Building "The Banks."

- A group gathers for a construction tour of The Banks.
I took up an invitation from the folks at Carter-Dawson to see the current progress on The Banks, the development currently rising between the two stadiums on Cincinnati's riverfront. Upon completion, the complex will have nearly 300 apartments in phase 1 and feature a wide variety of retail and dining options. There's even room for an office tower to be built as well as a hotel. The development will be surrounded by Great American Ballpark, Paul Brown Stadium, downtown and the new Central Riverfront Park.



The project had been a concept since 1997, but didn't have a finalized master plan until 2007. Since the groundbreaking in 2008, construction has continued at a feverish pace. Even those attending Reds opening day today will notice a stark difference in the riverfront from the end of last baseball season. Currently, one tenant is up an running: The Holy Grail Bar and Grill.

- A look inside one of the apartment display models.
- Some prints from the QC/D Store would make that wall in the living room look even better.


- View from a corner apartment. The streetcar will eventually pass directly below, before heading North on Main.
- Live right across from GABP and right on the streetcar line, if only I had the cash...
- Banks Balcony view over Main St.
- Apartment construction.
- What will eventually be filled with pedestrian traffic and street level retail.
- The tour group in front of GABP.



- Rooftop pool under construction.
- View from one of the top level apartments.
- Touring a penthouse.
- View looking West.
My friend Ryan, who came along on the tour, saw the view towards Paul Brown Stadium and remarked: "If you're a Bengals fan, what more could you ask for?"
"A decent team," I replied.


The amount of progress along the Riverfront is staggering, it's great seeing it all come together. Throw in Phase 2, the office building, the hotel, the streetcar, put the Riverfront Transit Center into use and the riverfront will be in good shape. A renaissance is rising in downtown.

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Previous Update :: March 21, 2011 - "The National Theatre."

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The Mighty Motor City - Part 3: The National Theatre

In the 1960's, being able to communicate with others via a hand held device was the fantasy of Star Trek episodes. These days, not only can you call someone from the phone in your pocket, but you can browse the internet and watch movies too. You're connected with a vast network of people and entertainment options all at your fingertips. If you can't stand the small screen of a smart phone, you can shell out your hard earned money to see a blockbuster at your local movie theatre. However, in the days before 3D glasses, HD video and surround sound - the live theatre was king. And while it's not dead, it was once the preeminent form of entertainment in Western culture. Its popularity was reflected in the vast amount of venues built to house it, many of which featured beautiful architecture. In Detroit, the ruins of one forgotten theatre echo that past.

- The interior remains of The National Theatre in Detroit.
The National was our third stop of the day during our Mighty Motor City trip. Despite an attempt to board it up and seal it off from the outside, the building's beauty still emanated prominently on the street corner. At one point in time, it was at the center of an entire theatre district. Now, it's abandoned and connected to a parking garage. It had opened originally in 1911, an 800 seat theatre showcasing live vaudeville variety shows. As the Roaring 20's came about, The National transitioned to showcasing the rising popularity of motion pictures. Considered small by comparison to nearby movie houses, the theatre transitioned to live burlesque shows and was renamed "The National Burlesk Theatre."

- The National with its shining lights and "Burlesk" moniker in 1966. Photograph from DetroitUrbex.com.
The stripteases provided by burlesque dancers failed to bring in customers like the nudity of strip clubs did. As topless bars were becoming more and more common on the American landscape, burlesque died out. The National was renamed "The Palace" and began showing pornographic films by early 1970. The neighborhood around it had become rough and most neighboring storefronts were closed. By 1975, The Palace saw its last guests and would never operate a show again. The building did find its way onto the National Register of Historic Places while the block around it was demolished for a parking garage. As of today, there are no plans to renovate or demolish the theatre.

- The National's doors and lobby are sealed off from the outside world by a wall of plywood.
The nearby parking meter where my car sat had only 45 minutes left on it. A gentleman down the street washing his parked car in the 30 degree weather and a homeless woman that wouldn't stop trying to start a conversation had delayed us from going in. When the car was cleaned off (as clean as you can make a rusty, 1994 Nissan Pathfinder) and the homeless woman moved on, we finally made our way into the lobby of The National. Unfortunately, there were two problems. One, the nearby car washer and the homeless woman had ate up a lot of my meter time and I had no more quarters left. Two, the theatre was pitch black. To get any halfway decent pictures, it was going to require flashlights and long exposures, a time consuming process. Not too familiar with Detroit's parking enforcement laws and not wanting to risk getting a ticket, I wanted to be back to the car before the meter expired. Gozer and I kept tripping over debris as we shared a flashlight. I set up the camera, aimed, focused and light painted for 30 seconds. I couldn't see it with my own eyes, but the camera revealed something beautiful:

- Inside the National Theatre.
As our eyes adjusted and the flashlight lit the room, we were awestruck. The seats were gone and the balconies were nearly falling off the walls, but the amount of detail and ornamentation put in from the original construction still remained in some spots. In the lobby, the doors were decorated just as they had been in 1911 and the ticket booth still remained.


Plaster from the ceiling and bricks from the walls had fallen all over the floor. The building has been slowly crumbling for nearly 36 years. The theatre says more about how our culture has changed over the past century than most words probably could.


- Besides that Mrs. Lincoln, how was the show?
With time running low, we carefully crept up the wooden staircases. Downstairs we had seen evidence of someone who had been squatting there, if they were up here we didn't want to disturb them. The upper lobby was completely exposed to the outside. The glass window above the theatre's marquee was gone,revealing a Detroit that was quite different from the Detroit 100 years ago when The National was built.


We cautiously made our way to the upper balcony where I snapped the first photo seen in this article. I didn't want to test and see if the side balconies would hold my weight, but Gozer and I did run to the top of the theatre. There, a projection room that once showed all kinds of movies, and later solely pornographic ones, remained - albeit it mostly empty.

- Stairs in The National Theatre.
We were out of time. I could hear a lot of people on the sidewalk outside, just below the open window. That posed a slight problem as they were standing right where we would be making our exit. The cameras were secured, we exited through the lobby just as countless patrons had done before us and made our way back to the streets. I took a quick glance outside the fence and determined that the people right by the exit probably would be more confused than concerned when I literally crawled out onto the sidewalk. I knew the gamble paid off when the family standing on the street corner gave me a strange look. "Hey! How ya doing," I said as I smiled and walked to the Corolla Rager and Gozer came crawling out behind me. "Doing just fine," said the man with the confused look on his face.

- The National as it appeared in the summer of 2009. Photograph by Al Duce of DetroitUrbex.com

Parts I and II of "The Mighty Motor City."

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Previous Update :: March 15, 2011 - "St. Agnes/Martyr's of Uganda."

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The Mighty Motor City - Part 2: St. Agnes/Marty's of Uganda

It was the second stop of the day on our latest trip to Detroit, MI. After checking out Ferris Elementary School, we made our way to St. Agnes at the request of Gozer. For her, this would be her first time seeing it, but it was a place our guide, Al Duce, and myself had seen before. Little did I know how much could change at an abandoned church in just a year and a half.


Above was the view of St. Agnes from its choir loft in August of 2009. Below is how she looked from the same view this past February:


St. Agnes had been a Catholic parish established in Detroit in 1913. The building seen above was completed in 1924. The church also featured both a high school and grade school, eventually only serving grades K-8. By 1989, the parishes of St. Agnes and the neighboring St. Theresa were merged to form the Martyr's of Uganda parish. In 2006, the Archdiocese of Detroit closed and disbanded the parish. I came across a thread of former parishoners/students sharing stories about the church.

For a young child who had a very unhappy home, to be able to go into that wonderful church and just sit and feel so close to God, was something I will never forget. I became Catholic when I was twenty years old. I am sure it had something to do with that wonderful old St. Agnes. - Former St. Agnes Parishoner

- The Church as it had looked when still active. This photograph appears on the cover of Catholic Churches of Detroit by Roman Godzak.
From the air, you can see that St. Agnes is shaped like a cross - one of the many intricate architectural details of the church. Once ornately decorated in beautiful stained glass windows and sacred relics, the church is now barren.

- Compare this view with the above one on the cover of the book.

When I first saw St. Agnes in 2009, the church had only been closed for three years. It was still in pristine (as pristine as an abandoned building can be) condition at the time. Its pews were gone as were any items of holy relevance, as is typical of decommissioned Catholic churches. Other than that, hardly anyone had touched it. There was no evidence that scrap thieves had gotten a hold of it, no vandalism and we had seen little evidence online of other photographers having been there.


- St. Agnes in February, 2011.
When we initially visited in 2009, everything on the church property was locked up tight. In fact, to get in, we had to help lift each other up through a broken window into what once had been the rectory where the priest lived. By the time I was back in 2011 there was no need to climb through any windows. Nearly every door had been knocked down, windows were broken, any trace of valuable metal had been ripped from the church, graffiti covered walls and the stone columns supporting the ornately decorated roof had been broken down to their cores.

- As of 2009, the organ was gone, but the pipes still remained.
- As of 2011, the organ pipes were completely ripped out of this area of the choir loft.
If you read about and saw St. Agnes from our first trip there, you might remember how the basement had been set up as a sunday school/parish center. Al took one look down there, before coming back up and reporting to us that the walls were covered in mold. With no protection from the weather and having been torn apart by scrap thieves and vandals, St. Agnes was now in an incredible and tragic state of deterioration.

- What had once been the altar.

There's a few scenes in the film Gran Torino (one of my favorite movies that you should probably see if you haven't already), where Clint Eastwood's character visits a Catholic church. Set in Detroit, the pews are mostly empty, the neighborhood has changed and it's a different time. St. Agnes seems eerily similar, a feeling echoed in another quote from the aforementioned thread.

I drove by there about a month ago. The school is still standing, but it has been vandalized. The church still looks nice though, at least from the outside.
As for the surrounding neighborhood, well maybe its best not to ask if you haven't been there in a while. - Former St. Agnes Parishoner

- Columns of the church, torn apart.



St. Agnes is maybe one of the best reflections of what happens to a place that was once important to so many people is left behind, void of life. Its decay at the hands of thieves is tragic, yet the church's current state is reflective of the changes that have taken place in Detroit. Just as the film Gran Torino illustrated, Detroit has had a massive population decline. Detroit has changed. Places like St. Agnes are a reminder of a time that once was.



For Part 1 of "The Mighty Motor City" - click here.

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Previous Update :: March 11, 2011 - "The Night that Covington Stood Still"

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The Night That Covington Stood Still

COVINGTON - "He came down to the scene like a captain coming to his ship," or something like that, is what I overheard one of the news reporters behind me saying while I stood with the crowd. She was colorfully describing how local restaurateur Jeff Ruby came down to see his "Waterfront" restaurant on Friday night about 100 ft. upstream from where it normally is. The floating "Boat-Raunt," as I dubbed it, had been pushed away from its usual spot by the currents of the river, which had grown strong due to flooding this past week, something I had witnessed earlier in the day.

- The top of the Serpentine Wall at Sawyer Point Park.
This whole past week I've been on Spring Break from school. The beginning of the week the weather was nice, followed by two days of rain. After that, it snowed. Then I woke up on Friday to find relatively warm temperatures and sunlight. I had some time to kill before work, so I went down to Sawyer Point to check out how high the river had gotten.


Access to the Serpentine Wall had been cut off by barricades. Many people, like myself, chose to ignore them to get closer to the water's edge. Apparently I wasn't the only one who wanted to see the floodwater and enjoy a really nice day in the park.




The park was full of people snapping photos with cell phones, point-and-shoot cameras and even digital SLR's like mine. The river was a rare sight to see. While I've photographed the river with high water before, I had never seen it this high in person. Some sources claim this is the highest it's been since the flood of 97. Not sure if that's right though. *Edit: According to reader Eric, the river has only been this high one other time since 1997. Thanks for the info, Eric!

- Panoramic photograph of Sawyer Point flooding. Click here for full size.

About eight hours later though, I was back down by the river. I had just gotten home from one job and was half awake, laying in bed when I saw someone post on facebook that the "Waterfront in Covington broke loose." At first I took that literally and thought an actual part of Covington's shoreline had been swept up by the rushing river waters. Then I read on the Enquirer's website that the Waterfront was the name of the floating restaurant down there and that it had floated away, apparently hitting the Clay Wade Bailey Bridge. I jumped up, grabbed my camera and hopped in the car with my roommates. We crossed the river and could see lights from police cars and tugboats down way. After finding a parking spot along the levee wall, we climbed the grassy hill to the top and found a crowd of onlookers and news crews.


At first glance from that distance, if you didn't know any better, everything looked fine. The restaurant was just sitting there, a little bit off the shore, still floating and right by a parking lot. You'd think it had always been there. However, it had floated about 100 feet east of its usual location. Apparently all 150 people aboard were fine and the fire department was working on getting people to shore. I snapped a few pictures and left.

- A tugboat lends assistance to the distressed floating restaurant.

- One of the restaurant's ramps lodged in the water.

While what happened was newsworthy, unusual and could've been much worse; the Cincinnati local media really ran with this story. When we got back to our apartment, one of my roommates had pulled up Channel 12's website where they had a 23 minute video of the story. The video is mostly the newscasters speculating potential disaster scenarios of what COULD happen if things took a catastrophic turn, even though it was pretty clear things were calm and a rescue effort had begun. Many members of the public ate the local media's colorful interpretation right up. A quick read through a few of the comments on this Enquirer article show how some people were wanting to immediately string up Jeff Ruby. The comments on Channel 12's site are just as interesting. One person claimed that Mr. Ruby was "the only one to blame for this stupid act." Last time I checked, it was the River who pushed the restaurant away and as of this moment all signs indicate that it wasn't intentional, therefore the river didn't "act."

- Firefighters evacuating restaurant patrons.

According to Ruby, the Waterfront has stayed open in flood waters before. He wasn't planning to close it until or if the city of Covington decided to put up the nearby floodgate. A few years back, he had a new plank installed that could float as the river rose, allowing the restaurant to stay open when water got high. Luckily no one was hurt and what transpired ended up being nothing more than an interesting story. But with the way some people reacted and covered it, you'd think this could've been the end of Queen City civilization, or fine dining, as we know it (I wonder how many tv news reports we'll see this week about how "safe" the other floating restaurants are (OMG, what about Newport Hooters!?)). May we never forget "The Night That Covington Stood Still!"


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Previous Update :: March 8, 2011 - "The Mighty Motor City - Part 1: Ferris Elementary"

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