My friends have called my apartment building many things, well before it was my building. Last year, we’d walk by it and they’d call it scary, gross, old or sketchy. They scoffed at its solemn and stately structure, long since worn by the passing of time and tenants, and I’d feel a pang of defensiveness for the place. My mother found the building to be rickety: somewhere she wasn’t quite sure she wanted her kid to live. She eyed each room suspiciously as we carried my furniture and boxes inside, searching for something wrong, something that would confirm its inability to host her precious daughter. It’s difficult for me to grasp the distrust they have for my building’s old bones; I always thought it was beautiful.
The four-story structure is short and square, made entirely of red brick and gray concrete. Above and below the windows, the dark brick is arranged to form decorative rectangles with happy pointed corners, and the edifice is adorned with carved stone spirals and ornamentation darkened from decades of dirt and exhaust.
Inside, the floors are made of real hardwood, with a strip of lighter wood going down the center of the walkways — the memory of a floor runner that is no longer there. The air in the halls always smells like old cigarettes. The doors lock with real keys and I struggle with the entrance to the lobby each time I use it; I jiggle and twist my old key while trying to turn the handle, the scuffed glass of the door rattling in its wooden frame during my daily dance with the knob. There is no elevator, and the wood stairs and railings are deeply penetrated with grime that couldn’t be sanded out when they were refinished last week.
When I get to my apartment, I struggle again with my own heavy wooden door. The entryway usually smells like cinnamon, unless the neighbors across the alley are cooking something that drifts from their kitchen to mine, or the wind brings the smell of Indian spices from the restaurant next door. Our windows are always open to the sounds of the street, the rain and the person above us who likes to sing. The wooden floors creak loudly under my feet as sunlight pours in, illuminating the clumpy cream-colored paint on the dusty windowsills and walls, which reflect the light and make the entire room feel golden. These warm walls have only been mine for three weeks, but they feel like home. It feels like I’m supposed to be here; it feels like a place made for people, made for me.
My friends’ apartments are not like this. Theirs are in greyscale, sans creaky floors or shabby curtains for the breeze to wander in through. Their apartments are crisp, cold and silent, not built to last but instead to be easily reworked when part of them gives out. The shapes are square. Their mothers must feel very relaxed knowing their children are safe from the world in their little glass boxes. There are no sweet ceramic cabinet knobs with flowers painted on them, nothing to grab onto with your eyes or soul. Even the sun manages to feel cold, sliding in through blue-filtered windows that look down on the streets, so far below you can’t hear the people walking on them. I find my little building from their high-rise view and think of how alive it feels — rough around its edges instead of unnervingly smooth.
These kinds of apartments have mostly been built in Ann Arbor within the last 20 years — some within the last 10 years, 10 months or 10 weeks. They pop up like daisies, an intensely invasive species, each new complex getting taller and taller with the same minimalistic modern interiors and short names that try to evoke some kind of history or grandiosity: Saga, The Legacy or Verve.
Tucked between them sit the unnamed buildings of Ann Arbor’s actual legacy. There are pillars, stonework, cupolas, ornate trim and heavy arches. Colors besides blue, beige and shades of gray welcome you and tell unique stories. They are buildings that were designed to be lived in — not just paid for. They were born from blueprints that took artistry, designs that spent the extra money to imbue real architectural history that lives in porticos and gables. The only saga behind Saga is the decision to build a frugal box from glass and metal and then hide its dullness behind the words “sleek” and “functional.” But we aren’t here to simply function.
People, by nature, are messy, ugly, weird and sketchy. Imbuing that nature into our environments is important. Modern construction dismisses this because frill reduces profit, but for centuries, architects across the world have disregarded pure functionalism because it is not enough to live off of. Humans have spent millions of dollars and wasted countless resources chiseling statues, painting murals and producing films for the sake of artistry. We have built houses with spindles and turrets simply because we can spare the extra wood. A gothic church has no practical reason to be dripping in pinnacles and spires, yet they do.
On a less extravagant level, the privacy film on the lower windowpane in my shower could have just been frosted, but instead it’s inlaid with little flowers, and the light that comes through the upper one refracts rainbows on the tile. It’s things like these, the little unnecessary details, that give life meaning — they prove that life isn’t just about survival, but truly living. Yes, my apartment complex is old, scary, gross and makes my mom a little nervous, but I can also feel its heart beating warmly every time I walk through it. It’s messily human, and that is why I love it.
The grime in the old wood comes from thousands of people running their hands along the railings. It comes from my neighbors, their families and all of the neighbors and families that came before them. The floors squeak obtrusively because decades of previous tenants have sleepily shuffled across the boards just as I do every morning; I hear their ghosts walk alongside me. In this old building, I share grimy bricks that have cradled a century of other people’s laughter and sense of home.
Ann Arbor is a city of history on each street corner, a city named lovingly after the founders’ wives and bustling with more than 50,000 students who want to change the world. Its humanity should not be plowed over with skyscrapers that pay no mind to the heritage of the physical and societal space they occupy. Good architecture is thoughtful and made with a love for the people who will live in it for centuries to come. Good architecture looks like someone cared about what you would think, not just how much you would pay for it. A new building can replicate this feeling, but it must recall something of the past — a past formed by billions of hands just like ours, palms that shaped our world and then handed it to us. That is our true legacy.
Daily Arts Writer Audrey Hollenbaugh can be reached at aehollen@umich.edu.
