

 

i've always considered detroit to be america in fast forward

 

No, we have seen other cities close to the brink of failure, re-invent, and come out a winner.  One can look at Cincinnati post Steamboats and meat packing, Pittsburgh post steel, SF post earthquake, LA after the decline of the WWII aircraft boom, and incredible racial strife.  While the majority of the country has found ways to evolve, Detroit has stagnated, and had terrible leadership. I don't think the future of American cities lies in Detroit, I just think Detroit is evidence to what happens when a city stagnates for too long.

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