Hanging Gardens

The above Feature was shot for Single Barrel Detroit showing the Hanging Gardens Project and The Juliets.

A riddle: name two homophones with opposite meanings. In English there are, as far as I know, two common answers. One is hole/whole, which is arguably a bit of a stretch. Hole isn’t exactly the opposite of whole, though one does happen to cancel the other out. The other and more accurate answer is raise/raze, a single sound which signifies both to create and to destroy, to build up and to burn down. Resurget cineribus and so on, you see where I’m going with this.

There are a handful of rumors surrounding the razing of the Forest Arms, rumors which could be effectively condensed into this: a man in dire straits, at the end of some sort of rope, sets fire to his own apartment after barricading himself inside, presumably in a desperate act of retribution toward an indifferent world. Another rumor suggests that he was simply a smoker who had fallen asleep amidst some paperwork with a lit cigarette in use. The facts are these: in the early morning of February 6, 2008, a fire started in the apartment of John Christian Robinson. It took four hours to contain, resulted in the death of Robinson, the displacement of over 100 residents, and the near-total destruction of the century-old complex. Also succumbed to the flames: Amsterdam Espresso, a community-driven café which burgeoned into an active local art gallery and music venue in its short time, and People’s Records, one of Detroit’s premiere record shops which has since relocated to Woodward and Peterboro.

I lived on the first floor of the Forest Arms for a year, between 2006 and 2007. It was my second year living in Detroit and I was knee-deep in my undergraduate studies at Wayne State. The places in which you come of age tend to quickly expand and then slowly contract over time in your memory, one long, labored breath. A lot of my memories from the Forest Arms had been neutralized in the past few years, had sizzled out and congealed. Something I did not expect was for these memories – or perhaps emotional responses attached to these memories which themselves have otherwise been relegated to my subconscious – to be suddenly, if only for a beat or two, jolted back to life.

I make my way from the lobby through the south wing, trying to get my bearings, the once meaty interior having shrunken to a static imprint, a wireframe of dingy timber. I reach my old apartment. It looks considerably smaller without any walls. The bathroom tiles are still visible in gaps between piles of detritus. There is a newly exposed, disused fireplace in the front bedroom, having previously been entombed by layers of plaster. I stood inside the outline on the floor which signified where my bedroom had once stood, trying to think of a joke.

If anything can provide some warmth to such overcast sentiments, it’s a diverse group of volunteers spending the day transforming the courtyard into a hanging garden, draping the façade with flowers and ivy while the building resonates with the bittersweet chamber pop of local favorites The Juliets. The task proves to be as much of a celebration as it is work, a labor of love culminating in a roof-top performance by the Juliets for the volunteers.

When the Forest Arms expired it left Midtown with a big blank, a void which the community works with measured pace to replenish. The hanging gardens are a subtle reminder of the life which used to be rooted in that building, and the creative accomplishments made possible by a motivated community. The breadth of the day fills me up – on second thought, the hole/whole answer to that riddle works pretty well here, too.

- Jeremy Franchi