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Reviews
| Ghostly Ruins: America's Forgotten Architecture. By Harry Skrdla. New York, N.Y.: Princeton Architectural Press, 2006. 224 pp., 250 illus. $29.95 pb (ISBN 1-56898-615-7).
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When I first encountered Ghostly Ruins by Harry Skrdla, I was disappointed as I was hoping to find a book more technically based. After having read and looked at the book, I find that I was confused as much as disappointed. This is a different way of looking at what we do as humans in commemorating our history and accomplishments. The book is also a commentary, a reminder if you will, that history continues apace. Time is the great leveler, and here are snapshots of a world less flat.
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The book is lush and evocative from the initial presentation, and one could actually mistake it for a coffee- table volume on "old places." This would, however, diminish and demean its effect. From the outset, the book tries to live up to its title by presenting old and new photographs in a black and white format that somehow mystifies the effect of vegetative overgrowth and material degeneration and simultaneously reinforces the fact that the life in these structures has long gone. In all, Skrdla takes the reader on a journey to 30 abandoned places: scenes of industry, business, and leisure. Although he has a noticeable preference for the Midwest, Skrdla's vision ranges from the forgotten town of Bodie, California, to the iconic Bethlehem Steel Mill in Pennsylvania, from islands in the Hudson River to Louisiana plantation country.
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For organization, Skrdla has defined his chapters by purpose: Transportation, Industry, Commerce, Public Works, Home, and Amusement. Most of his ruins are industrial in nature. His chronological limit for each location is one familiar to all would-be architectural historians: then and now. More than a glorification of life and times "back in the day," Skrdla's work unveils the history of each site in its prime before leading readers along the trail of years to its present disposition. Profusely illustrated by striking photography, each site within a chapter stands alone as a complete saga of creation, utility, and decline. His last two chapters also look at the fates of structures that have passed from the uncertain limbo of abandonment and neglect to either salvation or adaptive reuse in chapter 7, "Reincarnation," or total destruction and disappearance in chapter 8, "Epitaphs."
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Skrdla's rationale for the book as expressed in the introduction is one of curiosity and fascination with ruins as the last connections to memorable persons and momentous enterprise or, perhaps just intriguingly, as the source of interesting stories. This spark of curiosity is a seeming universal for a generation that has witnessed society's passage from production to consumption. Skrdla makes his case for the appeal of spooky old places when he states,
Everyone has seen, at some time in their life, some decaying old house at the end of a dirt road, some echoing shell of a former railroad station, its tracks brown with rust; some overgrown mill standing silently beside a gurgling stream deep in the woods, and wondered about it and its former inhabitants (p. 17).
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While providing the reader with lively vintage photographs, he has carefully interwoven the lasting effect that comes from the array of haunting contemporary images into the very fabric of the book itself. His pictures also express the fact that there is more here than meets the eye. This is not a fond farewell to the "good old days" as much as one person's plea that people realize the connection they have with their living past, "buildings not just as shelter, but as frameworks for life—templates within which to conduct the business of living ..." (p. 17).
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Skrdla establishes a ghostly metaphor as an effective vehicle to portray the ruins "as dead as any corpse left decaying in a field," asserting, "But it too once lived, was animate, and in a sense, had a soul" (p. 18). I find exception to this literary device in his seeming assumption that these buildings do possess some supernatural importance. Skrdla's invitation to join him on a campy ghost hunt serve well in the introduction (Grab your flashlight and come along. Better bring a spare—just in case" [p. 22]), but the repetition with each chapter and site became distracting, as if a stage setting were necessary for appreciation. At one point it was as though each chapter and section was another Twilight Zone episode, and Skrdla was standing before a ruin saying, "Imagine, if you will ... ."
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| Skrdla's writing style is decidedly nontechnical: "On an island long shunned by the Indians as haunted, a ruined castle stands. Treacherous currents and hidden rocks discourage visitors, and precariously settling walls warn of peril to those foolish enough to set foot within" (p. 83). While such phrasing originally bothered me as detracting from content, it did evoke a mood conducive to feeling the story. By the last two chapters of the book, "Reincarnation" and "Epitaph," I understood that Skrdla had provided a collection of memories in brick, wood, broken glass, and plaster dust that added vivid recollection to the other five senses. While not ranking as a high academic work, Skrdla achieves an easy association with the comprehensive past and welcomes readers as they share anecdotes along with specs and figures. This is a book that colleagues may pass between them while marveling at the enterprise of life. This is also a book that a more general, and perhaps generational, audience can appreciate. I can hear the peculiar whirring buzz of the "tumble bug" ride at Chippewa Lake Park in Medina, Ohio, as I describe the summer trips there to my wife. She, in turn, describes the smells and sounds of Hudson's Department Store in Detroit during Christmas in the early sixties. Skrdla's blending of easy prose and expressive descriptions teams well with the profusion of images and leaves the reader not just informed but a little more connected and satisfied. Unlike more technical tomes, I return to this book often, just to look, question, and wonder. It reminds me of why we do what we do as historians and archaeologists. |
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