What Survives

The five steps

1. Step 1 of 5Still doing the first jobPut up for one purpose and still at it, which in a city that rebuilds itself this often is rarer than it sounds and worth going to look at while it lasts.
2. Step 2 of 5New work in the old shellThe use inside has changed completely and the building has not. The most common step in this city and the one that rewards a slow walk past the outside.
3. Step 3 of 5Pieces kept inside something newThe building came down and parts of it did not: a front, a stair, a run of iron columns, held inside whatever replaced it.
4. Step 4 of 5The shape left in the groundNothing stands. The outline is still legible in a curb line, a change of paving, a wall that stops where a building used to start.
5. Step 5 of 5Nothing left but the nameThe last step. No fabric at all, and a name still in use for a corner, a stop or a block, attached now to something that has no connection to it.

All ten, in step order

1. Step 1 of 5, still doing the first jobA Firehouse Still Running EnginesBuilt for apparatus in the 1890s and holding apparatus now. The rarest step on this axis and the easiest to read, because the door tells you before anything else does.
2. Step 1 of 5, still doing the first jobA Pumphouse That Never StoppedA small brick building on a fenced lot, put up to move water and still moving it. Nothing about it has been marketed, restyled or reused, which is why it is worth an hour.
3. Step 2 of 5, new work in the old shellA Bank That Serves DinnerBuilt to look permanent and to be difficult to get into. Both of those are expensive to undo, which is why so many small banks end up as dining rooms rather than as demolition.
4. Step 2 of 5, new work in the old shellA Mill Full of StudiosThe building has not changed and everything inside it has. This is the commonest step in this state by a wide margin and the one most people walk past without reading.
5. Step 3 of 5, pieces kept inside something newA Front Wall With Nothing Behind ItOne wall of the old building, propped through the works and built into the new one. The most visible kind of fragment and the one that starts the most arguments.
6. Step 3 of 5, pieces kept inside something newIron Columns Inside a New LobbyThe building went. Eleven columns did not. What is left is a real piece of one building standing inside another, which is the whole of step three and the step people find hardest to read.
7. Step 4 of 5, the shape left in the groundA Curb Line That Remembers a TrackThe rails came up, the sidewalk stayed where it was, and the curve is still in the granite. A trace with no building at all, which is why it is the strangest entry in this paper.
8. Step 4 of 5, the shape left in the groundA Lot With a Foundation Still In ItNothing stands. The building is still legible in a low wall, a step to nowhere and a scar on the neighbor, and that is more information than most standing buildings give up.
9. Step 5 of 5, nothing left but the nameA Corner Named for a Building That WentThe last step. No fabric of any kind, and a name that everybody still uses for a corner where the thing it names has not stood within living memory for most people using it.
10. Step 5 of 5, nothing left but the nameA Street Named for What Was Made On ItA street name describing an industry, on a street where that industry stopped four generations ago. The evidence is a word, and the word is accurate.

What the indent is doing

Each step sits further from the left edge than the one before it. The further the first use has receded, the further from the margin the entry sits.

That is decoration and nothing else. Every entry states its step in words, the steps are numbered one to five, and nothing on this site is carried by color at any point. A reader who sees no indent at all, on a narrow screen or in a screen reader, loses nothing. Using this site says the same at more length.

The five questions

Asked of every front, in the same order, whatever step it is at:

1. What it was built to do. The first use, as far as the fabric supports it.
2. What happens there now. The current use, in one line.
3. What you can still read off it. The specific evidence, named, so a reader can check it.
4. Where you can stand to see it. Public ground, always, and the page says which.
5. What has gone for good. The part nobody can recover, which is usually the plan.

The fifth is there because a paper about survival that only listed survivals would be dishonest by omission.

Why the numbers thin out

Step one has the fewest entries because continuity is rare in this city, and step two has the most because conversion is what happened here instead.

That distribution is not an accident of our choices. It is what the building stock looks like in a state whose entire industrial base stopped inside one generation, and it is arguably the most useful single fact in this paper.