Monday, August 13, 2012

Worcester State Hospital


Sunrise streaming into the soon-to-be-demolished Clocktower, one of only two structures remaining from the 1877 Kirkbride complex at Worcester State Hospital.

The Kirkbride building at Worcester State Hospital, a once-sprawling complex conceived in 1869, built between 1873 and 1877, and continuously used for well over a century, has suffered an unfortunate fate over the last 21 years.  In 1991, a fire tore through the complex, destroying much of the original construction.  Of what remained, the state decided to demolish all but the administrative pavilion - known as the Clocktower, due to its distinctive clock tower - and the Hooper turret to its left.  With little fanfare, the three remaining wards and Gage turret were torn down along with several other historic structures in 2008.  Now, the state plans to destroy the historic Clocktower, leaving only a hollow monument where it stands.



The edge of the Hooper Turret in 2008, with the Clocktower building in the distance, flanked by several buildings demolished later that year.

The State Lunatic Asylum (1833-1877)


The Kirkbride structure wasn't a part of the original State Lunatic Asylum at Worcester, the first public asylum in the state of Massachusetts.  Far from it - the cornerstone wasn't even laid until over 40 years after the asylum's founding; two other Kirkbride structures had already been tested in the Commonwealth, at Taunton and Northampton, and the Worcester Kirkbride was built during the same time period as the famous example at Danvers State Hospital.

But the State Lunatic Asylum began much earlier, on a scale perhaps less-grand, but certainly noble.  In 1829, Horace Mann - charged by the Commonwealth to report on the condition of the insane within its borders - returned with a damning report, accompanied by some progressive recommendations.  Insane persons without means - those who could not afford boarding in one of the private asylums spread throughout the United States to ease the burden of insanity in the families of the wealthy - had few options.  In some cases, when families could (and wanted to) manage it, the insane would be given care at home.  Otherwise, however, they wound up in almshouses or jails.  Mann's report echoed the future findings of notable mental healthcare reformer Dorothea Dix, who would not study the state of mental healthcare for another decade.

Mann suggested that the state act quickly to establish a "State Lunatic Asylum", so that the insane might receive care in a setting suitable to recovery or, at least, civil treatment.  Virginia and Maryland had erected such public asylums at the end of the 18th century; Kentucky, New York, and South Carolina had joined them in the 1820s.  On Mann's strong recommendation, Massachusetts became the sixth state to provide publicly funded care for the insane in an institutional setting - and the site chosen for the new asylum was Worcester.

The Bloomingdale Insane Asylum opened in January, 1833, in a single building constructed to house a superintendent and 120 patients.  Governor Levi Lincoln personally showed up to announce its opening.  By December of that same year, Dr. Samuel B. Woodward, its first superintendent, announced that it was over capacity and turning away needy patients.  While care was tendered civilly and humanely to those at the institution, it was clear that 120 beds were not enough.  In 1835, the hospital - now known as the State Lunatic Asylum - was expanding.

In 1841, Dorothea Dix visited her home state of Massachusetts in order to study the conditions of the insane throughout the Commonwealth.  Her report echoed Mann's report, spelling out deplorable conditions for the insane throughout most of the state, and concluding that the asylum at Worcester be expanded in order to provide care to more of the insane residents of Massachusetts.  Some expansions were made to the hospital, and by the middle of the 1840s, there was room for 360 patients - three times the number the hospital was originally designed for.  But instead of continually adding to one asylum, the Commonwealth elected to begin construction on new asylums, in other parts of the state.  Asylums would be built in Boston, in Taunton, and in Northampton before Worcester would be significantly expanded.

The Kirkbride Building (1877-1991)



* A public-domain aerial photograph of the completed Kirkbride complex (and Lowell Hall, a nurses' cottage to the right).

In 1869, current superintendent Merrick Bemis proposed moving the State Lunatic Asylum at Worcester to a new locale in the suburbs, and the present hospital site was purchased.  Bemis's plan was to have a large central building for chronic cases, and a variety of smaller pavilions for convalescent care - an early proposal for a cottage-plan asylum.  Bemis had always been an idealist in his superintendentship; he had appointed the first female physician to the staff, and had run the first incarnation of the Asylum with the edicts of Moral Treatment in mind, although he disagreed with Moral Treatment pioneer Thomas Story Kirkbride on the layout of the ideal asylum.

Bemis's plans were not to be, however - he went into private practice before plans could be made to utilize the land purchased during his tenure.  His successor, Bernard D. Eastman, melded his plan for a segregated population with his adherence to the linear plan layout espoused by Kirkbride.  In 1873, construction on the Worcester Kirkbride began; it would be completed in four years, with some parts - including the Clocktower - finished by 1876.  Chronic patients remained in the original 1830s buildings, while patients who were seen as possessing a chance of leaving the asylum system were moved into the new building in 1877.

ADDENDUM 8/14/2012

In the original post yesterday (8/13/2012), I incorrectly attributed the design of the Kirkbride complex to Ward P. Delano of Fuller &; Delano, a prominent Worcester architectural firm.  My friend and fellow photographer Ethan McElroy, of Kirkbride Buildings, sent me a message that he had also initially believed the vast number of online sources that point to Delano, but that the actual architect was George Dutton Rand of Weston & Rand.  I reached out to Preservation Worcester, a group which worked hard for many years to save as much as possible of the original construction, and who is responsible for the agreement to save the Hooper turret (as well as to construct the monument).  Valerie Ostrander and Susan Ceccacci were kind enough to return my correspondence almost immediately, and to confirm (this time with reliably sourced information) that it was, indeed, Rand's work.  Additionally, Rand's next firm, Rand & Taylor, completed some enlargements in 1887.  Delano was linked to the hospital in a couple of ways - he designed the farmhouse building, and in 1898 Fuller, Dalano &; Frost enlarged the kitchen of the complex.  I would like to personally thank Ethan, Valerie, and Susan for helping clear up this confusion.

The "Clocktower" Administrative Building (Constructed 1873-1876)



The Worcester Clocktower was the administrative pavilion for the new Kirkbride complex; elegantly appointed in the High Victorian Gothic style of the entire campus, it is one of only two portions that still remain, and is now slated for demolition.

According to the Kirkbride prescription, the seat of power for the linear-plan asylum was to be an administrative pavilion set in the center of two wings, one each for male and female patients.  Delano envisioned a clock tower reaching into the sky as a representative symbol of this seat.  Around the tower, he built the administrative pavilion, a five-story structure utilizing the High Victorian Gothic architectural modality of the rest of the complex.  Sitting atop what was known as "Hospital Hill", the structure was visible from far away, and left no illusions as to where the decisionmakers in the hospital resided.

Like any Admin in a Kirkbride building, the Clocktower provided not only administrative functions, but also a residence for the hospital superintendent.  As was usually the case in these sorts of buildings, the Worcester Clocktower was much grander than the two wings radiating from its sides.  It was thought that the ideal for patients to strive for would be that central point in the building, and so the most convalescent wards - those for patients likely to be released soon - were placed adjacent to this imposing building.  Farthest away would be the wards for the violent patients.

The interior of the Clocktower has recently been determined to be beyond salvage by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, who is set to demolish the 135-year-old structure.  Here is a glimpse at the interior, which features a unique floating staircase that winds up to the top floor of the building, as well as asymmetrical octagonal atria on each floor with grand arches allowing passage in eight directions.



First-floor landing of floating staircase.  The first floor was by far the hardest-hit by the fire in 1991 that destroyed most of the complex; soot still covers much of the walls here.
 


• Massively damaged by the fire in 1991, the first and second floors have merged here through the loss of the floor, although a fireplace still clings to the wall.  This level of damage is atypical of the structure on the whole; most of the floors are surprisingly sound.
 


The second-floor landing of the floating staircase.
 


The second-floor atrium directly after sunrise; the outlines of the original arches that radiated in every direction can be seen, as well as the orange light of the rising sun through a kitchen to the left.
 


A corridor off the second-floor atrium is illuminated by the orange glow of the sunrise.
 


A second-floor parlor, although damaged by decades of neglect, still shows its grandeur first thing in the morning.
 


The third-floor landing of the floating staircase.
 


Even with boards over the windows, enough light gets in to the old library during an 8-minute exposure to show off the elegant construction.
 


The fourth-floor landing of the floating staircase, during civil twilight, demonstrates the main use of the Clocktower for the past couple of decades - as a roosting area for pigeons.
 


A view into the fourth-floor atrium shortly after sunrise.
 


A standard room on the fourth floor of the Clocktower building, which would have served as a residence for the superintendent of the asylum.
 


One of the bathrooms in the superintendent's residence still has a claw-foot bathtub intact.  The high window was designed to allow for light to access the interior of the building without sacrificing privacy in the days before electrical lighting.
 


The fifth-floor landing of the floating staircase reveals the source of the light that shines down five floors - a large skylight, which was probably modified at some point in the 20th century.
 


Climbing up into the clock tower proper, this landing contains the bell, which was originally rung by the clock tower mechanisms.  Unfortunately, the ladder leading up to the clock face itself seemed in dodgy enough condition that it did not seem safe to climb.

The Wards (Constructed 1873-1877, Destroyed 1991 & 2008)



• The rear of the Lincoln ward as it was about to be prepped for demolition in 2008, with a view to the Clocktower at right.

Each wing of the Kirkbride complex originally consisted of five flagstone-and-brick wards, along with an elegant turret reminiscent of Vienna's Narrenturm - itself one of the world's notable insane asylums.  From the back of the Clocktower, some other connected buildings sprang, designed to match the complex, including a massive chapel with a grand pipe organ, a kitchen, bakery, dining hall, etc.  In 1991, a devastating five-alarm fire ripped through the complex, destroying most of the original Kirkbride; the Clocktower was saved, as was the Hooper turret to its left.

On the right wing, three wards were saved by the diligence and swift response of the Worcester Fire Department.  Quimby, originally the violent ward at the end, connected to Salisbury, and Salisbury to Lincoln.  Lincoln connected to the Gage turret, which was also saved.  This complex, often referred to as "The Wards" in the time between the fire and their demolition in 2008, was a good representative piece of the asylum, even if most of the structure was lost.  Where these wards would have connected with other parts of the complex, salvaged stone from the parts that had to be demolished following the fire capped off the buildings.  What follows are a number of photographs from this section of the building, taken over the course of a couple of years leading up to their complete demolition.

The Ward Basements


As a personal note, I almost never find the historic locations I photograph to be "creepy" or "unsettling".  They are places where history, good and bad, occurred; I attempt to capture that history to the best of my abilities.  That said, every time I visited the basements under the wards at Worcester State Hospital, I decidedly found them unsettling.  There were features built into the basements that were unlike anything I've seen in dozens of other asylums, and it took a good amount of digging to figure out what some of these things were - and then the reason for my unsettlement became clear.

The basements under these wards were renovated in the 30s and 40s so that a team of doctors working at the asylum could test out experimental therapies, especially new forms of hydrotherapy.  Institutional tile was added to the basement walls in order to make the walls easy to clean and more resilient to the damage from the water.  These experimental therapies were dubious at best, but what the basements were later used for, during the 50s and 60s when the hospital was at its most overcrowded, was even worse.  An experimental mass-shower room was turned into a punitive "hose-down" room - the showerheads were removed, and a protective cage was installed around the operator's booth to minimize the risk to the orderly manning the controls.  At the height of overcrowding, some windowless basement rooms were even used to house patients.


• A basement corridor, into which a bedframe had been placed.  The benches at right date to the era when this entire section of the basement was given over to experimental water therapies.
 


The group-shower turned hose-down-room under the Lincoln ward.
 


Temperature gauges in control booth of same room.
 


* At first glance this was similar to a mortician's table typically seen in a hospital's morgue, but placement under the Lincoln ward didn't make sense.  As it turned out, this was a table used for resting hydrotherapy.
 


These mannequin legs sat at the base of one of the staircases for several years; in 2008, they had disappeared from the hospital basement.
 


* A scale found under the Gage turret.  In 1949, lensman Herbert Gehr photographed a patient being weighed on this same scale in this room during an experiment, for LIFE magazine: click here to see it.
 


* The Gage turret, under which the temperature-sealed experimental chamber portrayed in the previous photograph was housed.  Demolished in 2008.
 

The Wards Proper


Unlike the unsettling basements beneath, the three wards of Worcester State Hospital that survived the fire of 1991 were beautiful and optimistic, in the style of any Kirkbride building.  With high ceilings, wide corridors, spacious patient rooms, and large dayrooms, it is pretty hard to argue that this would not have been a comparatively good place for the insane to receive treatment before it became overcrowded.  Although nearly pitch-black inside - the Commonwealth boarded off the windows after abandoning the structure in the wake of the fire - it is pretty clear from the size and placement of the windows that this would have been a bright and pleasant atmosphere.


* View from a dayroom into a ward corridor.  This exposure was over 10 minutes in length, a testament to how little light made it into the hospital after it was boarded up.
 


* A wheelchair in the corridor of the Salisbury ward.
 


A dormitory for several patients, demonstrating the tall windows found throughout the wards.
 


The junction between wards, partially artificially lit with LED lanterns.
 


Strange to find inside the closet of a patient bedroom, this collection of biological specimen containers appears (from dating on one of the canisters) to have been here since the 1960s.  The stopper remained in place on the test tube for nearly half a century.
 


Part of the Quimby violent ward was converted for use by children some time between the 1960s and the hospital's abandonment.  There were toys strewn about in this section, and someone had set up a tricycle in the middle of the hallway.
 


At a junction in between wards, a couch slowly gathered dust - and was torn apart by some sort of animal, as evidenced from the scraps of cushion on the floor around it.
 


A geriatric chair sits in a beam of light from a partially-unboarded window under an arch between hallways in the Lincoln ward.
 


A pram sits on the landing of a stairwell in the Lincoln ward.
 


The top floors of the wards featured dormer windows, and were about the only part of the remaining wards to catch some natural light - there were several boards pulled loose from windows.  Here, a patient bedframe sits in a dormitory.
 


The strike plate on the door in the same dormitory.
 


A saw leaning against the wall in the same dormitory.
 


Bedframes were piled up in a single-occupancy room on the top floor.
 


This staff room, on the top floor of the asylum, contained an "Important Notice" stenciled onto the wall.
 


Detail of the same.
 

Later Years & Recent History


After the fire in 1991 leveled most of the Kirkbride complex, the rest was boarded up and left to fall apart.  Some of it had not been used for a very long time already; some had been in use up until the fire.  In the more-than-a-century that the asylum was in use, it went through a number of phases, as did many asylums in America, Kirkbride plan and otherwise.  The 19th century saw optimism, Moral Treatment, patients housed humanely in a place that provided them the best treatments available at a time when there was no such thing as a cure.  The early 20th century saw those same asylums filling up, and the beginning of what Erving Goffman termed the "Total Institution", with the mindset that accompanies this - high patient-to-staff ratios and an institutional environment that contributed to the dehumanization of those that were supposed to be under care.  Sometimes guinea pigs, sometimes the victims of abuse, the patients were no longer finding the respite that the word "asylum" entails.  The peak of overcrowding occurred in the 1950s and 60s, right before the asylums began to empty with the advent of chlorpromazine.  The name of the institution changed over the years as well; the "Bloomingdale Insane Asylum" was gone before the Kirkbride building was ever erected, and not long into the 20th century, the "State Lunatic Asylum" became Worcester State Hospital.

In the early 21st century, it was proposed that the hospital again be expanded, and it was decided that most of the remaining portions of the 1877 complex - mostly destroyed by fire - would be leveled.  In 2008, this task was accomplished, leaving only the Clocktower and the Hooper turret.  A new building was built to continue the tradition of public mental health care in Worcester, right on top of those wards that were demolished to little public outcry.  It probably would have been impossible to save the wards, given the fire damage, and the following period of abandonment; although surprisingly intact for buildings mothballed for decades, they would have needed gut renovation.  Still, the Worcester Asylum represented an important chapter in the histories of both psychiatric care in America and in the progressive history of Massachusetts, an early adopter of such care.  And it cannot be argued that there was not still some beauty in the wards.



A few months before the wrecking balls destroyed the wards of Worcester State Hospital once and for all, snow from a long winter drifted through a small hole in the ceiling of this top-floor room and accumulated in a pile through a bedframe left in the empty shell.
 

Now it appears as if the Clocktower will meet the wrecking ball as well.  As of early 2012, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts has been working on a plan to demolish the historic structure - a symbol of mental healthcare in Worcester for 135 years - and to replace it with an empty reconstruction of just the clock tower itself.  For those that value historic preservation, and the continued examination of our own national history through an examination of our historic buildings, this seems to be as hollow a compromise as the proposed monument, which will not have any internal substance.

The Commonwealth appears ready to spend $7-8 million dollars to demolish the historic structure and to build this monument, whereas studies have shown that renovation of the building in order to put it back into use - as more than a hollow reminder - would only cost about five times this sum.  But Massachusetts has a rather dismal record regarding the preservation of its Kirkbride buildings - the structures at Northampton and Taunton were destroyed to little fanfare (and, to all appearances, for no good reason - both spaces are still currently undeveloped) in 2007 and 2009 respectively.  First to go was Danvers State Hospital in 2006; to call what was saved by developer Avalon Bay "preservation" would be disingenous.

While it is never over until it's over, the Clocktower is currently surrounded by three fences, and an army of construction equipment - and it appears likely that the sun will set on this beautiful architectural treasure for the last time in the very near future.


The Worcester State Hospital Clocktower at sunset, 2008.

Monday, May 14, 2012

Waldo Hotel, Clarksburg, WV


Front (Western) facade of the Waldo Hotel.

The Waldo Hotel, located in the heart of Clarksburg, WV, was once among the crown jewels of the state.


Mezzanine balcony overlooking lobby.

Designed in the Beaux Arts style, with elegant interior ornamentation, it was in operation for about 90 years before the boards went up.


Blue corridor with intact paint and undamaged carpet.

Some parts of the hotel are still in remarkably good condition.


Upper-floor room demonstrating significant water damage.

Much of the building, however, has suffered significant water damage in a short period of time, and as of February 13, 2009, the Waldo is condemned.

A Brief History of the Waldo

Wealthy socialite and Virginia State Senator Waldo Goff had an estate built in Clarksburg, a city in what was to become West Virgina, in 1839; he named the Neo-Classical mansion "Waldomore".  It was here that his son Nathan Goff was born; Nathan would go on to be Secretary of the Navy under Rutherford B. Hayes, as well as to serve as a U.S. Congressman.  He would be the longest surviving member of the Hayes cabinet, living until 1920.

After retiring from a notable political career as a member of the Republican party, Nathan Goff decided to erect a magnificent hotel in the center of his hometown, in order to increase the prestige of Clarksburg as well as to provide a social center for state Republicans.  He decided to honor his father, who had passed away in 1881, and named the forthcoming structure the Waldo Hotel.

The architect chosen for the project was Harrison Albright, then the State Architect for West Virginia.  Known to Goff through his political affiliations, Albright was something of a risky choice for the job - skilled at municipal architecture and having some experience with more utilitarian projects in the Philadelphia area, he only had a few lavish and ornamental commissions under his belt - though his next hotel after the Waldo would be the celebrated West Baden Springs Hotel in Indiana, which featured the largest free spanning dome in the world at 200' diameter.

Albright designed an elegant Beaux Arts edifice, ornamental but lacking in bombast.  The focus of the interior was on a grand lobby; here, an 11-foot-wide marble staircase led up to a mezzanine level with a wraparound balcony, and a smaller matching staircase completed the journey to the second floor, which featured another wraparound balcony.  Here, ornament was employed in abundance, with every detail carefully considered - from the tiled floors, to the classical gold-and-blue color scheme, to the detailed plasterwork that covered everything from the insets for electrical lighting in the ceiling to the "W" emblems spread throughout.  The remainder of the first-through-second floors was a maze of kitchens, workers' areas, and various meeting rooms, as well as a ballroom.  The remaining floors contained various rooms and suites, some available to the public, and some reserved for those with connections.

With primary construction completed between 1901 and 1904, the hotel soon developed a reputation for luxury, and attracted the wealthy and elite from the region.  As Goff had planned, it became a noted meeting place for Republican politicians and supporters, and this continued even after the deed passed to Goff's sons upon his death.  Guy Goff, who lived in a suite of rooms on the fourth floor of the Waldo, attempted to run a campaign against Herbert Hoover, which was ultimately unsuccessful.

The Lobby

The lobby of the Waldo Hotel is easily the most striking architectural feature of the 108-year-old building; despite some serious neglect, its beauty is still quite evident.



View of lobby from second-floor balcony, depicting ceiling detail and grand staircase.
 


View of ceiling and balconies from ground floor.
 


The 11-foot wide grand marble staircase leading to the mezzanine is now blanketed in a mouldering carpet, just as the ornate tiled floor is blanketed in plaster dust.
 


The peeling paint of the mezzanine balcony reveals many years of color changes as the building was repurposed.
 


Turning to the right from the previous image allows an idea of the view which greeted hotel patrons mingling on the mezzanine balcony.
 


View of second-floor balcony, with staircase (right) leading down to mezzanine level.
 


At the corner of the second-floor balcony, the elegant plaster detailing seen throughout the lobby is evident.
 


This view of the second-floor balcony shows the level of deterioration that the plasterwork is undergoing due to the ongoing neglect of the Waldo Hotel.
 


A view down into the lobby from the eastern side of the second-floor balcony.
 

Decline and Abandonment of the Waldo

The heyday of Clarksburg was in the 1920s and 30s, when many prominent families had settled in the area, manufacturing in the surrounding areas was at its peak, and the city was a hotbed of political action in the State of West Virginia.  But the modest empire built by the Goff family and others was beginning to crumble, and after World War 2, the census numbers stabilized and began to drop.  The city fell into decline, with the population peaking in 1950, and declining in every census since then.  Manufacturing was beginning to flee the area, and residency there was no longer seen as desirable by the elite of the region.  Clarksburg was beginning to take on a feel familiar to cities in the Rust Belt of today, and the Waldo reflected this change.

In the 1950s, the Waldo was converted from a hotel to a longer-term rooming house, and soon, it found its final use as an apartment building.  Over ensuing years, as the economic downslide of Clarksburg continued, the apartments were lower-and-lower rent; because it had been designed as a European style hotel - without a separate water closet for each room - the apartments were not desirable, despite the elegance of the building.  Renters who could afford it preferred their own private bathroom, and so the Waldo was being used as low-income housing by the 1970s.

Towards the end of its tenure as an apartment complex, the tenants were complaining about various maintenance issues, and the deterioration of the building began, even as it was still occupied.  Eventually, in 1994, the decision was made to shut the Waldo down rather than spend the money to make the repairs necessary to keep it going.  Shuttered, the building began to decay more rapidly.

Residential Areas of the Waldo

The third through seventh floors of the Waldo Hotel, originally hotel rooms, were converted for longer-term residential use in the 1950s.  Today, these areas are in various states of decay.


On the top floor, it is possible to see from a decayed kitchen to the side of the building as well as into an adjoining room, thanks to windows placed at a diagonal.
 


A straight-on view of the same kitchen gives a sense of the level of water damage the property's owners have failed to prevent in recent years.
 


While the room adjoining the above kitchen is reasonably intact, the room across the hallway - seen here from the former - is beginning to collapse, with some holes in the floor.
 


A view of the hallway outside of the rooms pictured above.
 


The attic on the south side of the building has only one finished room, pictured here in a long exposure - to the naked eye, this scene was nearly pitch-black.
 


A seven-minute exposure illuminates the extremely dark sloped corridor immediately outside the room pictured above.
 


Even after the conversion to apartments, the grander rooms at the ends of the southern wing maintain some of their luxurious details - such as this tiled fireplace.
 


Above a similar fireplace, some pencil scratchings from May Day, 1917 are still evident.
 


Much of the Waldo is carpeted, and in hallways such as this, which have not been hit as hard by the neglect the building has suffered, even the paint on the walls is reasonably intact.
 


Many of the apartments contained cheaply installed wardrobes such as this one; this particular room also features a window looking out directly at another wall of the building.
 


Door into an apartment in one of the relatively undamaged portions of the Waldo.
 


A blue sky above, in combination with light bouncing off of various colored reflectors, gives interesting color casts to many of the rooms now that the artificial light has been shut off.
 


Despite the decay, the beauty of this building is evident, particularly in undamaged areas such as this large common room.
 


Some original architectural details have been hidden by more recent construction; here, a lovely piece of molding is hidden behind a fake wooden panel.
 


This later-period staircase was likely installed between the first and mezzanine floors in order to keep up with fire codes.




It appears that work got underway to remove mouldering carpet at some point in this upper-floor hallway, but was never finished; piles of rolled carpet are found throughout the hall.
 


After the residential floors are reached via the main staircase or the servants' stairs on the north end of the building, this central staircase connects floors 3-7.
 


Some of the color and design choices for the apartments are quite interesting.
 


In another room which has suffered tremendous water damage due to owner neglect, the shell of a fireplace overlooks a pile of fallen plaster which is carpeted in moss and algae, which will speed the destruction of the building along.
 


There is enough moisture inside the Waldo to maintain various flora, as well as fungus - here, mushrooms have taken root in damp crumbled plaster.
 


While the superstructure of the Waldo is in great shape, the interior is rapidly deteriorating due to the fact that no money has been put into maintaining it.  Here, water has rotted a doorframe to the point that the door was able to pull free from its hinges and fall.
 


But despite the damage to some areas of the building, there are other areas which are quite intact.  In these areas, it is possible to see the potential for reuse of this grand historic building.
 


Some rooms are so undamaged as to almost look ready for new tenants to move in.
 


Here, a doorway divides a two-room apartment at the end of the southern wing.
 


The main structural elements in the Waldo are still useable, and with quick action, the building could be saved and repurposed.
 


But despite the grandeur and beauty of this building, its current owners are making no motion to actually preserve it; it is falling prey to demolition by neglect, like so many historic buildings in America.
 


If action is not taken to, at the very least, stabilize the building soon, it will likely fall prey to the wrecking ball.
 


A hallway leads back to a machine room where modern ventilation machinery is in place - the building was completely renovated once, and could be renovated again.
 

The Present and Future of the Waldo

Abandoned since 1994, various options have been floated for the redevelopment of the Waldo Hotel.  The hotel was briefly owned by the McCabe Land Co., which bought it for the stated purpose of preventing it from being demolished (as reported by Abandoned).  Since then, it has fallen into the hands of the Vandalia Heritage Foundation.  Vandalia, a 501(c)3 non-profit entity, claims the motto: "Economic Revitalization through Historic Preservation".  However, it is quite clear that the economics trump historic preservation with this group - there was absolutely no evidence that any serious effort had been made to fix up the property in the decade-plus the building has been owned by Vandalia.

Had, at the very least, roofing repairs and mothballing occurred in 2001 when the deed was transferred, the building would be in much better shape and cost much less to restore.  Now, the "preservation" group is claiming that they don't have the money to save the Waldo, despite $100K in preservation funding from the State of West Virginia and the fact that they had the ability to go in to collect scrap metal to sell.  After getting nowhere towards preservation despite years of ownership, the Waldo Hotel was officially condemned on February 13, 2009.  Although Vandalia was granted an extension in order to allow them to get their house in order - as it were - the only work that appears to have been done on the Waldo is the removal of further metal to sell for scrap.  The building is still incredibly humid, and nothing has been done to fix the roof or to stabilize the structure.

The future of the building is unclear, but things do not look good for this grand piece of the Goff legacy.  Locals, tired of seeing a dilapidated eyesore, are pushing for demolition.  There are no publicly posted plans which include Vandalia transferring the property to another entity with the resources and know-how to rehabilitate it.  Although a site visit - and the photos taken during this visit - make it clear that the building is an ideal candidate for adaptive reuse, there don't seem to be any motions being made in this direction.  Meanwhile, the water is still creeping in.


A tiny diagonal hallway connects the southern wing of the building with the main corridor.
 


Significant water damage has caused most of the plaster to collapse in this apartment; still, the superstructure remains intact and the floors traversable.
 


An interior room - nearly pitch black to the naked eye - demonstrates water damage to plaster, as well as various algae and molds which have grown on the damp drywall partition at left.
 


The future of the Waldo Hotel is currently hidden in murky shadow.


As always, I would like to invite any of my readers who are in the know about this building's future - or anybody who's lived here or has a personal connection - to reach out to me through my email address, or to leave a comment below.