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The Mysterious Attic

The Grand Midway Hotel’s forgotten attic one evening just yawned wide open! It had been completely sealed off since the hotel was built. Trying to get to the roof and finding no route to do so, Damien Youth and I sawed a small hole into the third floor ceiling. To our surprise we discovered this entire massive forgotten space! We climbed up and investigated. It was massive! The size of the entire hotel! I looked like a giant whale’s rib cage with wooden beams lining deep into the shadows…

In this photo master carpenter Thom Drexler builds the first actual staircase into this realm of the unknown…

Below, not our actual attic and also this room is only about one forth the size, but our newly discovered 4rth floor looks a little like this:

"Oh me! Oh life! of the questions of these recurring, Of the endless trains of the faithless, of cities fill’d with the foolish, Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?) Of eyes that vainly crave the light, of the objects mean, of the struggle ever renew’d, Of the poor results of all, of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me, Of the empty and useless years of the rest, with the rest me intertwined, The question, O me! so sad, recurring—What good amid these, O me, O life? Answer. That you are here—that life exists and identity, That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse."

-Walt Whitman

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