It s a Peregrine Falcon, It s a Zeppelin. It s only at night that the Superman building really gives you it s full effect. 28 stories, over 460 feet tall, it s the tallest building in Rhode Island and it only has one light on. All the windows are black, but a there s a bright white lantern at the top that almost looks like it s suspended, surrounded by a big black void. [clip from old superman show] The Superman building is officially named the Industrial Trust Tower. But everyone in Providence calls it the Superman building. It got its name because people in Providence thought that the Daily Planet building, the one found in the Superman comics and TV show, was based off the Industrial Trust tower. The daily Planet building was actually inspired by a different art deco skyscraper in Toronto, but the name stuck anyway. [music in Jazz] Built in 1928, its design recalls the industry of the roaring twenties, the glamor of the Jazz Age. When it was built, thousands of Providence citizens came to see the grand opening. A local writer composed a poem for the building. They marveled at its scale, its luxury, its newness. Now, the building is a reminder that those days are long since behind us. After the economic crash in 2008, the last businesses moved out of the building s offices. In 2013, Bank of America, the building s last tenant, moved out of the ground floor. Ever since, it s been empty. M: Hey Chris, I m gonna be bringing these uh this young man young lady around for a while, just to let you know. Uh if you see anyone out there I ll probably be bopping them around... Ok copy yeah I lkl keep an eye out for ya This is Mike. He s the head security guard, one of 7 people that still work here, all employed by High Rock Development, which currently owns the building. His job is to look after the building, make sure no one tries to break in. The other employees engineers, custodians their job is to maintain the building, keep it from decaying too much while it sits empty. M: the lights ll give you a little more of the effect. He takes us into the cavernous banking hall on the first floor. Chandeliers hang from the ceiling, surrounded by paintings of Roman gods. The tile floors are impossibly shiny. All the little calendars on the counters still say April 12th, the day the building was vacated in 2013. All of these columns, everything you see here was all originally built in 1928 so it s all original. people call him up they wanna have bar mitzvah s here and weddings here and whatever.. and and reunions here cause this it s just a cool room.
These requests are always denied, Mike says. For liability reasons. We ll take a secret stairwell.. Going deeper into the building, you see more decay. The paint peels from the walls and covers the stairs in chips, wires protrude from the ceiling where there used to be lights. We have to use the flashlight on my phone. The building needs work, when it gets bought, they wanna try and make it apartments and stuff but he s not getting any help so I think they re talking to Citizen s Bank so.. Right now, a development company that owns it wants to turn it into luxury apartments, but are asking for money from the state government to do so. The government has refused and the building sits vacant. Which is a huge controversy for the city, one that is used as a symbol for the terrible state of the Rhode Island economy, government corruption, gentrification, or any number of other things, depending on who you ask. But for Mike, his wishes for the building are more personal than political. I mean it s nice to watch, I m a people guy I just wanna see the building become alive again you know. How would you not want to have a wedding here? Just the way it looks, the acoustics.. But the building does not go unused, at least not entirely. Oh yeah, they ve had a lot of movie scenes in this room, many. We had a movie here uh the end of the movie, it s a woody allen movie called A Regular Man The movie is actually called Irrational Man, not Irregular Man. Anyway last August, Emma Stone you know Emma Stone the actress and Joaquin Phoenix. He was a professor, she was a student they were having a steamy affair kinda thing Yeah last august they did the whole closing scene here.. I don t wanna tell you it was the ending and I m not gonna tell you... Yeah I met Emma Stone. Joaquin Pheonix was not a nice guy he was a jerk he was into his craft he wouldn t speak to anybody, she was totally cool. Totally beautiful too, so skinny! Aside from movies, a lot of people including myself are just intrigued by the building. Like so many abandoned places, it s become a sort of museum for urban decay. So much so that giving tours is a surprisingly big part of Mike s job. Does it get lonely working here?
Nooo me and the building engineers it s quiet. It s quiet. But I get people I do a lot of tours. Liek with you. Buildings like this there s a lot of people, I ve given I ve been here 2 ½ years, you guys gotta be.. I don t know how many people I wish I kept track. A few hundred now, gotta be has to be. 2 300 people that I ve shown around this building. But I enjoy it I m a big ham so.. This is such a big part of his job that he often sounds just like a tour guide, equipped with countless unusual facts about the building. Here he is showing us the vault: That s the vault it was 26 mill cast in merchandise there was a 4 million dollar blue diamond from south africa. Everything s out now I ve checked. See if somebody left behind a hundred grand by mistake you know! The other people that work there all claim that the building is haunted. Mike shows us the floor where most of the paranormal experiences seem to take place. Wait till you see it, this is the floor where they ve felt the things and have seen flashes, white flashes of figures or something You know, different stuff like that. Uh, both guys have told me that you know they love it. And you know what s cool, you know it s true cause they re saying the same things. I believe in spirits. I mean, I believe in god so I believe in heaven I believe in spirits, so you know I know I ve felt spirits of animals that I ve lost many times that have passed away in my life, so. I do, I believe there s another entity out there, another time war whatever you want to call it. But the building is also haunted in a much more real sense. The Chief Engineer of the building, Paul Almeida, had passed away a few weeks before I visited. He had worked here for 30 years, and everyone I talked to said he left an indelible mark on this building. I miss him. We were good friends. We kinda like this was like our building you know. He tells me about the day it happened. I was waiting for him to drive up on that wednesday morning, because he had died tuesday night. It was freaky, I was like wow. It just makes you think, everybody it doesn t matter what age you are of your mortality. Enjoy your you know, people get mad at such silly stupid things sometimes little meaningless things. Enjoy your time here on earth, that s what I say. you were telling me about what they might do with paul s ashes? yeah possibly his wife had mentioned about taking them he had for the around the building, because he had been here for 30 years. She hasn t spoken to me about it, but she said she ll let me know.
He started here as a porter at 19 years old, which is kind of like a janitor, I believe, and turned into the tope building engineer of the building. So he he s in heaven now.. Paul knew this building in and out. He was a good guy, it was just it s still shocking like I say it s too bad because he cared about the building he he had been here a long time, and I thought were were gonna be working together for a while. More than anything else, the Superman building gives you a sense of history. Its vacancy reveals the marks that almost a century of people passing through have made. We go to the very top of the building, taking two elevators and several flights of stairs, until we can see the entire city of Providence from the 26th floor. And then we go even higher up, to a small room that feels kind of like a treehouse. No one seems to know for sure what the purpose of this room is, but there s a lot of speculation. In the late 20 s, Zeppelins were very much being considered for air transportation almost as much as airplanes. They were gonna like maybe go more than airplanes. So, and here we are this is was gonna be a docking station for Zeppelins that was the big rumor. I ve heard no I ve heard yes. Now, it never became that because you know what happened in 1928, the Hindenburg. Mike often imagines the people that used to use this building, and the expensive parties they d have. You can tell this was the executive floor, you know how you know? They had their own kitchen, they had their own cooks, so you know the big wheels were up here from Bank of America. This was where the big wheels resided. And they had their parties up here. You can see the two way mirror so I don t know what kinda, they had some private parties up here. When I see two way mirrors and I see wine rocks I m thinking there was some debauchery up here. But for him, the building s abandonment is also potential for the future. The potential for someone like him to one day live in a place like this. I would love to see it become apartments. I was talking about my wife and I cause the owner said to me I ll give you a nice deal I d be living right here.. come down in my slippers It s a cool building man, it s totally like a time warp walking around this building you fall out of 2015 you right into like 1930.. you know it s cool a simpler time. Much meaner world now that s ture. My analogous is always halloween.. You know we re rooting for it.. Keep the flame going for the superman building.. do you think it might lose some of its charm? For me it would.. like you said I wouldn t be doing this if it was full of people.
While the building might not be full of people for a long time, the building was never entirely abandoned, not really. To see the last remaining residents of the Superman building, look out the window from the 26th floor. [Mike talks about Peregrine Falcons that live there]