Building 231

Steel, iron, rivets and rust. That's about all that remains here in Building #231 at the old Hunter's Point Naval Yard. Scrap metal and ghosts. The air here is rank with the smells of mildew, diesel fumes and engine grease. And though it is as silent as a church now, you can almost still hear the shouts of men working, joking with one another,  the clang of iron chains and the endless rhythm of hammers. This cavernous structure was once a machine shop where naval vessels and submarines were repaired and maintained by dozens of men working round-the-clock shifts.

Now it is a cathedral of scrap iron and toxic waste. This is a superfund site, where lead and radioactive materials were routinely handled and carelessly disposed. But it is quiet now, and empty. Where row upon row of men once stood at machines there is now a vast empty slab of oil-stained concrete. Photographs cannot to justice to the enormity of the space. It is vast and lonely, but everywhere you look one is reminded that people spent a good portion of their lives here. This facility was built to serve machines, but it was inhabited by people. Mot of whom are dead now.

They were not mere men, they were members, they formed committees, they were part of groups. In this room, which the sign above the door says is the planning office,  ideas were conceived, drawn up and put into action. On the shop floor, in the images above, the plans were carried out by men with tools wielded by flesh-and-blood hands, not pneumatic robot arms. Building 231 was a place where things were built and fixed by men who were paid to use their bodies and minds to solve problems.

 

The human eye is perhaps the most sophisticated and complex marvel we possess. It is also the most vulnerable. The exposed soft tissue of the eye is subject to damage from flying bits of debris. A tiny speck of metal dust can blind us. Yet a floating mote of it can dazzle. The eye is the only sense organ that can perceive the passage of time, that can witness it. Time cannot be tasted, touched, smelled or heard. But the eye can see time passing. It can see light. And light is a clock.

Men worked here. Building 231 was filled with men, men who fixed ships so that we could stop fascism and imperialism and communism. There is always an ism to fight. We go to war against isms and build entire industries around them. And whenever we manage to defeat one ism we find a new ism to rally around and to justify both the mechanations and humanations of war. But all wars end, and old enemies surrender, only to be replace by new ones. And then men always come when they are called.

The Building 231's rot out and fall to rust but the men always come. Places like the Parthenon and the Coliseum crumble, but the men don't fade. They always come. Ambition draws them. Noble causes draw them. Money draws them, and promises of a better life. Structures of vast scale draw men. What is it about them that does? Is it the promise of being part of some cause greater than themselves?

Everywhere the eye turns in Building # 231 there is evidence of men. The objects they held in their hands. The brooms they pushed, the helmets they used to protect their heads, the shoes they wore. A ghost ship is so called because of the ghosts. Building 231 is full of them. Just go there. You can feel them. The air is thick with spirit. And you don't need a Quija board to find them. Or a camera.

o O o