Glass House [Hardcover]

Margaret Morton (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 29, 2004

Penn State Press interview with Margaret Morton, March 2004 Your books--The Tunnel; Fragile Dwelling; Transitory Gardens, Uprooted Lives; and now Glass House--always use a place in their titles and often present photographs of sites throughout New York City. Why these titles? Why so many photographs of the places where the homeless gather to find shelter? From the beginning, my work was devoted not to despair but rather to the courage and imagination with which people face adversity, the ways they manage to build makeshift structures and find warmth and community. I try to show that the term 'homeless' is a misnomer that blinds us from seeing how people preserve their sense of home and identity while struggling for survival at the margins of society. How does Glass House fit into your earlier work? Unlike my other books, which are about adults, Glass House focuses upon a group of young people--some were runaways--who in 1993 established a communal home in an abandoned glass factory on Manhattan s Lower East Side. How did you find out about Glass House and get access to the community? I learned about Glass House from a homeless man whom I had photographed. He introduced me to Gentle Spike, one of the members of the community, who told me to meet him at Avenue D and East 10th Street on a Sunday night at 9 pm. 'If no one is there,' he said, 'just yell 'Glass House.''When I arrived at the seven-story building that next Sunday, it was completely dark and looked deserted. I waited a few minutes, then yelled 'Glass House.' Silence. I yelled again. Suddenly, a thick chain came hurtling down. I had the keys. I found my way to the second floor and a dimly lit, unheated room where about thirty-five people between the ages of seventeen and twenty-two were conducting what they called a 'house meeting.' 'A stranger, a documentarian,' was on the agenda. I showed them a copy of my first book, Transitory Gardens, Uprooted Lives. Discussion, a show of hands, then a woman slammed a sledgehammer on a table: I had been given permission to take photographs and conduct interviews as they continued their lives in this derelict brick building. After that night and for the next four months, I attended Thursday workdays, Sunday night house meetings, and met with individual residents. Why do you think they accepted you? These young men and women in Glass House had had many adults--teachers, parents, police--try to impose codes of behavior on them that they considered cruel or irrational or just too restrictive. I think that from the first they understood I would not judge them by society s norms of conduct. I accepted them as they were. Then, too, I believe the people in Glass Hourse wanted to tell their stories, to present their experiences to a society they thought had been unwilling or unable to understand them. They decided they could trust me to record their way of life. Glass House seems to have been a tightly regulated community, indeed, seems to have been better organized than most communities and institutions on 'the outside.' How did they go about keeping order? They took turns doing essential duties, built what was needed with what they could find, and took care of one another. Each and every one was required to respect house rules, which were strict and detailed, covering almost every eventuality from overnight guests to police raids. Here, for instance, is the guest policy: 'You can t stay at Glass House unless you are the guest of a member. If you are the guest of a member, you can only sleep in his or her room. Glass House is not a crash pad. You can't sleep in the community room or in any other part of the house. All guests must attend Sunday night meetings, so we know your face. Any strangers will be escorted to the door.'

Editorial Reviews

Review

Margaret Morton's Glass House is a remarkable work, the best of her books on the demi-monde of homelessness and squatting in New York City. --Alan Trachtenberg, Yale University

Margaret Morton's Glass House is an important, richly evocative, and very moving book. It may be an illustrated work of oral history, but it has the momentum of narrative. The characters come fully alive and most become quite attaching. Even if we've known all along that the story will end with a violent eviction, by the time the end comes it is still shocking. --Luc Sante

Margaret Morton has been doing remarkable, indeed invaluable work at the juncture of photography and social documentation. She is our modern-day Jacob Riis. Glass House, her latest project, is a triumph of art and compassion. --Phillip Lopate, author of Waterfront: A Journey Around Manhattan

About the Author

Margaret Morton is a photographer well known for her work with the homeless of New York City. Her photographs have been exhibited in numerous one-person and group shows in America and abroad. She has published several books of photographs and oral histories, including Fragile Dwelling (2000); The Tunnel (1995); and, with Diana Balmori, Transitory Gardens, Uprooted Lives (1993). Morton is Professor of Art at The Cooper Union.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 160 pages
• Publisher: Pennsylvania State Univ Pr (September 29, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0271024631
• ISBN-13: 978-0271024639
• Product Dimensions: 10 x 10.1 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,615,913 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent insight into homeless youth, November 21, 2009

By 

Karen T. Riehl "Oreely" (Carlsbad, CA, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Glass House (Hardcover)

A pictorial essay of the lives of a group of homeless young people who find a way to build a community among the castoffs of society.

5.0 out of 5 stars building a home, December 26, 2010

By 

Kathleen (New York, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Glass House (Hardcover)

For several years, I lived in cooperative housing where all the residents participated in organized chores, ate together, relaxed and bonded together in common areas, and established house rules such as guest policies by democratic vote at weekly Sunday meetings. All this features of communal life were also present at the "Glass House," where young adults formed a community living in an abandoned factory in New York City. I found Morton's account of their experiences very moving. The pictures and narratives are beautiful, stark, evocative; they tell how these different people ended up at the Glass House, how they built themselves a home and community there, how they lived, and where most of them ended up ten years later.

I think people with a variety of interests, from photography to homelessness to urban life, would find much to reflect on in this book. For me, how the various inhabitants organized themselves, formed a family of sorts, and became emotionally invested in their shared living space was especially fascinating. I read the book as a story of people coming together in situations of deprivation or duress to try to survive, such as the 2010 Chilean miners who managed to survive while trapped underground for months. The Glass House residents were not necessarily physically trapped, but they often faced barriers and hardships such as poverty, mental health problems, and addictions. How can people endure and even build lives while trapped in a mine, or in an abandoned factory on the lower East Side? But I think there are many other approaches to this account, and I am sure that when I read it again I will form another interpretation.

One resident, Donny, said of Glass House: "I watched people change and grow up there. It was a transforming experience for a lot of people. I saw people come here with no skills, who learned carpentry, who learned plumbing, learned electricity, and learned installing locks, right here. And some of them beat ten-year, five-year drug habits while they did it. Basically, the family mattered more than the building. I mean, we were always working on the building, but we were always working on the community too."