Gwyn and I were determined. She'd done some research and there was a way in, we just had to find it. In daylight. On a busy street. Through an open lot.
Gwyn is a brave woman, and she made me braver. Sadly I wasn't one of the lucky photographers (like Gwyn) who got into this place before it was completely gutted. I've seen the photos and drooled. It is a shell of a building now, and the construction stalled so abruptly that many of their supplies were left behind....a wall of hanging hard hats; a manager's make-shift office with its desk, file cabinet, and papers (all since vandalized). There are some people taking residence in the building still as well.
We ran into one of them on our way out in a momentary scare that Gwyn didn't even blink at. We were on our way down from the 9th floor through each little stairwell (separate one for each floor, with a door at the bottom). We turned the one corner in the stairwell between floors 8 and 7 and I saw that not only was the door shut, but through the little window see that someone has shoved a 6-feet piece of wood up against it!
My brain reeled...was someone up here with us? Was there another way out? Gwyn just shrugged and walked down to it, gave it a shove and it opened right up. That's when we met our man and had a somewhat ridiculous exchange of hands up in open surrender (him too) and explanations of "no harm, no foul." He says the door was like that for an hour and swears he didn't do it and we saying we're just taking pictures and are on our way out. He was more scared of us, it seems.
We will be going back at some point, as we did not make it onto the roof. Our adrenaline couldn't take the rusty ladder up from the fire escape (well mostly we both were worried about the getting back down part).
