More from my trip to Portland… There’s so much to share, we will have to take it one event at a time. Vancouver, WA is just across the river from Portland; Sean lived in Vancouver for quite a while before moving back to Spokane, so he knew exactly where to take me. In downtown Vancouver there is an old building called The Academy that currently houses a wedding chapel, a beautiful little cafe (in the hidden courtyard no less!), and a number of other businesses. The Academy was originally commissioned by a nun, Sister Mary Joseph, as a girls’ school. She actually designed the school and chapel herself, and even helped with the bricklaying. She eventually sold it to the bricklayer’s family, who still own it today. The school is four stories, although the fourth is no longer used, and it is absolutely gorgeous, a treasury of random antiquities like the old-fashioned sink in the girls’ bathroom, ancient heaters, antique lamps, and rusty once-elegant locks. The architecture is beautiful…I love brick, and The Academy has both a beautiful, well-cared for brick exterior and several shabbier sections of brickwork inside that appeal to my love of vintage things. And of course, I just adore the doors and windows, many of which are very Gothic. Sean and I poked around in there for a long time, up and down all the beautiful spiraling staircases and the whitewashed corridors, squeezing into odd little nooks and crannies just to get the perfect shot of some detail or oddment that captured our attention. It’s too bad we couldn’t sneak up to the fourth floor… We were, however, able to talk the manager of the wedding business into showing us the chapel. It was absolutely breathtaking. I could have stayed in there for hours taking pictures of every little detail–all the sculpted columns and balconies, the gorgeous altar, the galleries above the main chapel floor. It was so amazing. Unfortunately, there was a wedding party coming through in a few minutes, so we didn’t get to stay as long as I would have liked, but I know I’ll be back. It’s one of those places that is just so wonderful you can’t go there just once, or even several times. You have to go there every chance you get to take in the beauty and awe anew.

Although, I must admit, as much as I loved the main building, there were three other structures on the property that were even more captivating. Sean & I speculate that they were servant’s quarters; they have long been abandoned and boarded up. Ivy has completely overtaken them, draping itself over windows and doorways on nearly all sides of the two largest buildings, even smothering an old fire escape in their vines. Beneath the ivy is beautiful old brickwork, the colors faded and uneven, the victim of time’s passage. Every inch of these buildings is worthy of capturing the heart, from the spread of ivy roots across the walls to the barren, graffiti-marred alley on the side. There is a strange, compelling beauty in the sagging double doors at the back, something noble about the worn, lime-green paint fading slowly beneath an arch of dark red brick. A thin chimney tower of brick soars above the ruins, still proudly proclaiming the Academy’s name in letters so large you can see them from miles away. Through gaps in the boards and broken windows, there is evidence of fire damage inside two of the buildings. Peering more intently through those holes, we discovered ivy once again, growing eagerly under the remnants of a collapsed roof. Trapped behind those brick walls are endless mounds of fascinating rubble–it seems that no one ever bothered to clear out any of the items that survived the fire. Behind the broken glass and dangling chunks of wood, there are glimpses of a rusted old bathtub, strange twists of metal that are no longer identifiable–so many things that I felt tempted to find a way inside to get better pictures, even though I knew that would be ill-advised. I am endlessly fascinated by things like this–anything old and dilapidated, rusty and peeling, broken and abandoned. I’m not sure why…but to me, there is an undeniable wonder and joy in photographing them. Perhaps because it is a way to turn something that most people would find ugly or dull into something far more, something intriguing or even beautiful. And perhaps because I feel as ancient, lonely, and run down sometimes, and I am waiting–hoping–for some unusual person to walk by my jagged windows and fire-ravaged walls someday and see something beautiful in them.