Forgotten Architecture
  Preservation Through Exploration
 
 

The New Life Apartments

  

I had first seen this apartment block when Reduxzero paid me a visit and had wanted to visit it ever since. The only problem was that work had me busy and entry was too difficult to attempt during the times I was available to explore. Then I hit another road block, the apartment block had been bought by a non-profit group a couple of weeks prior to the date of exploration and had now started ripping up the interior. It seemed as if I would be unable to explore the apartment until I received my registration slip from the university I that allowed me to get out of work for the afternoon and explore. At first my strategy was to simply look like I was a worker and walk right in. However that strategy failed when the foreman saw the tri-pod in my backpack and was quick to ask if I had permission to take photograph's of the building. I was quick to say that I was looking for the one to ask for permission hoping to get out of this jam. He pointed me to the supervisor and I walked out to meet her. To my surprise she was receptive to the idea of me taking pictures of the apartments to preserve history and she allowed me full access to the building and invited me to take pictures of the workers as well. She then proceeded to take me to the basement, told me to watch out for the nails and rotting flooring and then left me to my own devises. There were only three apartments in the basement but they were odd in the sense that there was only one bathroom and kitchen for the entire floor. The decay in the basement however was amazing and made me wish that I had seen this place before everything had been thrown into chaos. While the apartments were in the south end of the building, the boiler room, laundry room and electrical rooms were in the north end and occupied a sizable portion along with numerous side storage closets. Heading into the north portion through the pale blue hallway the first room is the electrical which had by now been turned into a temporary break room but still had its components together. After taking a quick picture of this I turned my attention to the laundry room but to my dismay held nothing of particular interest seeing how it was now the main office for the renovation. At the very end of the blue hallway was the boiler room that did not cease to amaze me and bring back memories of when I had to chase pigeons out of my dad's apartments' boiler. As I was taking a picture of the boiler a worker came to tell me that the supervisor wanted to show me the upstairs and talk with me. The super was waiting for me at the stairs that were outside of the boiler room and as we walked up the stairs she explained to me that the fourth floor was now completely gutted, the third had some renovation done to it and that the first and second floors were mainly untouched. She was about to leave when I asked her as to why she would go through all the trouble of renovating this place after it had been run down by its former landlord for the past thirty years. With a glow in her face she explained that the company she works for was in the business of renovating old, decaying buildings for the purpose of creating low-income housing and in particular, this apartment was going to be used for new immigrants. Going on, she then explained that because their company is non-profit, they can apply for grant money which pays back the large loan they take out which in turns enables them to be the largest stake holder in the project and thus be able to call all the shots. At this point she was radioed and had to leave so I once again thanked her for allowing me to take pictures of the place and wished her a good day. I then proceeded to poke around the various apartments whose roofs were leaking and whose hardwood floors buckled. Generally, all the rooms seemed to be the same but with slight differences that were so small that I could not remember the rooms when I wrote this. After checking out every room I decided to proceed up to the third floor however almost everything was stripped down to the 1x1 wall boards so I went up to the fourth floor. As I climbed up the last stair a worker startled me when he rushed by me carrying a bucket full of plaster and proceeded to dump it into the dumpster on the ground below. I found that everything but the studs had been removed so I went back down to go into the south end of the building. Although the south end of the building was much smaller, it had larger rooms that were in far better condition than its cousins in the north side. Walking up the creaking stairs I walked past the second floor that held nothing of interest and to the third where there remained some old plumbing equipment amid the now stripped walls. The fourth floor was most likely the oddest as it held two apartments, one of which was fine and damage free while the other had extreme damage that would have to result in bringing everything down to the studs. After examining both and talking to various workers I proceeded down to my car and to the gig I had to play at.