Adaptive Reuse at it's finest!!

Those of you familiar with Historic Preservation know that there are four basic treatments for a historic building- preservation, rehabilitation, restoration, and reconstruction. Depending on the building and the extent to which the historic fabric is saved, altered, changed etc., a truly historic building will fall into one of these categories.

Today I want to talk about rehabilitation, and what is in my opinion, an optimal way to rehab a building. First let me explain that I grew up in Kansas City, Missouri. The downtown area of K.C. was all but abandoned in the last few decades as is so common with many cities downtowns. (Ala, suburban expansion). Fortunately, there has been a major revitalization of many downtown areas thanks to the Main Street Program. Kansas City has enjoyed such a revival in it's own downtown and industrial district in the last few years.

There are some really amazing old industrial buildings all around K.C., and it's great to finally see them being used again. There are a few buildings however, that were way ahead of the trend. Particularly, I'm talking about this building here:


It appears to be a fairly unassuming building I think. Looks like an abandoned industrial building of some type, in a quite deserted area of town. If you're from Kansas City however, you know this is not quite the case. Look a bit closer and you'll get some clues:



Ahhh, that's right folks, this is the infamous EDGE OF HELL! One of the world's finest Haunted Houses. Growing up I took for granted how amazing this haunted house was. The West Bottoms area of KC boasts about 4 world class haunted houses. I never knew just how spectacular they were until I moved away from Missouri. I've lived in many different places since then, and every October I'm on the lookout for great Halloween fun, but I can never find a real haunted house. Sure I've been to dinky ones where you go through one floor in 10 minutes and see your standard blood and guts and random boo's! But seriously, they don't come close to the KC standard. I mean, just look at the Chambers haunted house:



It's that grey building there in the center. Now that is a haunted house, the entire building. You see in KC, haunted houses aren't just a small time gig for a few weeks a year. These buildings stay as they are, all year round. The Edge of Hell has been here since 1975. It's a five story building, it's so elaborately decorated that it would be asinine to try and take it all down. So, it stays a haunted house all year long. As do the others. I'm telling you, these are first class, terrifying haunted houses. I mean, just look at this review from the Edge of Hell: "The Edge of Hell is constantly re-inventing it's five floors. New scenes are always added to the cast of 45 live performers with the newest state-of-the-art technology. The air crackles, your fingertips sizzle. One million volts surge to grab you. A Vampire lunges, his hot breath violates your lungs. A 20 foot live Anaconda's eyes dart left then right, poised to crush his live prey."

They're not kidding, it's crazy scary. But it's soooo fun! I have loved going to these haunted houses since I was a kid. It scares the heck out of you but I guess it's such an adrenalin rush that you keep going back year after year, forking over another $30!

One of my favorite features from these Halloween wonderlands are the slides. That's right, the slides are the best! Typically you slide from some kind of absurd scary heaven straight down into the jowls of Hell, sliding right into the Devil himself!


Ahh, fantastic! Seeing as Halloween is my favorite day of the year, it's no wonder I'm infatuated with these fantastic fun houses. I just wish they were as common in other parts of the country. I also wish they were open for longer. Granted, these KC attractions are usually open from the end of August until the beginning of November. That's a pretty decent Halloween season in my opinion. They are also open throughout the year for team-building events, meetings, birthdays, field trips, even weddings! That's right folks, you can even get married there. Check out these on-site wedding pics: http://www.edgeofhell.com/meetings-events/weddings.html

I know most of you will think that's absolutely absurd, but I'd do it! Looks pretty awesome to me. I also wish I could show some night time pictures and pictures from the inside, but no photos are allowed inside for obvious reasons, so you'll just have to use your imagination and trust me that they are as awesome as I say. Ya sure these buildings could have been turned into super cool modern 'Lofts' or office space, or a number of other things, but then we couldn't visit the Edge of Hell, or the Beast, or the Macabre, and you wouldn't want that, would you??