Joseph S. Pete “American Ruins”
“American Ruins” depicts a spectral stairwell to the second-story loading platform in the long-abandoned Union Station in downtown Gary, where the last train left the station about a half century ago.
In 2017, I helped the Gary-based Decay Devils art collective and preservationist group try to restore the decrepit 107-year-old structure, a neoclassical architectural gem that was featured in one of the first episodes of the History Channel series “Life After People.” I hauled brush, laid bricks and tossed litter into a dumpster, including a car frame long ago buried under the dirt.
Volunteers cleaned up the long-vacant property, brought in prominent local graffiti artists to paint murals and installed park benches. They hoped to turn it from blight to a ruins park where people could come to appreciate the past, back when craftsmanship mattered, before everything was a strip mall, big-box store or a tract home slapped up for as cheaply as possible.
The train station is striking, the advanced state of deterioration more so. I felt privileged to explore such a rotted space, which seemed as sacred as it was decomposed. It was once immortalized in the 1950s noir movie “Appointment with Danger,” but is now listed on Indiana Landmarks’ 10 Most Endangered Landmarks in Indiana after a protracted bout of deindustrialization, white flight and terminally declining property values.
It was reassuring to see that the past, once so rock-solid but now casually discarded like a gum wrapper, had some hint of a future.
In 2017, I helped the Gary-based Decay Devils art collective and preservationist group try to restore the decrepit 107-year-old structure, a neoclassical architectural gem that was featured in one of the first episodes of the History Channel series “Life After People.” I hauled brush, laid bricks and tossed litter into a dumpster, including a car frame long ago buried under the dirt.
Volunteers cleaned up the long-vacant property, brought in prominent local graffiti artists to paint murals and installed park benches. They hoped to turn it from blight to a ruins park where people could come to appreciate the past, back when craftsmanship mattered, before everything was a strip mall, big-box store or a tract home slapped up for as cheaply as possible.
The train station is striking, the advanced state of deterioration more so. I felt privileged to explore such a rotted space, which seemed as sacred as it was decomposed. It was once immortalized in the 1950s noir movie “Appointment with Danger,” but is now listed on Indiana Landmarks’ 10 Most Endangered Landmarks in Indiana after a protracted bout of deindustrialization, white flight and terminally declining property values.
It was reassuring to see that the past, once so rock-solid but now casually discarded like a gum wrapper, had some hint of a future.
Joseph S. Pete is a photographer, an award-winning journalist, a war veteran, an Indiana University graduate, and a frequent guest on NPR. He was named poet laureate of Chicago BaconFest, which Chaucer never accomplished. His work has appeared in Roaring Muse, Dogzplot, shufPoetry, Blue Collar Review, Prairie Winds, and elsewhere.
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