This Halloween special of Laying the Foundation takes a spooky turn as our team shares their most chilling encounters from the world of architecture. From abandoned facilities to haunted spaces, our architects and designers recount their eerie experiences on the job. Get ready for spine-tingling tales that will leave you questioning what truly lurks behind the blueprints.
Skyler: In the span of the Laying the Foundation episodes, we've talked to architects, designers, project managers, and leaders on a variety of projects and spaces and the incredible design concepts behind them. But one thing we haven't touched on is the spookier side of what we do. The eerie abandoned facilities and terrifying hidden terrors within the facilities we've toured and the spaces we've searched.
Skyler: Today, we step through that mysterious portal into the realm of the peculiar and paranormal as we try to make sense of the stories our team has to share about some of the fearful experiences they've had on job sites, and even some unexpected things they've picked up on the 3D scanners. So scoot to the edge of your seat and prepare yourself for some terrifying tales of spooky spaces.
Skyler: All right, Lee, welcome to the scare zone. I haven't come up with anything, but it's just, that one makes more sense. I can't say like the fear factor. That's already taken. That's taken. So anyway, welcome to the special Halloween episode. Talk to me about your project, keeping things kind of broad, obviously with, with certain details, but tell me, tell me about the spooky things that you've experienced.
Lee: So the project that comes to my mind when I think of Halloween and architecture, as you're trying to relate, is the time that, uh, we were hired to, you know, assess an old, uh, abandoned nursing home. And so this thing had been sitting abandoned for a few years. Okay. And so you can just kind of picture this, uh, nursing homes, large, you know, a lot of, a lot of things that happen in those nursing homes.
Lee: You know? Okay. Yeah. We'll just leave it at that. Okay. Yeah. We don't want, we don't want to go morbid, right? We don't want to be disrespectful of what happens in nursing homes and how things end and stuff like that. But, um, so you can just, this nursing home fits the picture of, uh, it sits up on a hill, you know, and it's in a wooded area, right, right in the middle of town, even.
Lee: Right. So just think. Interesting. Think of, think of that. Think, bring, bring yourself to the movies of what that is. And it's got this long winding drive, even going up there.
Skyler: No.
Lee: Right. So it's perfect. It's perfect for a spooky story. Absolutely. So yeah, we went there, I went there, um, and I was going there with a contractor and to look at this thing, to see if it could be rehabilitated into, into something else and not a nursing home anymore, not a nursing home.
Lee: Nope. It had been abandoned from that. Don't know why. Spooky. Exactly. Um, so we drove up there. I drove up there first by myself, got there early, you know, you drive up this kind of long windy road. It was early in the year. So there wasn't even leaves on the trees yet. So then it even had like the, like the, the dead branches look kind of over top.
Lee: Perfect. So yeah, you get there, you pull in, um, and there you have like this, uh, The security camera thing sitting out there right because by this time it had been abandoned enough and when buildings get abandoned They get stripped. They get stripped of the copper. They get stripped of Anything of value right in there, right?
Lee: So you pull into this parking lot Weeds are already starting to come up through it. Okay. And the looters had already pulled stuff out. Wow. So this isn't
Skyler: even, we're not even talking about like, you know, the people that owned the building were like, well, it's gone. Yeah, no. So
Lee: it's been sitting up there all by itself, you know, so unprotected, you know, unsupervised.
Lee: So yeah, people had already kind of been pulling stuff out. So windows were broken. Of course. Um, stuff had been kind of strewn across the parking lots. So it's like, Think post apocalyptic, right? You know, the walking dead. So I remember that opening scene when he wakes up in the hospital and it's just like a strewn mess in there.
Skyler: I
Lee: think that kind of setting, right? There's a door
Skyler: that says don't dead. Well, that I don't remember, but there was none of that written in there, but, but, you know, just
Lee: waking up in there and everything was just a disaster out in the streets, you know, I was like. Um, tumbleweed almost flying through here, that type of, that type of feel.
Lee: So anyway, so we're sitting there, you know, and it's just kind of, I'm waiting for the, the other guy to show up and he gets there. Oh
Skyler: my gosh. So you were just chilling by yourself. Oh my gosh.
Lee: Um, so then we go to, uh, go inside. And, uh, well, the door was locked, but it didn't matter, right? The windows on that side were broke.
Lee: The windows on that side were broke. So we're sitting there trying to get this lock undone, you know, messing with that. And we finally get that and you, you pulled the doors open, the big glass doors, but You get inside and that's about as far as the daylight went. So I'll picture like, you know, when you see dust in the air, you got this light filtering through and you walk in and if you've ever been in a nursing home, they're big, they're, they're long winding, long hallways, um, yeah.
Lee: And the only rooms that have daylight are the ones kind of on the side. So anything inward, right. Just pitch black power had been turned off. Water's been turned off. Everything's been turned off. I remember stepping into this building and the temperatures were just starting to warm up. So, um, musky smell, mold was probably even starting to potentially occur in here.
Lee: But as I said, looters had been starting to go through and you just kind of walk and there's just crackling under your feet. You know, and you look down and it's, it's male or it's, um, you're kicking bedpans. You're kicking shringes. You're, it's just like this place has just been, just like it had been just abandoned in place.
Lee: Everybody just disappeared.
Skyler: Yeah.
Lee: Like it had been lived in, there's furniture sitting in the corners, you know, there's all these things and, um, all that kind of stuff sitting there. Uh, and so, you know, we're, we're with our cell phones, you know, we're trying to walk through this place and the light, you know, and, and then the story start, right?
Lee: And then, uh, you start to peel off one. We were in a group of like four of us and then two of us went this way, two of us went this way. And it's just like, guys, this is the beginning of a horror movie. Like why are we separating in this dark Velma, you and
Skyler: Shaggy go this way and Anthony and I will go this way.
Lee: And then you're looking in all the spaces, right? You're right. All right. You're just like in every horror movie. Why would you go to the darkest, deepest room? Well, that's where the mechanical system. So, you know, we're, we're just like opening these creaking doors and looking into here and smells and, you know, all you have is your flashlight.
Lee: So. You creating all these long, deep shadows. Right, right. Um, but yeah, it was, uh, so me being me, as I said, we split up.
Skyler: Yeah.
Lee: Um, and I could hear the other two coming up the hallway. Oh no. You know, so I hid and I hid around the corner in one of these rooms and. Uh, they're, they're pushing this, this hallway door with all this junk behind it, you know, so they're just kind of pushing it open.
Lee: And, uh, at that same time I pushed on the backside of it and she just screamed and it was, it was perfect. But, you know, when you're just walking through it, the, the walls had been stripped of the copper. So, you know, like sheet rock had been falling off, um, there's insulation hanging down from the ceiling.
Lee: Purely a picture of of a whole yeah, just yeah again. I go back to that post apocalyptic It's just the place has been torn apart and everybody had just disappeared and you're like, where is everyone? It looks like this was just lived in. Yeah, you know, the dining room was still set up
Skyler: Oh my
Lee: god, you know where they eat their dinner or their lunches and but it was just completely torn apart
Skyler: It's so bizarre like the the certain things that people will take from a derelict facility And then the things that they'll leave and they leave just enough for it.
Skyler: Cause like, I mean, they're not going to take furniture where the, how are they going to haul that? You know what I mean? Right. So it's like, yeah, it, it leaves the ability for it to feel like it's currently being used to some extent, but then at the same time, like you said, you've got papers on the floor.
Skyler: It looks like someone came in and ransacked the whole place and everybody
Lee: disappeared. Yep. You would, there was a, Some of the cabinets even still had food. Oh. You know, like canned food in there. And then in one of the waiting rooms there was, there was still molded food, like just sitting on the counter.
Lee: Ew. It's like, it's again, like everybody had just gone very post apocalypse, just raptured out of there. Yeah. You know what I mean? More or less. Absolutely. Like completely left, left to, uh, to the thing now to nature, to nature to kind just to overtake.
Skyler: I, I will say, Lee, and, and this is just a, a forewarning going forward, but.
Skyler: With my reasonably extensive horror knowledge, uh, I feel like the guy that typically pranks everybody at the beginning of a horror movie is the one that gets the first one to go. He's probably the, almost pretty much always the first one that goes. That is true, that's true. He goes to go do something and then just disappears.
Skyler: Yeah, that's true. Sometimes you don't really get to see him. See what happens to them, but they're gone. That
Lee: is very true. You, I did not think about that at the time.
Skyler: So just in the future, especially if I'm going to be just for whatever reason, I end up at one of these facilities, like I'm going to be on edge, you scare me.
Skyler: I, you know, things I'm going to, I'm going to be terrified.
Lee: Yeah, no, but it was, yeah, we're sticking our heads up in the attic and you're just, you're waiting for that rat or you're waiting for that, whatever to come running across there, you know? Or is there a looter even in the building still? Oh, absolutely.
Lee: You know what I like. So you're kind of just like hitting on the doors, like Yeah. Hey, coming in, you know what I mean? Coming into this wing, make sure no one's back there. You know? Oh, that's one of the
Skyler: most terrifying things. Like to know that's possible. Right.
Lee: We,
Skyler: uh,
Lee: when, because it's a big enough building.
Lee: Oh, absolutely. You would've never known if someone was on the other half of the building. Absolutely. You were on the other half. You know, I know when,
Skyler: uh, Emily and I were house hunting a few years ago, we went into this one particular house, and there was still a lot of furniture there. It was in good condition.
Skyler: And the realtor kept telling us, she's like, Hey, you know, in situations like this, you really got to watch out for, for squatters and she just kept saying squatter squatters. So like at one point I go down to the basement to go check what that looks like. And she's like, you know, just be careful squatter.
Skyler: So yeah, just having that fear that they might be around any corner or whatever. And you know, that's not to like stereotype people or whatever, but at the same time, like. We're scaring them and they freak out and things can happen. So yeah, it's a, it's definitely terrifying. Yeah. And you guys obviously we were able to get your way in.
Skyler: Like you said, the windows are broken. It would be pretty easy to get inside and just hang out. I mean they had, they had
Lee: pulled all the HVAC units out from underneath the window so you could just walk right into all these places. But you know, I had been sitting. Yeah. And, but like I said, as it was warming up, it took on a different smell.
Lee: Yeah. You know, it's humidity and, and, uh, non conditioned buildings don't go well. Absolutely. You know, you start to get that smell. Oh. So that adds to it, but just the, the crinkling under your feet, you know, everywhere you walk, there was something on the floor and it was just constantly moving things and then the flashlights casting the deep shadows or the light doesn't even get to the end of the hallway.
Lee: No, you know what I mean? It's just like, it just keeps on going and all that
Skyler: particulate in the air kind of block creates a block. And then on top of that, like with the, with the floor and the crackling of everything that you're stepping on, like. In a quiet, desolate facility like that, any
Lee: sound that you make is just amplified.
Lee: Right, right. I think the creepiest things is when the dining room was like, still set up. Yeah. You know? Oh, yeah. And then some of the bedrooms were still like, the beds were still made. Yeah. You know, and then some of them were strewn in a mess. You know what I mean? Right, right. The things that could always kind of caught you off guard were the IV.
Lee: Like hanging treat, you know, those things like they didn't have anything on them, but they were taller, kind of about the height of the person, you know what I mean? So they're just kind of sitting in the corners and you turn and you look around and it's like this thing right, right at eye level. I don't know what those things are called, but
Skyler: yeah, no, that's a, that's a big, no, that's,
Lee: that's creepy.
Lee: That's what came to my mind when, uh, When you talked about spooky architecture, yeah,
Skyler: I mean, that's honestly probably would for me personally, that'd be about the spookiest concept so far. So yeah, that's terrifying. So no ghosts yet necessarily. Yeah. Why did it close? That's right. You know what happened?
Skyler: Exactly. Leaving you with those vibes. I do not just to forewarn anybody who's listening. I do not recommend If you find a derelict facility going in, don't do that. It's called trespassing. Yes, no trespassing. But, whatever the case, Lee, thanks for taking the time to sit down with me and tell your spooky tales.
Skyler: You're best.
Skyler: Alright everybody, welcome to another story for our Halloween special episode. Joining me for this particular episode is discussion of a spooky space is our architect, Adam Wheelock from our Sioux City office. Adam, welcome to the show.
Adam: Thanks for having me. Absolutely.
Skyler: And, uh, so you tell me that you've got a bit of a spooky space that you've had experience with, uh, tell, tell me what you saw, what you
Adam: heard, what you felt.
Adam: I do have a spooky space. Um, so I do primarily healthcare work. And so this space is part of a hospital. Uh, it's a part of a very old part of the hospital. Sure. Um, first you have to go to the basement of the main hospital and just by nature, basements are always a little spooky, right? Um, And so then once you're in the basement of the main hospital, you have to take this kind of creepy dark tunnel from one building to the next.
Adam: Oh
Skyler: my gosh.
Adam: Um, so then once you've passed through this, I mean, the tunnel's old and only maybe one out of three light fixtures work. And so it's, it's dark and it's narrow. So you kind of have to walk file, you know, single file one by one. Oh, I mean you're getting the claustrophobia. Yeah. And then, and you can totally tell you're underground in this tunnel, you know.
Adam: And, uh, then you get to the end of the tunnel and there's this narrow staircase that takes you kind of back up to the main level of this, we'll call it separate building, yeah. Uh, the building was originally built, um, in the 30s. Burn unit and so there are many parts of this building that still have all the parts to go along with an old burn unit The building is almost entirely abandoned, right?
Adam: So there you go again abandoned buildings, you know I don't love those a minute, right?
Skyler: They are just the Highlight of creepiness. Absolutely.
Adam: And so because the majority of this building is abandoned It's full of old Old broken down medical equipment and it just litters the rooms and the hallways. It's just randomly scattered.
Adam: It's all in disarray and different portions of, uh, disassembled, you know, stolen for parts, those kinds of things. So yeah, and it's all just piled up, you know. Um, at one point in this building's life, it functioned as a daycare, and so painted on all the walls and the corridors are these, you know, pictures of clowns and, you know, funny animals and alphabets, and so you have this kind of daycare theme going on,
Skyler: aligned
Adam: with all this old medical equipment.
Adam: And so the only functional thing left in this building is the morgue.
Skyler: Just to add insult to injury. And you have to wander
Adam: through the, almost through the entire building from where you come in from the tunnel. Through all this old medical equipment decorated as a daycare and at the end of the tunnel is the morgue.
Adam: And it's a pretty typical morgue, you know. It has the big stainless steel table with the washtown bays and all the equipment all the way around it. And then at the back end of the morgue is where all of the, uh, tissue samples are kept. So these are Things that essentially were valuable information at some point and they're stored in wax blocks And then they're all in their little drawers and so it's just shelf after shelf aisle after aisle of just metal shelving full of little boxes and Inside each little box is a little piece of human tissue human tissue, and
Skyler: you know,
Adam: you would
Skyler: know this You know, it's the person who You're obviously the, the architect working on a healthcare facility, you know, these things.
Skyler: And so, yeah, I can imagine walking through there and knowing that inside each one of those is some little bit of a person. Yes.
Adam: Oh my gosh. It is a creepy experience every time I have to go there.
Skyler: No. And you said that it's mostly. Like abandoned or unused is there portions of it that are still in use?
Adam: The only piece that is still in use is the morgue is the morgue So that's I feel so bad for those people that have to work the scale of the building to the morgue We're probably dealing with maybe um, I don't know an eighth of the building.
Adam: So Seven eighths of the building is abandoned and empty and the poor people that have to go
Skyler: Work at the morgue every day. Oh my gosh. I can't, I mean, you already have a creepy enough job working in the morgue. Right. And then to top it off, like, everything. You're
Adam: in this abandoned building, decorated as a daycare full of abandoned medical equipment.
Skyler: That's insane. That's so creepy. I mean, that is the perfect setting. Like, if someone described that in a horror story. Or like used it in some kind of horror movie or something. I feel like people would look at that and say, Hmm, that's not believable. It doesn't make sense. I can
Adam: imagine storyboarding this out and seeing how all that, and you're like, no, no, that's too much.
Adam: It's just like taking
Skyler: a ton of different horror elements and just throwing them all together and being like, yeah, this will work. But I think
Adam: the most alarming part of it is when you get into the building and you realize it's mostly abandoned. And then like there's corridors that lead off that you don't go down because they lead to abandoned portions.
Adam: And none of the light fixtures work down there, so it just kind of, uh, disappears into the darkness. It's just a, a
Skyler: dark tunnel.
Adam: Every once in a while, like, one light will blink on temporarily and then blink back off. It's like, nope,
Skyler: nope. Flickering lights, bigger, big no no.
Adam: Yeah. It's just, it's just a creepy space.
Adam: Wow.
Skyler: Alright. Well, Adam, thank you so much for putting nightmares into all of our heads. Glad I could help. About spooky healthcare spaces underground.
Skyler: Teresa, you are here. One of our architectural architects,
Teresa: designer,
Skyler: architectural designers. And, uh, you are, you told me that you had kind of some creepy stories, experiences with some of the spaces that you've visited or, um, toured or whatever the, I guess that's the same thing, but I digress. Tell me, tell me a little bit about some of the things that you've seen or experienced or heard.
Skyler: I don't know what. What all goes into the, I mean, there's a lot that goes into these kind of eerie experiences, but give it, I'll let you talk. I'll let you tell me about it.
Teresa: So my last job, I was kind of wound up being the person who would be like, Oh, we have a new building. Someone wants to renovate it. Go check it out.
Teresa: We don't have any drawings. So it'd be sort of like, here, take the summer intern. Go figure out what's in this building.
Skyler: Mm hmm.
Teresa: It's been unoccupied for a couple years
Skyler: Oh the classic abandoned building
Teresa: like truly abandoned and like few
Skyler: things creepier than abandoned Facilities it
Teresa: happens like the amount of spooky levels is like immediate Yeah, like even if you've been in like a school after hours immediately creepy.
Skyler: Yes Yes, now
Teresa: imagine a building that has been empty for like a couple years.
Skyler: Yeah,
Teresa: like immediately and like in some places You Even without like clearly people getting in because it happens.
Skyler: Oh, yeah,
Teresa: even just an empty building creepy on its own,
Skyler: right? Yeah, and
Teresa: so and a lot of the buildings that I was on were pretty old buildings from the 20s.
Teresa: Oh
Skyler: my gosh Those are old. They're pretty old hundred year old building
Teresa: and school once we went in a building that Hadn't been anything since it had been a brothel We did a project out in, uh, Deadwood, South Dakota. Um, the storefronts are all full, obviously, cause it's like a big touristy area. But a lot of the upstairs build parts of those buildings have been empty.
Teresa: Since like the 20s. Yeah, since they banned for a prostitution. Yeah, but brought back gambling, right?
Skyler: The weird laws of the early days of American history. Deadwood
Teresa: has a wild history. Sure. Like it's bizarre. I mean just the name
Skyler: itself, Deadwood. Yeah.
Teresa: Well, I mean, that's just, that's just I mean.
Skyler: But it sounds cool.
Skyler: It
Teresa: sounds cool. So a bunch of those buildings were real spooky. The one of them, one, there's, I think it's called like the Fairmont Hotel. They actually do ghost tours. Um, but one of the other ones we went out into, there was like a restaurant underneath, but the upper floor was all like a bunch of tiny little rooms.
Teresa: And like the owner had like. Mannequins in some of the rooms. What? Which did not help with this movie. No. Like, you can see them from the street.
Skyler: Yeah.
Teresa: But ways like a group of grad students are just sort of like running around up there and there's like graffiti and they've done like any building that they, has been abandoned but then they've done a haunted house in.
Skyler: Sure.
Teresa: Always get stuff left behind. Yes.
Skyler: And that's
Teresa: also creepy.
Skyler: Yes. I think just like the eeriness of like There were things here, and they're still here, but the people are gone.
Teresa: There's so many, there's so many remnants, and like, especially with like the prostitution thing, there's so much like weight.
Skyler: Yes.
Teresa: That you can't, like, you know, even though it's like, it's gone through many changes, there's still like, that weight that like, hangs
Skyler: out.
Teresa: Yeah, the
Skyler: same thing for, people talk about, like, when they go to abandoned prisons, or psychiatric wards, and things like that. There's sort of this intensity about these kind of, I want to call it like, emotionally intense spaces, or maybe morally intense spaces.
Skyler: Like, you know bad things happen in that room, you know people had a bad time in that room. Yes, exactly. Yes, yes.
Teresa: I think, like, I think this is why people, like, feel like they're psychic, cause like. You feel that even though like we're so unbelievably empathetic. That's
Skyler: right Yeah, even from an unexpected sort of like I'm just walking through a space where something happened like I'm still getting yeah It's our brains are weird.
Skyler: Our brains are very weird It goes back to like we don't understand our brains, but they're registering all kinds of crazy stuff all the time
Teresa: I think another thing that adds to that like being able to see that layers Oh, even that like knowing what may have been in that building you see like old finishes You Especially if you, I love when you see like a couple of layers in one spot where it's been like, it's fallen off and then there's another layer of wallpaper underneath.
Teresa: It's like totally different. And you're like, Oh, this space had something very different happening in it. Like, try to imagine what kind of person would have put that wallpaper on that wall, um, for better or worse. Who would make
Skyler: this design choice? Interesting. So then we got like the whole interior design of how much that can affect kind of the creepiness too.
Skyler: That's interesting.
Teresa: When we're designing we're so focused on like what's, what looks good now, what's popular now. But when you go into those older buildings, though, you see a lot of those have changed so much and how our, you know, Like concept of things change, like, I want to go use the word zeitgeist, but it's like a big philosophical word.
Teresa: Like those changes, those decisions we make as like designers. Are heavily impacted impacted by our like our outlook on the world as a whole, right? And like if you go back and you look at this finishes, they're all like different They're just a totally different mindset, right? Like between I don't know things like how posh things I want to use the word posh But i'm always imagining like floral.
Teresa: Yeah wallpapers and things like that and like all the wood trim and things Such a pain to renovate
Skyler: It's a pain for us in the in the modern day, but yeah, absolutely back then, you know, obviously there was That was the culture of the time you could say, you know That's kind of what you did and we'll still see that on on some of these old buildings and again It kind of bringing it back to that creepy perspective old stuff also just kind of has this eeriness to it as well you know you find a An abandoned space and there's all this like very vintage Stuff inside furniture designs on the on the wall.
Skyler: I think we found
Teresa: one room that had been a dentist office
Skyler: Oh,
Teresa: and it had been mostly cleaned out. Yeah, but there was still like Bottles of things. Yeah, and we're like we should not touch that. Don't touch that. Don't touch that
Skyler: The last thing you want to do is get like a cut on your hand and have some fun Some like hundred year old questionable chemical get into your, your wound.
Skyler: It sounds
Teresa: like a bad sci fi movie. It
Skyler: does sound like a bad sci fi movie. And as if dentists weren't already like kind of eliciting fear enough, like 1920s dentistry, whoo, I can't even imagine.
Teresa: No, absolutely not. Even like mundane things like immediately become like. I don't know if you've ever seen like an old, like, vanity in a bathroom.
Teresa: Yes. Like, I, the stuff that's even ten years old, I don't know if I would touch it, but like. And people used to like shove razor blades, like, in the wall. Yeah. Like, ugh.
Skyler: It's the classic, like, you know, we used to use lead paint on everything. It's like, there were just a lot of really poor decisions from people back in a time where they didn't know that it was a poor decision at the time.
Skyler: Sometimes the smell's really bad. Yes.
Teresa: Sometimes they're like, They're bad, but they're mostly just like, you don't know what it is. I think that adds to the spookiness as you get in there and you're like, there's a smell.
Skyler: Absolutely. So, okay. So you guys were students when you went and toured this facility, was it just like to like, see? Okay. Okay. We did a bunch of laser
Teresa: scanning. Okay. We got one studio where we're like, Hey, can we do something a little more whimsical? Sure. And they were like, yes, we got this. Right. Because you're in school, you
Skyler: can do whatever, you know, make it fun.
Teresa: It was like second to last before our last project, which was like, we knew it was going to be really serious. So like, let's do one kind of fun one. Yes. So we went out to Deadwood and we laser scanned a bunch of these empty spaces. Okay. As a way to sort of like, what can we put in these spaces? So those student projects didn't really go anywhere, but it was also more about like, It kind of became more, we talked a lot about like, what is a glitch?
Teresa: Sure. Because there's always this gating software always comes back. It's not a hundred percent. Right, right. And you get weird artifacts and things. Like mirrors come up really odd. Yes. Because it doesn't understand what a mirror is. Right. It's just receiving, you know, The signal that came back. And so it will like duplicate things.
Teresa: I was just going to say, it's kind of like,
Skyler: take the reflection and make it.
Teresa: It'll be at an angle or something. Um, and we really got into like, what is a glitch and what, which also leads into that, like, what is an artifact? And it was an unusual study, to say the least. Some of the results. That came out of it were very unusual.
Teresa: There was about nine different buildings. Um, we each got one building, which was kind of cute. Yeah. Um, the one, there were a couple of different brothels, but the one brothel, his project, he didn't produce really any drawings. He produced this really long box with little peep holes in it. It was unusual. It made sense.
Teresa: Yeah. Um, and then there were a little like rooms in there and you could watch the people watching
Skyler: the prostitutes. Sure. Sure.
Teresa: It got really meta really fast. Yeah.
Skyler: Yeah.
Teresa: And the other one was like a, like, uh, almost like a VR tour, but then he had found old images of prostitutes and like put them in there I would say almost like jump scares, but not really.
Teresa: Like it really did convey that feeling of what it was like to be in that building and know that things had happened in there. It kind of brought those like ghosts. That was scary. That one was legitimately scary. Everyone was unsettled during that final studio review. It was incredibly unsettling. And everyone was like, you did what you intended to do.
Teresa: That was scary. And
Skyler: it was,
Teresa: I mean,
Skyler: this is all the kind of stuff that like you could do a very strangely themed, like haunted house. Sort of a situation with, with this kind of stuff. But it's just like, this is going to be a, definitely an interesting episode with the most mentions of brothels and prostitutes that I think we're going to see in, in any laying the foundation podcast, but this is also a very different like kind of episode.
Skyler: So yeah, this'll be interesting. Is there any other experiences you've had along the way? Oh yeah. Okay. I
Teresa: hadn't even remembered the Deadwood one when we were talking earlier. Oh, okay. So that was just a bonus. That was a bonus. I love it. So it's coming in like having to like. investigate, I guess. It's almost, I would call it, I would call it like surveying, yeah, is a more accurate term, but investigating is kind of not a good way to describe it.
Teresa: There's one building that was, it was originally a department store, like a 1920s department store. So it's like one of those little skinny downtown kind of style buildings. So like a couple floors and then there was like a way, a couple, a little bit of warehouse space upstairs, but it had been a furniture store for a really long time.
Teresa: And then it had been empty for a couple decades. So like, it's extra spooky because they had, you know, kind of Ikea style, they had a few rooms that were like set up. Okay.
Skyler: Okay.
Teresa: But like a lot of the times, like the power isn't on or like there's minimal lighting and like, you try finding a light switch in the dark, you know, like a root, like it's probably in a back room somewhere that you haven't.
Teresa: And like, we've, we've like a couple different flashlights and one of them was good and one of them was not
Skyler: good.
Teresa: So you like, you always hoped you had the good one and you like this little orange, like. It's not big enough. You're not, you're just illuminating a tiny little area in front of you. And you're like, I just hope I don't trip or step on anything.
Teresa: Like, and you're just trying to figure out what's happening. Cause like buildings get renovated and they don't always come up with drawings. So you're like, I know what the shape of the building is, but you're like, there's all these little rooms. I don't know what they are. And like, every time you open a new room, you have no idea what you're going to get.
Teresa: No,
Skyler: no.
Teresa: Um,
Skyler: that's that in and of itself, just knowing that is terrifying. Yes.
Teresa: Yes. Um, sometimes it's fun and surprising and sometimes it's like, what is going on here? What happened? Um, but that one was a little spooky part because like with the downtown, there's like no windows. There's just windows in the front and the back didn't only had like a couple.
Teresa: So like the middle of the building, itch black, like true blackness. I don't know if you've ever done like a cave tour.
Skyler: Yes. Yeah. Yeah.
Teresa: Where you know, it's like that.
Skyler: Oh my gosh.
Teresa: Like, and it's so bizarre to experience that. As a whole, but just like, and sometimes it's sudden, like a door gets shut. And it's just
Skyler: gone.
Teresa: You have no sense of where anything is. There was one building, a different building we were touring and we, it was really dark. And we had gotten, we'd found a back door and we'd opened the door and we're like up a couple of floors in the rickety staircase you've ever seen. Like the one of those old metal staircases.
Teresa: And we were like, Nope. And then we shut the door and our eyes had adjusted to outside. And then we were in full pitch black again. And we were like, Oh, wait, what do we do now? And then the genius. Smart guy was like, oh, I'll take a picture with the flash on.
Skyler: Oh, and so there's a
Teresa: picture of me Just like making a terrible like what happened face.
Teresa: It's one of the worst photos ever
Skyler: Well in the same time like that just feels so horror movie of like you take a flash Picture and then all of a sudden, you know You see something like a shadow and it slowly moves in closer and closer every time you take a another picture Kind of like, uh, Rear Window, the classic movie, or something like that.
Teresa: Um, but the, the, the furniture store we got, luckily the one time I went there, where this happened, I was with my other co worker, who had been a Marine.
Skyler: Oh.
Teresa: Like, six foot, some, huge guy. Yes. Like completely confident. The person you want to have working in this situation. The person you want, right? Like we've gotten, it's this little tiny staircase to go up to the top floor with the, that was like warehouse space.
Skyler: Yes.
Teresa: And we get up there and it's like a weird situation with the doors, obviously. It always is an old building. See, they've even been padlocked or something, or they don't really work. The door doesn't really work. I once found a door with two door handles on it.
Skyler: Oh
Teresa: yeah. You had to use both of them to get the door open.
Teresa: I don't know how that was, it was bizarre. I think I took a video of it cause I loved
Skyler: it, but we
Teresa: got upstairs and then it's more of an open space and it's like, what I would describe as like. A chic studio apartment, you know, where it's like all in, it's just all brick and exposed things, but there's like, A mattress because it was a furniture store, but this mattress clearly had been arranged in the nice spot.
Teresa: There was an open suitcase on it.
Skyler: Oh,
Teresa: and we were like, uh,
Skyler: don't like that one might be here.
Teresa: Um, like with stuff in it, like clothes and stuff. So it's open on this. Clearly they'd like set up. It was a nice little spot. Actually the building got turned into apartments. Oh, it is a nice spot. Yeah. . And then the window, someone had punched the, through the window and then there was a trail of dried blood on the floor.
Teresa: Oh. And we both were like, uh, nope. This is a big Nope. We would like to leave now. This is, the vibes are very bad now. Oh my gosh. We were both like, it was like clearly had happened. It was dry. Right. So clearly it was not immediate, but it was like an amount of blood that you should go to the ER for. Yes.
Skyler: Yes.
Teresa: It was not a small amount of blood.
Skyler: No.
Teresa: Like, like, like a big circle, like trail, like circular trail. Like they clearly done it and done one of those like, ah, and like ran around the room a little bit. Oh my. Like,
Skyler: in a panic. Really did it all over the place. Well,
Teresa: it was like one big like arc on the floor, like they had ran in sort of a circle or something.
Teresa: It was, we were just like. It was, it was, it was disturbing. And we're like, okay, this is not great. Cause also people clearly getting in the building. Yes. There's like four stories up. We're like, also, how did this person get in here? Yeah. Yeah. That's the other thing. And we're like, are they still here?
Skyler: Well, that's the biggest concern, right?
Skyler: Like you got a dude with a, with a bloody arm running around. Who knows where, or, you know, you don't want to like walk into another room and find a body or something. Oh goodness.
Teresa: No. That's a big no no. Yeah, that's the, thank goodness I've never had that happen. And then
Skyler: that, that's gonna spark like an investigation.
Skyler: I mean I found dead
Teresa: animals, but that's Well, yeah. Spoilers for the other story. Sure, sure. And then, and then, and then, that was like, we still have more to look at, so we're like, the whole time we're just like on edge. Yeah. And we're like, we want to leave now. Oh my gosh. I don't think we spent, we looked at the other room up there, and then we were like, we're gone.
Teresa: We were like, we're out of here. Hey guys, just so you
Skyler: guys know, as the people that purchased this building and want to do something with it, there may be a little bit more to be done. Maybe send some police in there before anybody does anything. Oh, yeah. Clear things up.
Teresa: I think one of the ones that, that one of the other times we truly were like, a little terrified.
Teresa: One of these other like, downtown office buildings that had been Abandoned, one of the elevators caught on fire
Skyler: and then the city
Teresa: deemed that it couldn't be occupiable. So everyone like got kicked out at once, like with no warning, everyone got kicked out of this building. And just like quite a few floors of offices, like, and a bunch of little individual, like, I don't like 30, 40 individual tenants, like you have to leave.
Teresa: Holy cow. That's a lot of people. It's a lot of people. Lots of stuff got left behind in that building. Sure. Things you wouldn't expect. A poster for Clockwork Orange that was in Japanese. What? That the favorite things I found in there. That
Skyler: is very bizarre. In
Teresa: Japanese, nonetheless. I mean, Clockwork Orange, just
Skyler: from the get go.
Skyler: It was like, in a frame. In the frame, the nice frame. That in and of itself, weird. With like, the eyeball being linked. Yeah, yeah. It's not good. It's not good. Which, that's, that's creepy, for sure. Yeah, and there's another one of those
Teresa: buildings where like, you get into the middle of the building. And there's no lights.
Teresa: And it's just pitch
Skyler: black. It's just pitch black.
Teresa: Like, immediately. And also, like, it gets really stuffy in buildings. Yes. And we were doing this one in the middle of the summer. It was Some of the rooms were unbelievably hot.
Skyler: Yes.
Teresa: Like, we purposely left doors open so that it could circulate to the cool side of the building.
Teresa: Yeah. Because the Yeah. The sunny side of the building, those rooms were so hot. These little offices with all their old finishes, like dusty curtains and things. Oh, it's nasty. You don't have to worry
Skyler: about like the possibility of additional fires. Like if they get too hot there. Speaking of
Teresa: fires, the next room I was going to think of, some of the rooms, like the bigger offices that had multiple rooms and stuff, they clearly had the manpower to get their stuff out.
Teresa: But there are a lot of individual, like, clearly like lawyers or like, Others like where it's like one or two people in an office, there were a few rooms that were just like a layer of paper, just like every box that had had been like dumped out. Like
Skyler: that's a, that's a fire hazard in the hot rooms and curtains.
Skyler: Also, like you said, the dried curtains, like. That's seems dangerous. If you
Teresa: touched them, it would be like crunchy. Like that kind of like, well, the one where it was like linen y kind of, and then they've been sat in the sun for like 10 years. So like, I'm sure if you touch them, they just were
Skyler: crumble.
Skyler: Almost. Yeah. Interesting.
Teresa: strewn full of paper, a couple of rooms. And like, I don't know if this one's really spooky, but there was one room where like, there were kind of multiple layers of flooring had been, and then the top layer had been taken off, but because it was so hot, the glue is sticky
Skyler: and you step
Teresa: on it, like stick.
Teresa: I lost my shoe at one point. I had to like, it came off my foot and I had to like, off the floor, like to rip it off the floor. Yeah, it does feel like that. And you're just terrified of like, you know, he's trying to step up over the potholes, but like, Sometimes there's like a random board with nails and like
Skyler: broken glass to be afraid of for sure.
Skyler: Yeah, whether you believe in ghosts or not is irrelevant when you're trying not to like get tetanus because You stepped on a nail that was sticking out of the floorboard.
Teresa: Or the floorboard is loose.
Skyler: Yeah, and you trip over and you fall through and you end up on the basement or something. You find a
Teresa: new room.
Skyler: Yeah.
Teresa: Or best safe scenario.
Skyler: Yeah, exactly. Oh, I'll note this one down while I'm here. But
Teresa: that one, we thought we were in that building by ourselves most days. And most days we were, because there wasn't anyone else. Like, there was one, one of the first floor offices was open, but that was it. But once you're up a couple floors, you can't hear that.
Skyler: Right. Yeah.
Teresa: Well, apparently they were working on the elevator one day. Oh. And we were down in the basement. Oh, no. Which is
Skyler: already spooky. The worst place to be to hear weird sounds. It's pitch,
Teresa: it's also extra dark in there. Yeah. It's cool, which is nice. Yeah. But it's like, it's all concrete. It's old concrete.
Teresa: But also that building had a bar in it at one point. Oh. Like, like a, you had to enter off the alleyway, there was like a weird hidden staircase that had been boarded up. The worst looking carpet. It was ugly.
Skyler: Yeah.
Teresa: Um, and there was a bar down there and we're like, what? This is bizarre. Yeah. It's just like.
Teresa: And it's like, most of the bar had been taken up, like removed, but there was still like the bar part of the bar and then like a, one of those walk in coolers. And we're getting in the back of there. And like, because of the whole tenant situation, some of the rooms had power and some didn't. So we're like, and I'm also like a.
Teresa: Not a super psyched about touching anything.
Skyler: No. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah,
Teresa: like who knows if it's working
Skyler: exactly
Teresa: Oh,
Skyler: you don't want to be the cause of a fire. We're in there Like we're trying to find the
Teresa: light switches and some of them sometimes they work. Sometimes we don't we're in this space It's bizarre that there's like bathrooms are immediately creepy and gross And then we're in behind the bar And we hadn't quite found the light switch yet.
Teresa: And I think the air conditioner pipes, like, you know, how like pipes when they like crash and bang,
Skyler: yeah,
Teresa: it did that like right above us, it was so, cause it's so dead quiet in there. You cannot hear any traffic outside, even though we're like on a main road. You can't hear any of that. Nothing.
Skyler: Right.
Teresa: It's dead quiet.
Teresa: We're like, why ourselves? We're almost like whispering because it's just like, it's so quiet.
Skyler: Yeah, you want to match that sort of volume if there's best you can. Even the, even the whispering sounds like, you know, fairly loud talking and then all of a sudden.
Teresa: And I think one of the other days we were on an upper floor and we were in kind of in the middle.
Teresa: And there'd been a room that had a weird amount of clothes in it.
Skyler: Okay. Cause it
Teresa: wasn't like a retail store or anything like it had been offices. Right. And this one room had like a TV and a couch in it. This was sort of office suite. And then the other room was like bags and bags of clothes. Oh, there might've been a small closet.
Teresa: We're like, has someone been in this recent?
Skyler: Yes. Right.
Teresa: And when we were in that part of the building, They were working on the elevator. Oh, and the L like it's a huge elevator.
Skyler: Yeah,
Teresa: it's it's an old industrial elevator Oh,
Skyler: okay. And
Teresa: like the shaft is huge. Yes, and it's like quite a bit of distance Well, apparently it might have been the time they got it jammed We got told at one point they got the elevator jammed Okay, and there cuz it's like one of the old with the after the lever and get it right spot You're
Skyler: very manual.
Skyler: It was
Teresa: so loud and you can like When voices echo from like a really, you can still kind of make it out, but you're not a hundred percent sure it's a voice. We were there already spooked ourselves out because we're like, has a person been in here recently? And then there's this horrible clattering, echoing noise.
Teresa: And we're like, we are not by ourselves. That's probably the worst feeling is thinking you're by yourself in a giant building and then you're not, and you're like, who are these people? Construction
Skyler: team, you need to tell us that you're here. I don't think they
Teresa: knew we were there either.
Skyler: It's just a classic miscommunication.
Skyler: I don't think we ever
Teresa: saw them. Cause they were on the roof. We couldn't see them from where we're. Yeah, there was some, there was some if she was up on the roof that needed fixing, but like. We didn't know they were there. And the elevator is super loud. Like it's that like metal banging, like of it, like flexing.
Teresa: And then the echo, we were like, I think we did put something in that one room that there was like, so that when we came back the next day, like if someone had gone in that room, they would have like bumped into it to figure out if someone had been in there recently,
Skyler: like,
Teresa: I found some scrap of something and put it in front of the door.
Teresa: So I was like, there's no way they're going to get in this room without Touching this yeah, I think that we came back later, and it had been moved. Oh my gosh, okay But was that the construction guys right?
Skyler: I hope so
Teresa: and now I'm like psyched out that building also had a surprise apartment in it Oh, we did not know was in there like a one bedroom apartment sure it was also like clearly no one was swimming in there Right they've been water damage.
Teresa: Yes through the windows, and it was Discuss together like but there was like you walk in there's like a living room and a kitchen really what
Skyler: this is just out of place
Teresa: It just feels like you walked into the wrong, right? Through
Skyler: a dimensional door a little bit office building into an apartment building all of a sudden.
Skyler: Yeah, wait, that's weird. Yeah, that's weird It's also
Teresa: like Completely coming apart. Yeah, like at the seams. Yeah, like it was bizarre.
Skyler: It's like walking through the It really it really is like that
Teresa: it really someone it's just because we like document a bunch of those spaces
Skyler: sure
Teresa: It's sometimes it was really hard to figure out what room I was looking at Because the photos were so similar,
Skyler: like
Teresa: sometimes I could figure it out because it was like, Oh, that one chair is the only chair that I saw that's like that, like the specific arrangement of like random stuff.
Teresa: I'm like, okay, I know what room this is. I know what corner this is. It's also weird that the buildings have been completely renovated and I still have. It's still in my head, where all the old hallways are. It's irrelevant information.
Skyler: It does
Teresa: not matter. I still remember where all those photos are.
Skyler: Yeah.
Teresa: But they don't exist anymore.
Skyler: Right, right.
Teresa: It's just like, it's so bizarre. There was also a radiator that had like kids toys. Clearly, whoever was in the office had a small kid, and their toy, like, little pieces of toys, like, were behind the radiator. Oh. It's like, aw. Like, people leave, I don't know, the stuff people leave behind.
Teresa: Oh, like, a surprising number of family photos. Oh. Like, of all the things you're gonna take with you.
Skyler: Yeah, you would think. What? It's a lot to abandon for you. That was
Teresa: bizarre.
Skyler: Yeah. That's weird. I feel like because of like the horror movies and stuff that we watch right your your brain has a tendency to jump Yeah, I'm like, I find a box and I pick
Teresa: it up and I'm like, this is a shot in a movie, right?
Teresa: This
Skyler: is how you find out that there was a cursed family that used to live here and they you know They all died in some horrible tragedy, but their souls are still here, you know
Teresa: Why would you leave the photo behind? Did you not like them? Or did someone leave unexpectedly? And no one else knew what to do with the stuff at their desk.
Teresa: But like, we can't throw it away. It's clearly a family photo that's important.
Skyler: Oh, yeah. It's weird. It's weird. It's always weird. Abandoned places in general just never cease to have the creepiest vibes for sure. And I mean, I guess that's something that we'll look at a lot in this episode. Because I think, Most people told me that they had a story about an abandoned facility that something was off.
Teresa: I think I have one, one more. Go
Skyler: for it.
Teresa: A similar but different building.
Skyler: Sure.
Teresa: With the same Marine.
Skyler: Um,
Teresa: it actually took us quite a bit to get into the building because we got told the wrong lock code of the door, um, and again, tiny little flashlights, none. And like you get in the basement, it's pitch black, you cannot hear anything from upstairs like at all.
Teresa: It's, I cannot describe how like dead silent it is, like truly that is the way to describe it. Like you think, like it feels like you can hear the dust moving, kind of quiet. Like. We're down there and the basement is mostly like never really been used for anything other than like maybe storage So it was like pretty much empty and like you can't see very far with the with the flashlights, right?
Teresa: No, like It's like being in a video game with a low render distance kind of where you're like, okay, you're walking suddenly a wall It's right there. Okay, really? Okay. Yeah that one That one was just extra spooky just because of how quiet we're trying to figure out where the roof drains went
Skyler: Okay,
Teresa: so we're like following this pipe through the dark Right And
Skyler: your lights are like focused on the pipes.
Skyler: So you have to see the pipe, but you also have to like
Teresa: double check the floor. And like, so you're constantly just like surveying,
Skyler: like
Teresa: laser beaming with your flashlight to try and make sure you're seeing everything, but
Skyler: following what you need to follow,
Teresa: but we also found a, probably one of the largest rats I've ever seen.
Skyler: Really?
Teresa: Dead. Oh. And then there's so long and it like dried out.
Skyler: Oh, gross. And
Teresa: was like flat. Oh no. And like you're scanning your flashlight and I'm like, there's something in the corner over there. I'm not sure what it is. And we get close enough that we kind of figure out what it is. And he's like, uh, let's go.
Teresa: Yeah. We had done what we needed to do and he's like, hmm, let's go. Yeah, exactly. Like a foot long. Oh my
Skyler: gosh.
Teresa: It's just like, flat. And then it makes you wonder,
Skyler: you're like, you're like, wait, if this is here and it's dead, I mean it could have died from natural causes. I'm not even thinking about it. Maybe it was a
Teresa: possum.
Teresa: It could have been, yeah. I've seen possums. But that
Skyler: means that, like, there's the potential that there's more. And there are a lot, and that's scary, right? I don't want to mess around with wild animals while I'm walking through a building, for sure. Awesome. Well, Teresa, thank you so much for telling us about these stories, these spooky experiences that you've had, and these spooky abandoned facilities.
Skyler: I was not expecting, like I said, brothels and And such to come up as much as they did. But again, it's a piece of American history and you know, this is the kind of stuff that like you architects are, are seeing all these crazy, um, old buildings and old buildings were used for a lot of old purposes, so. On the
Teresa: other hand, a lot of these buildings, they got renovated and they're full of life.
Teresa: Oh, that's awesome. So heartwarming to see, like, partly cause it's like the thing that we drew for months actually happened. That's still a little bizarre, but like, Like I live in that building that had the rat in it.
Skyler: Oh,
Teresa: oh, okay. It's a one, it's full of life now. It's really awesome to see that, like. Yes.
Teresa: The basement's still spooky, but. Sure.
Skyler: The
Teresa: rest of the building's good now. That's okay.
Skyler: I mean, I think most basements tend to have a bit of a, just an innate spooky vibe to it. There's only so much you can do. But that's awesome. That's awesome. And getting to, to know that you guys. You know, other architects out there are all working on these spaces to make them less spooky.
Skyler: Whether the souls of the dead still remain or not, I guess is up to them, but. Um, it's good to know that yeah, like you said bringing new life to these these facilities. So Teresa Thank you so much for sharing your stories really appreciate it And hopefully it's gonna really give everybody some spooky vibes for the halloween season
Skyler: All right, everybody. Welcome back to the laying the foundation halloween special and joining me now Is one of our amazing architects, David Brokshus. David Brokshus, welcome to this spooky Halloween special for the
David: podcast. Thank you for having me Skyler. It feels odd recording this early in the summer, but we've got some fall weather this week, so I'm getting into the mood.
David: It is getting nice and cool. I love it. It's, it's pretty great. But you, you put the call out for some spooky projects and then. The, a new, new construction. There's not a lot of spooky that you can, you, you see with new construction, but anytime you do an existing building renovation, yes, there's always some lovely surprises you find in the building.
David: So I had gone through three of kind of my favorites. I'm going to start with the least spooky, if you will. Sure. And we'll add you to the levels of spookiness. None of them are truly like horrifying or scary. But they're, they, I think they fit the word spooky fairly well. Yes,
Skyler: absolutely. All right. What do we got?
David: For a recent school project, we're doing just some investigation throughout the building, trying to find the feasibility of different, um, HVAC and, um, spring fire sprinkler systems. So, uh, above a theater. We found a cartoonishly large dead rat and it was captured via photograph. And that'll be
Skyler: the cover photo for this episode.
Skyler: No, I'm just kidding.
David: But I do have
Skyler: the photo. You see, you kept the photo, which is great. Yes. Okay. Shared
David: it around with the design team. And there was some speculation of like, wow, that's a very large. That's a big rat. So we, with further exploration, cause we had a number of other contractors, people go up there.
David: It was in their theater fly loft. So it turns out this. Cartoonishly large dead rat was a a spoof spookiness here. It was a fake dead rat. What?
Skyler: Why? Why was it? I mean, I guess it's the theater. If
David: you're a, if you're an upperclassman at this, at this school here and you send a freshman up there to say, Hey, go modify the rigging.
David: Or whatever, if it's next to a control station or whatever, and they look down and they see in the, in the murky dark, they're a big, definitely rat shaped feature. Yes. That's going to cause you to jump. Yes. Uh, it made more sense that it was fake after that, because if it had been something up there, you know, in the middle of summer break, um, When we had done our exploration, uh, it probably would have been a little more decayed.
David: It was firmly rat shaped when we saw it. So it's, it, it made more sense that it ended up being a theater prop at that point in time.
Skyler: Or it had died recently, but yeah, thankfully it was just a prank rat for sure. But
David: that project is ongoing. Hopefully I can have like a construction site photo of that or with the rack at some point in time.
David: I looked for it most recently, but I think I was on the wrong end of the theater there. Oh, okay.
Skyler: Gotcha. Yeah. So wait, you guys left it there. When you left, we left it
David: there. I'm not, I'm not going to ruin the upperclassmen's fun.
Skyler: That is a good one. That's a very, uh, very, uh, fairly wholesome prank. You know, nobody, nobody gets hurt with a fake rubber rat.
David: Oh, hopefully not. It is. It is in a fly loft above a ceiling. So that's true. I hopefully fingers. Yes. No one has been hurt.
Skyler: No one falls through the ceiling tiles or something. Awesome. All right. Fake rat. First off. That's our, that's our. Your lower tier spooky. What's, what are we going into for medium tier?
David: Uh, the next one, we're actually going to get up. So we're going through an existing building that would be demolished. Oh, um, this building in the past had been an auto repair shop. Uh, and one thing they'd put in was if you go in to get your oil change, you know, in most of those auto repair shops, they have a recessed floor or like a basement or it's not a true basement, but it's open to the elements to a certain extent inside the building.
David: Well, the roof had collapsed in this one. So it's got a fairly kind of zombie aesthetic by end of the world. Apocalypse if I had gone on, uh, they cleared a bunch of that debris already just for safety in terms of just people who are looking at a few other things and documenting things on site. And then they had kind of pseudo started construction demolition just to get rid of some of those things ahead of construction.
David: But they found, they actually found the basements there and said, Hey, We need to document this because it's added cost. Gotta check on everything. And the person who, or me and another CMBA team member, um, drew the short straw of having to go document. The extent of these basements. Um, so they had essentially cut openings in and found like staircases that you could go down that were carved, like poured in place, concrete stairs, uh, to go down to a definitely not lit at all basement.
David: So we went into the first one and it was extremely tomb like just with being concrete and there was just kind of remnants of things on the walls that have been abandoned there at whatever point that they had essentially enclosed the space, um, But to try and document like how much concrete the contractors would have to remove and how much fill they'd have to do.
David: So we took our laser dimension device down there, went and found the far wall, shot the laser across it. Snap some photos in there and it's truly kind of the creepy horror movie vibes when you snap the flash in the photo, the space lights up and it just looks really scary. Very
Skyler: kind of rear
David: window or there was no, no light.
David: You get a really dramatic lighting coming down the stairs that is coming through the open hole in the roof. You know, like, uh, it met all the like horror movie set vibes for a building. I love it. So we were a little creeped out with the first one. Um, we had been told previous that there were some people who'd broken into the building and were squatting.
David: And we had seen some evidence of people napping and eating inside the building. So we went down into the second one and the hair on the back of our necks had risen enough from being in the first space that we went, okay, well, you know, maybe we don't need to go all the way down to the bottom and experience the vibes of this, of this second space.
David: Let's take the laser scanner and use it. To as soon as we get down deep enough into the space to like snap it on one wall, shoot across, snap it on the other wall, shoot across and take a photo in the space, just to make sure that we, there's nothing else down there that we necessarily can't see with our eyes.
David: Right. As the phone cameras don't really light it up. So snap the photo. And this is B where you'd probably be expecting like, Oh, and there's a person. No, there, it was once again, just abandoned, but the space had kind of an unsettling enough kind of feel to it that it was right. Not someplace we wanted to be long term.
David: No,
Skyler: no. And like you said, that, that kind of concept of like snapping the picture and having that be the first of light that you have,
David: it's, it's a pit of darkness that you truly don't know what's going on at all until, until like you see the flash and you just get that little glimpse of like, Oh yeah, there's nothing down here, but like, It is.
David: It is. What if there is? Yeah. Yeah. What if there is like a crap? I hope there's not a person's face though. Just, just in front of me.
Skyler: Yeah, exactly. And it comes closer and closer. Every time you, you take a flash or something like that, like straight out of
David: after the first photo, we probably just would have booked it.
David: Yeah.
Skyler: Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. If you notice. And it's always one of those things where like you snap the picture and you don't notice it at first, maybe you're not looking in that corner and then you're like, Hey, did we get a good enough picture? You look at the picture and you see the face like kind of coming out of the corner and then you're like, No, no, no, no, no, no.
Skyler: And
David: then, so just, just some fun subgrade exploration things there on a building here in town. Um, and what
Skyler: an interesting space to like the kind of, like you said, sub basement underneath. That was
David: the, that was earlier on in my career. And that was the first time I'd been in a, all the other renovations I've had have been like public buildings where they've been more well maintained is the first project where.
David: They, they made an effort to try and save some of the pieces of the building that ultimately was unsuccessful. They ended up doing some historic replication of what the existing was because they ended up not being able to save as much as they wanted to. But it was my first time kind of experience going through a space that had, um, just an utter state of disrepair, if you will, or kind of that apocalypse kind of vibe.
David: And then you leave and you go back on the street and it's. From everyone's, it's business as normal out on the road. And they were back into real life there, but it had that kind of eerie. Um, you could hear kind of distantly when you're inside the building through like the collapsed roof, you can hear what's going on in the city around you in a muffled kind of experience.
David: So yeah, experientially it was kind of a unique space to be in. It's the first time I really experienced anything like that.
Skyler: Absolutely. Absolutely. And it's not something you're going to get a lot unless you go into, like you said, these kind of older, older spaces for sure. We don't,
David: there's not a huge amount that we see like that with just kind of the nature of our work.
David: But most of the, what we do just kind of for public entities, they're. Like I said, they do maintain their spaces better. So you don't, you don't very often see that like state of disrepair, but that was kind of the first time I had experienced it in my career, at least. So.
Skyler: Interesting. All right, now it's time for the grand finale, the big final story.
David: My scariest space I've been in was also a historic building in Sioux City that, uh, parts of it had been used. Uh, parts of it definitely had not. And other parts of it, once again, had been entombed just due to, Lack of willingness or lack or lack of use there. So in certain parts of Sioux city, like the, the roadway elevation is built up.
David: And this was the case for this building where the road that was next to it had quite a few infrastructure projects on it. So they had actually lifted the roadway up. So the true, like main entrance to the building was lower down back in the day than it was now. So there, there was a very interesting, unique kind of basement space or not unique because a number of them have it, but you just don't see it anymore.
David: But, um, the, the main level truly was like the actual basement level there, where there were infilled windows in different places, the access to the basement, like the, the original entryways have been revised. And then it was actually a two part building where it was two buildings that were joined and they cut down half of one on the basement space.
David: They just essentially poured in a concrete wall. But the, like, the on grade access was removed, so you had to, like, enter through a series of rather, um, hand crafted, we'll say, stairways that were very, um, Very suspect and in their own right, that they had very obviously been cut into the floor and it was advised to us by the owner that really only one person at a time should be on the stairs because you can see the, the planks bumping up and down each time as you go through.
David: Um, so being the historic like construction as well. So they had all brick foundations, all brick. Um, masonry walls for support and loading. And then they had just kind of, the previous owners had literally just without putting reinforcement lentils in, had just kind of carved their own openings
Skyler: a little too
David: far on the DIY typically would see, um, but in different spots, bricks were kind of falling down.
David: Um, they had a lot of unsupported columns. So it was a heavy timber building. Like we're like the CMBA office in Sioux city is, um, we have like a lot of these nice kind of cast iron brackets that provide. Reinforcement to really make sure that the structural members are in place. There were a number of spots that the structural engineer later on in the project said, I don't really think there's much holding this column in place.
David: So they provided actual reinforcement drawings to make sure that the, that the columns in different places, the building really stood where they're at. Right. One similar thing we found further up in the building like this is we're looking at some of the good bones the building had higher up on, they had some really cool spaces, um, So the owner saying, yeah, this isn't a kind of nice space to be in.
David: He leans on a wall or a column that was there next to the wall and the column, the structural column, you know, it's supposed to be holding the building up. Just spins like a top and kind of wobbles around in space. There, you know, something that you would expect to be very firmly fastened to the building, you would get up, uh, turns out was just kind of a decorative feature at that point in time.
David: So that was one of them. The structural engineer truly focused on later on in the project was making sure that that guy. to his original home and was securely, um, supported in the building and made sure it was like, you know, actually doing its job instead of literally hanging out in the space at that point in time.
David: Oh
Skyler: my gosh.
David: Um, otherwise it was kind of unique where they had, um, spaces in this building that were obviously being used for like their, their business. And then just kind of other spots where they just kind of left the building as a shell and then they had like an office in the back, so it was just kind of disparate.
David: And broken up, um, they hadn't really supported any of the floors, there were ramps that were built up in a rather DIY manner.
Skyler: Right.
David: Sometimes using plywood or recycled road signs or billboards.
Skyler: Man, they were really working with whatever they had. Truly
David: just kind of things off the shelf that they could find.
David: In the upper stories of that building too, there was a fairly large bat
Skyler: Oh.
David: colony living as well. Oh no. So as we're walking around with our phone lights on, because there were almost no lights in the upper stories, bats are kind of flitting around in the space and It was living up to the more like spooky Halloween vibes at that point in time.
Skyler: It's almost like a really intense either haunted house or fun house or something along those lines. That
David: is kind of the vibes you get in the, the shelled off spaces that they weren't using where you go back to their business areas and you go kind of back to normal again. Like I talked about with the previous building where, Hey, I'm back in this space that they're doing for their retail sales.
David: And, but if you go into those other spaces, things were boarded up and just closed in. And. Different things. You just couldn't see a lot of the good bones from the outside. The lower levels, especially were very creepy and kind of like cobbled together. But the further up you went in the space, the better the bones of the building became there.
David: And then when they ended up gutting the space there too, they actually found quite a bit more of just the, a lot of really good, like heavy timber, all the really unique kind of design aspects, similar to what our office has, where it's the exposed wood, the exposed brick. They found so many things that has been layered up and hidden in here under different layers of things.
David: They did have some really fun murals as well in the, uh, the building that were painted on by a previous owner that wasn't the retail tenant.
Skyler: Yeah.
David: So having seen those removed, uh, That was the the creepiest that we had found there were just the haunted house kind of vibes. Yes. That's the one that, that Really hit us there as we, as we walk through the space and looking at some of those spaces and the owner's like, Oh, I'm envisioning this here.
David: And it's like, okay, Oh, it's, it's a tougher vision on this. And I agree. Like it's something you probably could do. And right. There was quite a bit of elbow grease on that project. And like the end result, it was just truly fantastic. And he really nailed his vision.
Skyler: Yeah.
David: But that's awesome. The, when you're going up a real rickety staircase through multiple levels of floors that don't necessarily align and right.
David: And you're seeing the bats fly around and the columns that are falling down and it's like, Wow, you've got a lot of work. There's a lot of work to do. Yeah. A vision isn't always like the, the most clear at that point in time. Sure. Well, and then, hey, you know, that really hit the, yeah, it really hit the, the spooky vibes though of like, Yes.
David: We don't really see buildings with bats flying around in them every day. You hope not to. That's
Skyler: for sure. Yeah. And don't want to end up with rabies by the end of your, your tour of a facility that you're hoping to renovate for sure.
David: There were no bat bites there. So that's good. And so that's
Skyler: good. And, and you know, just the, the, we always talk about like horror and the concept of like monsters and ghosts and all this other stuff, but what about like the, the more realistic horror side of.
Skyler: That's like a load bearing pillar there and it just spins around. You know, this is this is a dangerous situation. This is like legitimately Hazardous right here. And so I think there's that side of it too that we oftentimes kind of overlook Obviously bats themselves can be kind of a scary thing
David: or just the the holes they had cut through like the masonry walls that were Unsupported where it's yeah, the there they had I think they had enough layers of brick that were kind of toothed together like Like, um, you see like Legos or matchsticks that it was holding it there.
David: But anytime you see a brick dangling kind of overhead, that's generally not a, no, not a good sign. No, not at all. Um, when you see various states of disrepair like that, that's when you start to kind of feel a sense of danger, especially as you're walking over the space, or I had mentioned the. The floors that re cobbled together with pieces of billboard and road sign.
David: When you feel the floor effect flex under your feet or on the roof of that building, you could feel the roof squishing and flexing on my feet. You experience more of that just with like the like the age of the age of the building and some of the kind of suspect nature. It's to a little bit on that.
Skyler: Yeah, absolutely. Like I could just fall through a floorboard at any minute and who knows how many levels of flooring that I'm going to go through.
David: So I know in the state of Iowa too, in, um, Dubuque, they had a building collapse too. That was a more historic building brick with the similar construction to this one.
David: So yeah. Yeah. Um, that didn't happen necessarily at the same time, but it was kind of a, an interesting story to then share with the owner and say, Hey, like kudos to you for saving this building and not allowing it to fall in the state of disrepair that that had happened to that other building that happened on the other side of Iowa.
David: So it's, it's kind of nice to see also someone take the care to, um, repair the space that they had purchased, then remaintain the space and then. Um, bring about kind of a new glory or show off the former glory, but at the same time reinvent the space to the, to meet, to meet their needs.
Skyler: Absolutely.
David: Um, so I know we've talked a bit about like the spooky side of the building, but
Skyler: it's nice to
David: have a happy ending.
David: Yeah. We can still see the, yeah, we do have the happy ending. Yes. You get the, you get the horror movie vibe again. Yes. Yes.
Skyler: It's one of the, like those, those good feel horror movies where like, obviously they went through a lot and there were jump scares and things like that. But at the end of it all.
Skyler: Everyone survived maybe one of those rare situations We don't see those very often anymore But and
David: then like we've talked a little bit about the spooky and the scary but some there's almost kind of a thrill Aspect to some of this where if you're going through some of these spaces that That no one has been in and
Skyler: Oh, yeah.
Skyler: However long,
David: like this might go more into the, the 1950s, forties or fifties, like Sure. Back when they were finding all the Egyptian pharaohs and tombs. , just the, the, the sense of awe and wonder of like, no one has been in this space for not thousands of years like that. Sure. 20, 30 years. Even if not more.
David: Like it's just kind of in interesting to see like. Hey, this is kind of a remnant of history that you might be one of the first people exploring or that not very many people get to see there with a kind of behind the scenes look or a,
Skyler: yeah,
David: um, an in depth kind of look before repairs are then taken to the building to bring it about like a new, new life and new space after that.
David: So it's the, the thrill of like, wow, this is, A little bit unsafe or might be a little sketchy here
Skyler: feeling like Indiana Jones or something like that. Yeah, we'll have to get Cmba fedoras for everybody for when they do these kind of projects But that's a really cool. That's a unique perspective for sure of like, yeah You're the first person and you're going to be one of the few people that saw it in that state Like it's changed and fixed up and cleaned up and everything
David: because as soon as contractors come on site things just start to they You know Got a building really quickly.
David: They start on structural repairs almost right away and then they go right at it from there. And, um, I know it's interesting to see, like you get that thrill of like, you get a sneak peek of what a space is prior to that. Or even the last building I talked about, like to hear someone's vision while they're in the space.
David: And sometimes it's really hard to see. And then to be able to watch it through construction, go from that scary space, Turn into kind of a blank canvas and then. Um, kind of a beautiful tapestry at the end of, Hey, this is, this is the idealized kind of version of their final idea. They've succeeded in kind of making the space their own at that point in time and bringing about new life to something that used to be in a serious state of disrepair or was filled with bats and cobwebs and really met the Halloween vibes that you're going for for this episode.
Skyler: Yes, absolutely. Well, David, thank you so much for sharing and again, offering such a unique perspective that I hadn't even thought of. Kind of the opportunity that architects have to sort of explore these historical spaces, which again, kind of a happy ending side to this concept of like horror and spooky that we've kind of gone off of.
Skyler: So thank you again for being on the show. Really appreciate it. Awesome stories.
David: Thanks for having me.
Skyler: If you'd like to find out more about the laying the foundation podcast, you can head over to any podcast streaming platform, such as Spotify, iTunes, Google podcasts, and others. You can also find out more about CMBA architects through social media, such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram.
Skyler: Additionally, you can head over to the CMBA website at CMBA architects. com. If you're an architecture or design professional or an intern looking for an internship within those fields, please be sure to check out our website and click on the careers tab to find out more about what opportunities we offer.
Skyler: This has been another episode of the laying the foundation podcast. We'll see you next time.