Between Tenants

A friend of mine, a former coworker and fellow photographer, invited me along for a walk through downtown Kankakee one morning. We were out not long after sunrise, photographing whatever caught our attention.

His father-in-law is a commercial real estate developer and had recently finished renovating a building downtown. More than a hundred years old, it had once held retail space on the first floor and offices above. The upper floors had now been converted into condominiums overlooking the courthouse and train station.

The work was finished, but no one had moved in yet.

My friend sent a text asking if he could bring me inside to see it.

For a short time, we had the building to ourselves.

What I remember most was the light.

Morning sunlight moved through windows, across floors and walls, down stairways and through open doors. The building was beautifully restored, but I wasn't particularly interested in photographing it as real estate. I found myself looking into rooms, through doorways and along staircases—watching the light reveal pieces of the old building.

There was also something unusual about seeing the place at that particular moment.

Its former life as offices was already gone. Its new life as people's homes hadn't started yet. The renovation was complete, but the rooms were still empty.

We happened to walk through during the brief space between the two.

I didn't know whether I would ever have access to the building again. I probably won't.

But for one morning, before anyone moved in, I was able to wander through a century-old building in downtown Kankakee with a camera and beautiful morning light.

These are the photographs I made while I was there.