[This is an essay I used for an assignment where our prompt was a picture that we had. It's the first draft and has since been edited and revised. Maybe someday I will post it]
At the time it was still a door that meant something, though its message had changed. When I was a kid the building was the home of Singer Steel, the name by which most residents of the neighborhood still call it. Only the recent trendy residents call it “that warehouse.” The heavy industrial business was an imposing landmark on the northwest side of the heavily ethnic community that marked the outskirts of our culture. The men who worked there were dirty and sweaty and smoked. They stood on the abnormally wide, green-painted sidewalk outside the building on their breaks and though I was only seven or eight years old I distinctly remember these sweaty smoking men being heavy set and drinking from gold-colored cans that where dazzling under the sun during my summer vacation. It was their version of the three martini lunch. Not as glamorous, but to them it wasn’t any less earned.
As small children we were of course susceptible to any manner of no-good that our parents didn’t know we were already willing participants in and the warehouse was one of those things. It was on the same side of Random Road (no that isn’t a cop out, it’s the real name) as the playground which was just a little north down the street and around the bend but the stretch where Singer Steel sat was mostly forbidden to us on our sixteen inch bikes. Our parents always said it was because of the trucks that pulled in and out of the three garage doors like clownfish in an anemone. The three trucks owned by the company were all red flat beds. Two were International 4000’s, shiny, new, one longer than the other, and one was an older International S-1900 in a little rougher shape but the same length as the longer of the newer trucks. The shortest often used the third garage door that was separated from the main two by about 80 feet. I always imagined it as the little brother. They never seemed to go anywhere but were constantly shuffling things inside and rolling in or out as needed.
The black, corrugated steel building was fortunately placed for my small group of friends so it wasn’t too hard to avoid its influence. We were of similar age but when you’re that young, a difference of 2 years is a quarter of a lifetime and so we weren’t really that similar at all. What brought the four of us together was the stern belief that we were the only people within the square quarter-mile of Little Italy under the age of 65. I lived on the north side of the block, just south and around the corner from the playground so I never passed the place much. Anthony Jr. was a year younger and my best friend and he lived on the south east side of the block. His way home from the swings was mostly via my street. Chris lived just around the corner from me to the west. Chris was a year older than I and deaf, something I didn’t understand when we first met. We gradually learned to use rudimentary hand signals to communicate. The most common were two hands held like gripping handlebars with the right motioning like the throttle on a motorcycle. It meant “let’s go ride our bikes. Fast.” The older people in the neighborhood whispered that his single mother was a prostitute. Whatever that was. He lived a bit closer but not by much. It was still easy to avoid. Frankie on the other hand was two years older than I and had a bit rougher time of it.
People that lived here would find a variety of reasons to dislike Singer Steel. Francis [name removed] who lived across from the little brother door said that the trucks in the street blocked her view of the traffic. She had completely paved her back yard in the way urban dwelling Italians love so she didn’t have much else to watch. Mr. Frank [name removed] Sr., Frankie’s dad, was her counterpart. He lived across from the two doors of the bigger trucks and he wasn’t fond of the mud pits that resulted from the heavy tires bumping up and over the curb on his side of the street. “Not fond” is perhaps an understatement. In every other locality that I’ve asked, it’s simply called “that piece of grass between the sidewalk and the street” but in
Frank Sr. was a cruder man than my parents. He had black hair and wore white undershirts and drove a pale yellow 1981 Buick Electra. There was a small gold cross hanging from a small gold chain around his neck but it didn’t stop him from cursing. Frank Sr. cursed frequently around us, particularly when he was speaking of “those fucking bums” across the street. He always told us to make sure those goddamned trucks didn’t pull into his driveway. Occasionally one would while we were riding up and down the pea gravel driveway next door making and seeing who could make the longest skid mark. We’d really here about it then. Frank Sr. would cuss for 10 minutes and leave the room to sit in the basement with a beer. Frankie’s mom would then offer us a can of coke in the kitchen. Frankie always called her by her first name. We could never figure out why, we just thought it was another part of his weirdness. He didn’t know how to ride a bike, spoke with a slight lateral lisp, and played with Power Rangers toys long after they stopped being acceptable for children our age. I discovered years later during high school that he was gay. I couldn’t imagine how with a father like Frank Sr.
With the exception of Frank Sr. and Mrs. [name removed], most other people just said the place was noisy, or dirty, or ugly. These were facts of life for a lot zoned for semi-industrial usage but things that people of a “historic arts district” and “cultural center” felt did not belong. By those criteria most of the people didn’t either. My father chose the last reason as his and always campaigned rather ineffectually to my mother and I about the possibilities for the façade and the rest of the structure. We had the nicest house on our street and at that time possibly the entire neighborhood too so my father felt he had an obligation to uphold the architectural example our house set. But part of his desires for something greater was a more personal connection.
In the late 1920s and 30s his maternal grandfather worked as a stone cutter in the business that occupied the building before Singer Steel bought it in 1947. Most famously, Dominic Mastrangelo worked on the towering stone pylons that are now part of the Hope Memorial Bridge. Now all that remains are a dusty photograph of him working that hangs in my grandparents’ living room and a portion of the weathered sign on the side of the building that reads “OHIO STONE.” That wasn’t the name of the place but the rest of the paint is washed away.
In 1994 Singer Steel moved to Streetsboro and dismantled operations at the building on Random Road over the next few years. Gradually the red trucks stopped showing up as frequently and one day a large 18-wheeled flat-bed rolled out with the large overhead crane on the back. It was the last major activity I saw from the place. For a few years the building sat vacant and silent with a large commercial real-estate agency sign on the side. The flat white sign with painted black letters that read SINGER STEEL on the apex of the sloped roof also began to show signs of dereliction and the white gradually gave way to brown at the edges eventually lengthening to long rusty streaks.
Our recklessness started small, from the gravel driveway next door to Frankie we would sometimes pick up the larger rocks and hurl them with flailing fresh teenage arms toward the building. We told ourselves that we were trying to hit the steel parts of the walls to see how loud of a sound we could get but given the ratio of glass to steel the inevitability of stone contacting and then shattering a pane was monumental. When the sound of falling shards was heard we would scatter like roaches at the flick of a light switch. When we saw that no one really cared we would slowly emerge from under porches and rocks and cracks in the sidewalk to inspect our handiwork. These were the first glimpses we got into the shadowy guts of the beast. We were finally able to look around and see the internal structures and we found that it was bigger than we thought.
In 1999 we discovered a back entrance near the railroad tracks on the opposite side from the one that faced the street. You had to squeeze under a fence behind the ball diamond and get through some pretty thick bush before hitting the access road. After that it was a quick quarter mile to Singer. A back garage-type door had been left partially open and on our bellies entry was pie. It was late afternoon when we snuck in and the last orange rays of daylight were starting to fade. A quick peak around showed nothing overtly remarkable besides a late 60s Cadillac left to compost near the ramp leading to the tracks. It was pretty much exactly as it seemed from the outside: just an empty warehouse.
It was then that we saw the door. It was slightly open and it called to us. It was scary and forbidden and irresistible to a thirteen year old boy. After some deep breaths we slipped inside as if someone were watching us. It was the old office building for the operation. Just an average looking house tacked onto a section of brick wall on the side of the building. Our inquiries into the contents of the abandoned desk drawers yielded nothing more than a few dirty magazines and trash. We pronounced the managers as perverts and kept the magazines though they were probably the property of some homeless man looking for a dry place to sit and rest with his girls. After that one afternoon, I didn’t venture back into the place when Anthony or Frankie did, the place just creeped me out.
After a few years, the neighborhood revitalization brought new popularity and more cars of suburbanites. On small, already cramped streets parking was precious and so the decision was made for the Murray Hill development company to purchase the building and use it as a parking lot for the increased traffic. Beginning around 2001 there was nearly always a big fat man sitting in a folding chair with a spray painted sign that read “PAKING 5$ [sic].” The man looked like the ones who used to work there loading steel but I dismissed it as a coincidence.
In the fall of 2005 I decided to take a photography class and chose the makeshift parking lot as one of my subjects. Camera in hand I marched around the corner and asked Big Fat Attendant if I could take some pictures. His blank look let me know I needed to explain myself. Then he said “No, I don’t want to buy anything.” It was my turn for a blank look. I again explained myself and added the magic word: “school.” Like Ali Baba I was in and snapped away 2 rolls before I saw the door again.
I didn’t have enough frames left to bracket my shot so the result is greatly underexposed. Add to that my subpar processing and frustration at the tedium that is a dark room and you have my result here. There are dust spots and some smudging on the right side. I got a modest grade. I also got a photo that still hangs on my wall. Sure it’s not great technique but what I see in it is the same thing I saw at thirteen after sliding under a half-open door: fear, mystery, grit and grime. But I also saw something new: decay. To me that’s what makes it a great photo.
After letting my last lease in Kent expire I moved home. During my first weekend back I took a walking tour of the old neighborhood just to get my legs about me after 6 years. The people have changed. Anthony is getting married, Frankie moved away while I was gone and Chris disappeared right before high school. What’s left is mostly young trendy folks and college students. They think I’m one of them not knowing I’m a native; the ones with which they battle about noise complaints and parking spaces. I walked by The Singer Steel Building and found most of the corrugated steel siding missing and the glass removed. The small office house was torn down and all that remains is the steel girder superstructure; a skeleton of a giant. From what I’m told, the next phase of development into a multi tiered parking deck is underway. The brick wall is still there minus the wall around it and the door is still hung, still partly open. Only now, it’s a door to nowhere in a wall that separates nothing.
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