DISCLAIMER: No laws were broken in gathering the following pictures. If you were to try and duplicate my efforts, you would be guilty of burglary and trespassing. This is not even a case of urban exploration. Urban exploration involves discovering abandoned spaces which this is not.Everyone knows the Thompson Building as the much beleaguered building at the Corner of North River and East Cross streets in Ypsilanti, but it’s been a lot more than that.

It’s been a barracks for the 14th and 27th Michigan Infantry Regiments in 1862 and 1863. It’s been commercial space devoted to paint, farm equipment, and bicycles. It’s been apartments. It’s been an archery range. It’s been a manufacturing facility. It’s been the home to two shifts of old ladies that made padding for Army helmets during the Vietnam War. It’s been the world headquarters of Fantasee Lighting. And now, it’s been empty for almost four years.

It’s definitely not falling down. It may never fall down. I have neighbors who have houses that aren’t half as stable as the Thompson Building.

It has buckled floors. What little plaster ceilings remain sag from a leaky roof even though more than a dozen rolls of roofing paper sit unused on the third floor. It has a lot more broken windows now than it had before it went into receivership. It has a love sadder than death.

This isn’t the end of the Thompson Building. It’s just one of the sorrier periods in its existence.