1681 Fillmore Avenue has been waiting for years. It’s been on the
official top ten list to be demolished since at least May, 2012. Meanwhile,
it’s wide open and dangerous, filled with tires, toys, wooden pallets and
broken furniture. Filthy vinyl hangs from the ceiling like depressed flags.
Evidence of gang activity shows in the graffiti throughout. This place, once a
carpet store, has none of the structural beauty of many of Buffalo’s other
abandoned places. It sits in a residential neighborhood, open and unprotected,
just begging for a kid to fall down a broken staircase. Right across the street
is a firehouse. Fire may claim
this building long before the city ever gets around to demolishing it. When it
finally goes down, no preservationists will mourn.
I’ve actually found many toys in this nasty dumping ground. Here
is a Batman figure in an assemblage I call ‘Batman vs. The Joker.’ The graffiti
at the building’s entrance is duplicated in miniature on the side panel of the
assemblage. All together, it is a landscape – a neighborhood in a box.
