For me, I’ve always been fascinated with dilapidated spaces. Perhaps it started with my sister’s bringing me to a crumbling castle in the Lakes Region in NH? Every time we’d pass the obscured pathway on the side of the road leading up to it, I’d imagine exploring it, living in its deteriorating walls, like Cassandra in Dodie Smith’s I Capture the Castle? Or, maybe it was my fascination with Miss Havisham in Satis House in Dickens’ Great Expectations? That Victorian Gothic aesthetic of death & decay, yet the beauty found in its mess. Maybe the introvert in me sees loveliness in that juxtaposition of the old & dying with life that refuses to let it go?
Maybe by living with visible symbols & markers of death, we can make peace with it? Find something magical in the process of aging?
I remember visiting Edith Wharton’s home, The Mount, in the late 1990s as a grad student, finding it in breakdown & decay. Now that it’s restored, this part of me misses the beauty of the place before it was decked out & refurbished. It was if I had this secret place, like Mary Lennox in Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden. My reading lists, growing up, reveal my deep interest in these kinds of places–Wuthering Heights, Thornfield Hall, Northanger Abbey, just to name a few. Like that hidden castle, I wanted to protect this kind of hermitage, the ultimate space for solitude, finding loveliness in the things others discarded.
A kind of poetic appreciation grew in me, & I still enjoy exploring antique stores, cluttered with rusty & decaying objects, much like Dickens’ The Curiosity Shop.
Maybe that’s why I felt completely devastated by the fire that consumed the Ghost Ship, an artist’s collective space in Oakland, CA, that claimed 36 lives in 2016. When I looked at the images (two examples, above) of the interiors, the nooks & cubbies were not unlike the kinds of things I love myself–an eclectic melange of carved wood, old upholstery, & strange lighting fixtures. What made that loss so sad was that loss of so many young artists who shared a passion for beauty, history, & creativity. The highly sensitive part of my personality, combined with my INFJ mindset, felt that loss so profoundly, putting me in a funk for a while in a way I couldn’t even explain.
Perhaps the thought of these kinds of spaces as deathtraps really scared me, since I saw the beauty in them? We know abandoned & condemned spaces are off-limits for a reason, as they are dangerous. Yet, what does that mean?
Also, when little, I’d explore our attic spaces, sorting through all of the old things my parents had stored there, & there was this sense of danger. The floorboards creaked & you could see down between the gaps the cement floor of the garage at least 15 feet below, so I did feel a bit like an adventurer, trying to find treasure. After all, my first movie in the theater I saw was Indiana Jones & the Raiders of the Lost Ark, so maybe that had influenced me as well? As mentioned in my last post, Romanticism also had its effect on me, where ruins were revered & captured in beautiful writing & art.
All these things likely combined to make up my personal preferred aesthetic, which comes out my earlier blog posts of Hillcrest Farm & its gardens.
Wyndecliffe Mansion in Rhinebeck, NY, which influenced Edith Wharton’s depiction of the manor house in her novel Hudson River Bracketed (pictured directly above, bottom image), also captured my fascination. When I read that book & explored the NY area, or read about the condemned property, Ventfort Hall, in Lenox, MA, rehabbed enough to serve as the exterior filming location for St. Cloud’s Orphanage in Cider House Rules (1998, based on John Irving’s novel), which I also appreciated, I felt a kinship to those other people like me, people who appreciated those old buildings & sought to memorialize them in some way. In writing & film, they saw the beauty.
It’s a great feeling to learn that you’re not so alone in your weirdness & the things you love. And, so, I leave you with interior shots of Wyndcliffe Mansion & Kimball’s Castle, below, in the hope that you too can appreciate their unique beauty.
