this post was submitted on 06 Sep 2024
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History Ruins

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What is a ruin? We’re running off of “You know it when you see it” at the moment. Ruins should be non-functioning structures of some age, or their function reduced to tourism and the like.

Generally speaking, specific items from a ruin should go to [email protected]

Illustrations of ruins (or their reconstructions) should go to [email protected]

Photos of ruins back when they were functioning should go to [email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Definitely no ghosts in there

[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 months ago (1 children)

You know I was just thinking how it'd be really cool to buy that house, live in it, and slowly and fix it up. That's literally how horror movies start.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Go to renovate the basement, knock out a wall. "Huh, there's an extra room back here!" Weird paintings and stuff on the walls. Stone floor that fades into dirt in the back of the room along the rear wall that is far older than the rest of the house. Boom. Indian burial ground.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 2 months ago

When I was very little, we lived in a house like that, except not in bad condition. Long story, but we were quite wealthy, and then very suddenly, never again. Lol.

Anyway, my brother and I decided it would be fun to sled down the stairs one day, and toward the bottom of the stairs one of us hit one of those little metal strips that held the carpet down on the stairs with the edge of the sled. When my dad was fixing it later they discovered that the stairs lifted up Munsters style, and there was an entire room down there, under the floor, with a tunnel that lead God knows where.

Turns out it wasn't satanists, but was in fact part of the underground rail road, and was used by folks smuggling slaves up north. Ridiculously cool to thing to have in your house

[–] moncharleskey 4 points 2 months ago

Make sure to movie your teenage kid into that new room!

[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Built decades after slavery was abolished, actually seems out of place for its size and style.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Do you mean plantation era...? Because it doesn't seem like any plantation era house I've seen. More like a pretty standard Victorian, imo, which tracks for when it was built. I'm just a lay person, however, and certainly no architect, so I could be wrong.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago (1 children)

You're really going to sit there and tell me this is nothing like a southern antebellum style house?

That its spacious parlour and large number of rooms doesn't reminisce of a time of servitude in the USA?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago

I mean, yeah. It's just a different style altogether. Parlors and room number has nothing to do with what the house looks like and the architectural era it belongs to.

It would be more accurate to say that it smacks of the gilded age (a time of the greatest wealth disparity in our history) than of the civil war era, even though that still isn't quite right, as the Victorian era is its own thing outside of the Edwardian era.

The US has had more than one age of servitude beyond just the obvious slavery era, sorry to say. It's kind of our brand.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Looks pretty antebellum style to my eyes, at the very least antebellum-inspired. I mean, I say at the very least, but what I know about antebellum architecture is pretty limited to having seen them in passing in US Civil War books, lmao.

Less grandiose than most, but it's got that kind of forward-heavy look combined with obsessive symmetry and that weird Anglo-Classical fusion.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago

I would click through some of the examples in your wiki link and try and notice a few things that most of the antebellum houses have in common. They're usually defined by the their blocky shape and the large columns in front; very Greek-revival.

This house, however, has completely different details and layout. Beyond the fact that it's missing the telltale columns and imposing silhouette, the design is more intricate and a touch more delicate. The Victorians loved fine details, and were very 'extra' in that way.

But honestly, all of that aside, the biggest tell is just the date it was built. A different style was simply the fashion then compared to earlier in the century. Just like how mid century modern was it's own thing outside of WW2 era suburban homes, though they're similar.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Maybe they liked the old slavery style?

"It's just a fact of life", you know.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Dumb question but what is slavery style? Like it seems like everyone else can immediately tell, but by looking at the house I personally don't know enough to be like "that house is a slave era house". Is it just the architectural style? Or is there a different tell? Thanks in advance I'm ignorant and dumb

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 months ago (2 children)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antebellum_architecture

It's a specific style dating back to the era of slavery. A lot of old plantation-type houses in the South have the style, and it's... grotesquely romanticized in some corners as a more 'rustic' time.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Maybe they meant a more 'rusty' time, what with all the chains and manacles and whatnot.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

That's cursed lol

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

Got it makes sense! Thanks, this made some other things I've heard click into place.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Big parlour.

Large number of rooms.

Display of wealth and status in a rural area.

I feel like if you were going to own human beings then you would want to do it while living in an Antebellum Style home.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

iT's My hErItAgE

[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 months ago

I would live there if I was a southern vampire.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Pretty sure I played a mission there in RDR2...

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago

Or Powerwash Simulator

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago

Finder's keeper

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Why, no one’s been in that house for nigh on forty years!

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago

'cept for ol' Wizard Whately, and that sad, sad albino daughter o' his Lavinia...

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Looks a bit like the house from Stranger Things.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago

Which is also in Georgia.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago

Finally some roommates, gonna get the ouija board and force them to pay rent.