Ghosts of Industry: Detroit

Detroit puts a hole in my heart. I think of all of the jobs and dreams that were created by the auto industry in its heyday. I think of all the immigrants who came here and of the black people who migrated up from the South when mechanization of cotton harvesting put them out of work. The middle-class lives they had. The fleeting decades of prosperity. And, now, Detroit's shame. The empty, weed-chokes lots. The solitary houses on otherwise vacant blocks, like a single tooth in an old man's mouth.

I drove through yesterday in search of b-roll for a mini-documentary video about collaboration between IBM Research scientists and UMich students to use advanced solar forecasting to help the students win the big solar car race that's coming in Australia in October. Wanted a visual contrast of the old industry and the new, so shot some video of the old Packard plant--a popular stop for urban-decay tourists. In the end, I decided it didn't fit. Too dark.

I drove around with Motown sounds in my head, but couldn't find any on the radio...

Ghosts of Industry: Leadville, Colorado

Leadville is a classic mining boom-and-bust town. At more than 10,000 feet in altitude, it's perched on the side of a broad valley and that's rimmed with breathtaking peaks. The town has a tremendous amount of 19th century charm--with its stately brick commercial buildings and Victorian houses. Yet the land all around still bears the scars of the mining boom, which lasted from the 1880s through the early 20th century. You see yellow and black gashes on the hillsides and vast fields of stones with nothing growing on them. Poisoned earth. Some of the old mining buildings and infrastructure remains, but most has returned to dust. The entire town is an EPA Superfund site.

Leadville has special meaning for me because one of my great-grandfathers, John Kee MacGowan, who had grown up a poor, orphaned immigrant boy in Philadelphia, somehow hooked up with the Guggenheim family in Colorado in the late 1890s, got hired, and ultimately became the first non-family partner of Guggenheims Bros., which was at the time the largest mining empire in the world.

My ancestor walked these streets...

Save the Tabor Opera House

The Tabor Opera House has been an iconic institution in the storied ex-mining town of Leadville, Colorado, since it was built during the silver boom in 1879. It has been saved before, but it needs saving again--since the owners are retiring. This is a piece of American history, where generations have enjoyed everything from opera and Shakespeare to performances by Houdini, Oscar Wilde and John Philip Souza's band to boxing matches featuring Jack Dempsey. It needs somebody to carry the baton of American history and culture deep into the 21st century. If you're interested, contact Bill Bland at 303-550-1048, or bill.bland@gmail.com, and visit the Web site at taboroperahouse.net. Says Bill: " We want to find somebody who loves history and would nurture it as a working theater."

Ghosts of Industry: Johnstown, PA

Where to begin with Johnstown? Arguably, the American steel industry was born there. At one point, the Bethlehem Steel plant ran 11 miles along the river and employed 13,000 people. Johnstown rivals New York City as a place where the immigrant experience was lived most intensely. It's a microcosm of American industrial history and an exemplar of the Ghosts of Industry theme.

Johnstown and the lives of thousands of people who lived there were destroyed in 1889 when a poorly-maintained earthen dam upstream on the Little Conemaugh River gave way and a wave of water, rocks, lumber and trees swept down the valley. The dam was owned by a club where wealthy people had summer houses--some of the same captains of industry who owned and ran the mills. The rich giveth and they taketh away.

This place has survived so much misfortune. Still, there's a lot of positive energy among the townspeople, a couple of great museums and a network of community pride institutions, and it's attempting to reinvent itself as an education and healthcare hub. That's working for Pittsburgh. Hopefully, it can work for Johnstown, too.

Downtown Johnstown and remains of Bethlehem Steel

Ghosts of Industry: Export, PA

It saddens me to see what has happened to organized labor in America. Once a powerful advocate for the rights and dignity of all workers--not just union members--the movement has been beaten down by corporations and right wing politicians to the point where it's a shadow of what it once was. Most workers are once again on their own--and many are powerless in their dealings with employers. The unions, and the people who suffered and sacrificed to build them, are ghosts of industry.

Export, PA, where I grew up, played an important role in the history of organized labor, but I didn't learn about that until many years after I left, when Helene Smith published her fantastic book, Export: A Patch of Tapestry Out of Coal Country America. As part of her portrait of the history and culture of an iconic American coal town, she described the tough living conditions of the immigrant workers who toiled in the mines and recounted the two massive strikes, in 1910 and 1922. These were long, violent affairs that ended in the defeat of the workers when strikebreakers and militias crushed the strikes. Mother Jones came to Export and led protests by miners' wives.

Export's main drag today

Ghosts of Industry -- Research into Lost Times and Places

I'm fascinated with old industries--have been ever since I grew up in, Export, PA, a former coal mining town, and went to college in Pittsburgh at a time when the steel mills were still going full blast and America still felt like the land of opportunity.

One of my favorite bars was called Franks. It was down by the J&L mill along the Monogahela River. It was a beautiful place--all dark hardwood interior with carved wood embellishments. The story was that it been built for the Chicago World's Fair in 1893 and the interior had been shipped to Pittsburgh afterwards to be Franks. I remember that at night, in front of the bar, the entire sky lit up with the glow from the mills. Also, draft Iron City cost 25 cents. A lost time and place.

Anyway, I'm now fascinated with the ghosts of industries--the old mills, the old cities, and my thoughts about the people, most of whom who are no longer living. They built those cities and mills and created the great American industries and the great American middle class.  This series of photos and stories is my homage to them.

I'm starting with Johnstown and Export. Look for updates as I make them.

For a teaser, here's a shot through a dirty window of the old Cambria Iron Works in Johnstown, where the steel industry was born. These are forges where they tested the steel.

The Bronx Revisited

I traveled to the South Bronx last evening to participate in a tech ecosystem-building event. I got off at the 3rd Ave stop on the 6 train and walked over to Per Scholas, about 1 mile. Most of the people I saw were Latino. Here are some photos:

Down Under the Manhattan Bridge

Yesterday afternoon, I traveled to the Brooklyn neighborhood called DUMBO. It was very cold, and the day's light was fading. A good time to shoot moody photographs of bricks, steel, river and glass.