Exchange Student

Not every building can be Tiger Stadium or the United Artists. That is probably for the best, as it makes those places all the more special.



Anyho, met Andy in the morning and we headed to the former Wilber Wright High School. The DPS has been hemorrhaging schools the past several years. Wilber Wright was one, closing just a few years ago. Oddly enough, I had a dream about this one a few weeks back, that we were locked inside and being chased around by hobos.



Even before the school had closed I wondered if it was open or not. Granted, the building’s backside faces Grand River, but it didn’t look good even then. Now it is totally trashed. Every window has been removed, the building was in an abatement process that ceased some time ago. Vandals have struck in mass.



Finding our way in wasn’t difficult. We started in the school’s powerhouse, impressively large. We were not there long before a man came walking up. “I need to pee, you guys don’t mind do you?” At least he asked first. The city is becoming more and more genteel.



Heading into the school itself we found the first floor to be rather dark and very trashed. The building was built in stages from 1929 to 1951, although to a common design. The main part of the building is L-shaped, with tiled corridors and classrooms on both sides.



The corridors are a mess. The yellow lockers are being pulled out from the walls, many lying on the floor. The classrooms are a disappointment. Most are stripped bare of anything recognizable. The only distinctive feature between individual rooms is the graf.



The only notable classrooms on the first floor are the science rooms. These rooms still have desks, and nice wooden cabinets. We went down a long dark corridor at the opposite end of the school to what we thought might be a gym. On either side we found large rooms, one with a piano, and the other with old computer monitors. The large room at the end was a shop.



The second floor is better lit, but more trashed. There are more lockers pulled from the walls and more stripped classrooms. At one corner we found the old wood shop. Like a mini-Washburne, the room was full of the old machines. I guess the city didn’t deem them valuable enough to salvage.



While Andy gabbed on his cell phone I grew greatly concerned. I could hear crazy angry rambling coming from not-to-far away and getting louder. I thought for sure that we were soon to be confronted with a delusional and violent hobo. But I soon realized that the ranting and screaming was, in fact, a sermon coming from the small church just down the block. ha ha, damnation!



Andy had to depart to go jump in the river, so I finished the school solo. The third floor was more stripped than the other two, completely lacking its lockers. I found a metal shop, also still equipped, directly above the wood shop. At the other corner I found what appears to have been the cafeteria/common area. No gym, odd.



The basement consists of storerooms and passageways with pipes. One room is still stocked with oodles of Cold War era Civil Defense supplies, including drums of water, laxatives that look like brown M&Ms, and 1962 vintage crackers. If only Matt had been there to try em out, ha ha. Anyho, with that I left.



Debating my options, I decided to follow up the school with the Film Exchange Building. This is a squat square structure standing alone at the north end of downtown. It was built in 1926 and served as a sort of wholesale warehouse of movies for the local theaters. The building was later used as offices, with much of the interior gutted and the windows replaced with tinted glass in anodized aluminum frames sometime in the 1970s.



Getting in was easy enough, cept I had to crawl through fowl-smelling hobo refuse. If only odors could be transmitted over the internet! I followed some feral cats to a stairwell and proceeded with the roof hike.



Tis a standard roof with the standard southward view of the skyline. Its unique aspects are two large penthouses and a very unusual ziggurat structure of vents. I’ve never seen anything else like it.



With my fill of that, I headed down to check out the office floors. The Film Exchange Building is remarkable in that it is so utterly unremarkable. My photographs make it appear more interesting than it really is, which isn’t saying much.



The gutting of the interior has robbed it of an historic appearance and most traces of its original function. Years ago I had heard lore of a screening room for theater owners where they could sample movies before selecting them. If such a room existed, it has long been swept away. The only hints of its film days are some old movie posters plastered on a wall and the remains of concrete storage vaults.



The rest of the building is rather plain. Some floors are wide open, others have modern partitions. There is nothing left behind in terms of furnishings or other artifacts. On a whole it is really clean and in good shape. But it makes People’s Outfitting seem interesting.



The smelly ground floor survived the modernization. The long lobby arcade still has its original marble paneling and a colorful Neo-classical plaster ceiling. There are empty storefronts on either side and service areas in the back.



I was glad to be back to the world of natural light and fresh air. A few minutes after returning to the car Andy called. We met at Buddy’s, ate dinner, and discussed buildings and such. And thus went another weekend, two buildings that were good to see, but I won’t be going out of my way to make return trips.