What lies above

Hidden spaces and the Madison loft tour

When I was young, I was convinced there was a secret door in the back of the closet of my childhood bedroom. By young, I mean up until I was, you know, like fifteen. Even as I write this now at forty-nine, I’m not totally convinced that there isn’t such a door. I’m tempted to get in the car and drive back to Kentucky, just to check one more time.

I don’t remember exactly where I believed the door led. Not into the bathroom, which is the room that backs up onto the closet and so is where such a door would actually lead (into the shower, actually). Maybe into the attic space across the hall from my bedroom, which does, in fact, have a door in the back of a closet, a plywood cut-out door with no handle. You pull at the edges to open it and then pull it closed behind you. It was this space I had designated to hide if the hostile alien invasion came (still traumatized by V the mini-series).

Maybe I confused the attic door with the closet or maybe it was a jumble of memories from when my dad finished out the attic. Maybe it was a recurring dream about the door in the back of my closet and where it led or too many books about magic portals to other worlds.

The upstairs windows are also gorgeous. This one looks out at the courthouse and has a window seat

At any rate, this fascination with the door at the back of the closet and other weird spaces probably explains why I love Madison’s loft tour so much. Other people can have their Nights Before Christmas or Madison in Bloom tours, the spaces all perfectly arranged and decorated. Rooms polished up for public consumption and a level of detail I have no real interest in achieving in my own house or garden. No, I’ll take the biennial exploration of the creepy spaces that hover above us every day and all the weirdness they contain.

The Madison loft tour was created by Madison Main Street, partly to incentivize people to put the upstairs spaces above businesses to use. There are some finished out apartments above the businesses downtown, but a lot of the spaces are empty—unfinished, unused and so, so delightfully weird.

The story is that the plaster ceiling mold came from Paris and the chandeliers were loaned to the Lanier Mansion for a while before they came back to where they belong, above the firehouse? Okay.

The tour is always a mix of finished and unfinished spaces. And sometimes spaces that are halfway in between—maybe someone uses them…maybe they don’t? It’s all sort of mysterious. On the loft tour over the years, I’ve seen the inside of one of our highest church spires (that was a climb). This year, I got to see the upstairs where one of our volunteer fire companies hang out, a room with elaborate plaster ceiling work and crystal chandeliers, along with, of course, a bar. Two years ago, we toured a building for sale that had once been used as storage for the town newspaper. This year, that same building is a gorgeous, boutique hotel.

The lived-in, finished-out spaces are certainly interesting, but what I love best about the tour is the weirdness of the unused rooms. The pile of old encyclopedias in a corner. The antique sewing machine locked behind a barred door. The strange rectangle cut halfway up the wall (for a heating/cooling vent? Or spyhole?). The irregular, plaster arch cut into a wall, which turns out to have been made by the owner to connect the lofts of what were once two separate buildings. On the other side of the arch, a baby grand piano which our local piano tuner and all around piano expert somehow hauled up onto the third floor with a system of ropes and pulleys. Will the piano ever be moved out? Or will it stay up there forever, a ghost instrument through the centuries?

Some of the mysteries have solutions. The weird photos we found in the upstairs of one business are from a portrait studio that was there once. My husband remembers our daughter getting a picture taken there. The rooms upstairs are cut up with cute shingled fronts because the whole building used to be Main Street Villages, an indoor mall, complete with a deli run by a former mayor.

Jeff through the arch. You can also see a big of the baby grand behind him.

Like all old houses, other idiosyncrasies have no answers. Why is there a pickleball court set up on the third floor in one building? Why are these ceilings so low and others so high? Why is that door there and where does it go?

Of course, as a writer it’s the weirdness of the loft tour that appeals to me. It’s the stories these empty spaces hold and the way the stories are always there, hovering above us as we have a drink at the bar or browse the shelves of the stores downstairs. I love the loft tour because it’s a walkable example of the way the world really is—mysteries all around us, if we just look in the right places. Imaginary doors that lead to other worlds. One of these days, if I look at the right moment with the exact right slant of light, maybe I’ll finally find that door at the back of the closet.