So I’m writing a book set partly in a creepy old convention center about to be torn down . It’s attached to the library (in downtown Portland, OR.) (And um, yes… it exists only in the parallel dimension where all of this happened. In my head. Unless I’m accessing that parallel dimension and reporting what actually happened there…) I really want to make this thing gothic and creepy and gargoyles everywhere, but it does have to be halfway believable and plausible. I can’t find any information on creepy old downtown conference centers anywhere in the U.S. It looks they’re all new… Does anyone have any ideas here? What would be a believable building style? Can anyone think of an example where this type of scenario really exists?
Hm, the whole convention center idea is relatively new - 80s or so and prior to that, conventions found large hotels and occasionally went to places like municipal arenas to run things like RV shows, or large toy shows, food conventions and the like. I did go to a convention series in the mid 70s at a St Bonaventure College annually [it was a gathering of foreign language students, I did several readings in french, and one time entered a performance of a medieval french song.]
You could find a nice creepy late 1800s hotel, not sure what is actually in Portland but since it is an alternative universe you could put one in. Who is to say that architecture would be the same in both universes?
Creepy downtown buildings with gargoyles no… but being from New York City and having been there plenty of times I do know that there are plenty of old downtown buildings there to use as support as far as the actual gargoyles naw I would place them as you see fit to make your story right.
In times past, conventions were often held in sports stadiums. Check out the history of the Jehovah’s Witnesses and their usage of stadiums for meetings.
How about those old Victorian exhibition halls that were used for world’s fair type stuff?
There are a lot of old armories that might qualify, and that would have been used for large events. Probably would not have had gargoyles but otherwise imposing looking buildings
There’s an issue here, because that style of building wasn’t as common on the West Coast. The Wikipedia page on the Portland Central Library has pictures of the 1893 and 1913 buildings, in the Georgian style. The Portland Armory looks foreboding in the Romanesque Revival style, but again no gargoyles. The old Portland University building looks fairly creepy.
Mostly, though, gargoyled gothic architecture is not going to be found in Portland. So just make one up. It wouldn’t be a convention center, but it could be an auditorium or converted old church.
A word of warning. If you don’t know enough history to understand that convention centers as we think of them today didn’t exist in that time period, you may run into a host of other problems.
The OP didn’t really specify a time frame, just old and creepy - and I’ve been in some abandoned buildings with 199_ on the cornerstone that were damned creepy.
But you make a good point. There are people who are (1) old enough to be a serious writer who (2) don’t quite realize we didn’t have cel phones in the 1970s. Fiction, too, is “write what you know” - and watch out for what you don’t.
Instead of Gothic and gargoyles, think of lowest-bidder 1975 energy-saving concrete bunker. Low ceilings, flickering fluorescents, spalling concrete, forgotten closets full of floor polishers and stacking chairs, flocked wallpaper and Naugahyde in the bathrooms, and vending machines where the orange juice has not only fermented, but come to life.
What about other types of buildings? What about an 1800’s orphanage or mental hospital? There are probably a few buildings standing in the US that were once one of those. For maximum creepy effect, the building should have been abandoned in that state and never been repurposed, so you could have rusting cribs, childish crayon graffiti, and a child-sized pinafore that someone hung up to block a draft.
It could sort of make sense for some sort of government educational or care facility to be attached to a government run library.
Depends on what the OP means by a convention hall. The Crystal Palace was an exhibition hall, designed to hold stuff rather than people. Modern convention centers have that but also have large spaces for people to meet, either in small individual sessions or huge multi-thousand person get-togethers. And the OP also uses the term “conference center” which might swing the emphasis to people over stuff.
Also, almost all the exhibition halls like the Crystal Palace were temporary structures. Only a tiny handful of World’s Fair-style buildings were designed to survive the Fair, and those were intended to become museums or the like.
We need more information about what Anise was thinking of.
Old mid-20th century elementary schools. I went in one that had been bought by a college for classroom and administrative space and things were just subtly off from the typical college experience - one major thing was that there were many water fixtures low to the ground, ostensibly for the little kiddies, that were never removed or moved.
Jails or prisons
Gothic churches or cathedrals. The National Cathedral (Episcopalian) in Washington, DC is very gothic but isn’t really scary at all, especially considering the good lighting and the fact that you know it’s not really that old. Do note that the sarcophagi-looking things in the crypt are real sarcophagi with bodies inside.
What you’re looking for is the Portland International Livestock Exposition Building. Portland used to be a major meat-packing town, and this building was where the stockyards held shows, graded cattle, did business, etc. in the earlier part of the 20th century. In addtion to being soaked in the blood of decades of cattle slaughter, this building was also used as an assembly area for Japanese-Americans being shipped to internment camps in WWII, so it would have a history of suffering and no shortage of old ghosts. The architecture was Georgian, which is tamer than what you’re looking for, but you can take some artistic license there. As in your story, it was targeted to be torn down a few years ago, and in real life, it was; again, you could elide the facts a bit.
According to Wikipedia, that building now is literally Portland’s convention center. I don’t think anyone would buy it as creepy. It’s not exactly in downtown, either.
This isn’t true. The Asbury Park Convention Center was built in 1928-30, under that name.
Atlantic City had a Convention Center, too, where they held the Miss America pageant. (The new Convention Center is a more recent construct)
As noted above, there have been many large buildings constructed for get-togethers before the 1970s. The Corn Palace in South Dakota dates back, in non-wooden form, to 1905.
All that said, I can’t think of a Convention Center/Hall, old or new, with gargoyles on it. There are plentyy of old buildings with gargoyles. More commonly, you’ll fimnd antefixes in the form of faces (very often lions) on old buildings. There are salso animal-faced Akroteria at the corners of buildings. People rarely notice these, because they don’t look up. But Boston, Cambridge, and NYC are full of them.
You’ll also find lots of Green Men and similar flourishes. I saw some in Indianapolis recently.
