For the uninitiated, the Ice House at 3920 McClellan on the city’s east side might have seemed like the Mid-Atlantic storm made its way to Michigan.
The project, by photographer Gregory Holm and architect Matthew Radune, of Brooklyn, N.Y., encased an abandoned house in ice, a feat that drew photographers and onlookers once the location, kept quiet for weeks, was revealed over the weekend.
“I had been hearing about this all week,” said Willie Bird, 64, who took his cell phone out to snap a picture of the side of the icicle-covered house. “I was waiting to hear the location. It’s different.”
Bird, from the city’s west side, said he planned to tell friends the house was worth driving over for a look. “I like the formation of the ice around the house,” he said.
Thick icicles hang all over the two-story home — stretching nearly from the roof’s edge to the ground like frozen vines on one side, glittering and white in the winter sunlight.
Holm and Radune created the Ice House to highlight the foreclosed homes in the Detroit area.
The men made a deal with the Michigan Land Bank to lease the house. The two also paid off delinquent property taxes on another foreclosed house so a single mother and her children could move in.
Rebecca Keast, 28, of Hamtramck and Miguel Verdejo, 29, of Detroit were looking for destinations in the city to show their friend Kristy Smith, 25, of Ann Arbor.
“We had heard about this and we were interested in what they were trying to represent,” Keast said Sunday. “I think they’re trying to bring awareness to the real estate market and the economy down here.”
For Verdejo, who took a peak inside one of the open windows, it wasn’t just the outside encased in ice that told a story. He said he saw old furniture, books on a table and a shoe. He said the inside view was his favorite part of the visit. He questioned the future of the neighboring houses if the economy doesn’t improve.
“Those houses are going to end up like this,” he said.
Smith said she thought about the people living near this temporary art piece. The house will eventually be dismantled and the materials recycled.
“We were wondering what people thought of people in their space,” she said as she looked at the numerous abandoned and occupied houses nearby.
They only had to ask Jermaine Davis, who was walking in his neighborhood Sunday afternoon. The 13-year-old stopped briefly to look at the house, which he had seen many times before.
“It looks beautiful,” he said. “I like the icicles coming down on the side and connecting with the other icicles. I also like the trees with the ice hanging down like ice cream cones.”
at 11:44 am
I DROVE by there on Sunday not knowing that it was there. I was going to visit a friend who lives 2 streets over. There were tons of people parked along the street. There’s not a lot of street parking but it’s interesting to see and you can’t help notice the condition of the neighborhood, which I was told is the point. “Wow this is fascinating in the middle of the city’s east side, but we have to do something about the other houses here. We have to rebuild this city.”