The Holy Illuminated Rust

Whenever I start to worry that I've run out of pictures for Rust and Brique, it only takes a quick drive around Cleveland's Eastside to change my mind. In fact, I could probably devote a lifetime to finding and photographing every empty hulk in this part of town and never finish.

This particular trip was sparked by reading a news article about an office space on Euclid burning down. The article said it was in downtown, which for me doesn't extend any further east than the Greyhound station, but I guess is technically everything between the Cuyahoga and Case Western. It turned out to be a few streets before E. 55th -- next door to the Agora, as I recall. It also was completely fenced off and guarded, so we slowed down the car as we passed and took a few shots of this wreckage.

Burn-Out

The tricky thing about this part of Cleveland (other than the fact that I'm only there every few months, and I'm completely unfamiliar with it) is that there's just so much decay that you miss about half of it -- it's hard to describe unless you've been somewhere that's block upon block of abandoned building. The nickname I've given the area around E. 55th and Euclid is "The Empty Quarter," and until you've wandered around a seven-story tenement trying to avoid wild dogs, it's impossible to comprehend the feel of a place like this. It's like a lost city or a jungle ruin that all the current inhabitants have forgotten about to the point where no one has any idea who built it, or who lived there, or what any of it means, and some explorers wander along and are completely in awe of this old civilization. But instead of Mayans from a millenium ago, it was built by Americans a century ago. I know there's a lot of question of exactly why the Mayans abandoned all these old settlements. . .has anyone considered that there might have been a Mayan version of urban blight or white flight and everyone moved to the suburbs?

The Poke-Prayer Block

These two buildings are across the street from each other just east of E. 55th. The first one, on the north side of the street, has a couple of very large tags on a billboard on its roof that read "Poke" and "Prayer", and Poke-Prayer is a very classy name for a building, so it's what I'll call it. The other building, on the south side, has signs for a business stating that it has moved across the street. The signs look like they're about 20 years old, and there's nothing in the other building. Aside from the hideous yellow panelling at the bottom, Poke-Prayer is a very charming building.

Concrete-Reinforced Relatives

This building looks almost *exactly* like the Chandler Chemical Co. which appeared in an earlier RnB, but it isn't. Unfortunately, we weren't able to get close to it on this trip, but it warrants further investigation. There's a lot of these kind of generic looking concrete-reinforced buildings, and while they might not be as picturesque as some of the older buildings, the sheer scale of the things is breath-taking.

The Cleveland Co-Operative Stove Co.

Here's the real show-stopper of this photo shoot. It's tucked into a corner near E. 65th and Cedar, and odd-shaped but fairly uninteresting from the back side (top photo). Fortunately, we caught a glimpse of the rusty sign and explored further. The signage on this building alone is just plain amazing -- especially that pointing-finger for the offices. People really don't put so much effort and attention to detail into construction anymore, do they? The place extends a block, to a garage which contained the holy illuminated rust at the top of this page. There's no trick photography there -- we were driving down the length of the building, and noticed this piece of rusty machinery, lit by a hole in the roof, glowing at us. Thankfully, the camera battery held out long enough for me to get this iconic example of my rust fetish and my appreciation of religious art.

A Whole Lot of Nothing

Here's the last shot we got before the battery died -- the remains of what once was adjacent to the building above. We went home like kids kicked out of a candy store to recharge the camera's batteries, with a whole list of buildings in Cleveland that require further investigation.
Next: The Noxious Fumes -- Tales from Deep Underground by John G.

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