Original subtitles

Abandoned structures hold the secrets of America's past.

A house of God reveals how salvation was beamed into every living room.

During that time to broadcast a crusade

in prime time was a revolutionary idea.

A towering structure explains who really built Motor City.

They were typically hired on the spot to work on the Ford assembly line.

This was very much known as the Ellis Island of Detroit.

And one mansion tells the tragic story of a man who transformed Manhattan.

There was a controversy on how his hand could've shot him in the head.

So that's why we're thinking it might've been a murder.

Scattered across the United States are abandoned structures.

Forgotten ruins of the past.

Monuments to a bygone era.

Each shines a light on the story of this land and its people.

These are the secrets of hidden America.

In the heart of the Bible Belt is a city with a surprisingly art deco downtown.

Tulsa experienced two huge oil booms early in its history

and because of that reason, there's a lot of prosperity in the downtown area.

And it is an area where Protestant Evangelical Christianity reigns supreme.

In fact, there are churches on nearly every street corner.

But one building here stands out.

Seemingly unrelated to the city's oil field wealth or religious routes.

This building is an icon in Tulsa. Lot of people recognize it

and a lot of people think it's an eye sore.

The first thing you notice is, it has no windows.

Instead it has these kind of gold tinted diamond shapes all around it.

It looks like something from a science fiction movie

from the 1950s in which they're imagining what the future looks like.

It's unique design makes sense when you learn of its creator

and his controversial masterplan.

The man behind this building, much like the building itself divides opinions.

What happened inside was revolutionary to American culture.

Millions of Americans would be personally touched by

what went on inside this building

even though many of them would never step foot inside of it themselves.

Entering the building in its current state

is not for the faint hearted.

Inside of course it's pitch black because there are no windows.

But once you bring a flashlight,

you see this spooky array of tunnels and rooms.

Everything's painted white.

But there is one floor that feels very different to the rest.

Wow!

It's amazing how big this auditorium is.

I mean, this is a massive, massive room.

From the outside you'd never know that there's a huge auditorium up here.

Daniel Isgrigg is an assistant professor at a local university

and knows all about the history of this building.

But until now, he hasn't been inside.

This room would've been filled with seats from this area here up towards the front which

there would have been a stage up here.

I can only imagine this room packed with people

and the energy, the singing and the organ, and just the electricity.

Everyone had come to hear the words of one man.

A preacher called Oral Roberts.

Roberts was a constant showman.

Someone who can bring in thousands of people and hold them

in a state of enraptured connection with God.

In his time, everybody knew who Oral Roberts was.

This was a man whose fame extended far beyond Christians.

As a little boy, who wants his eye sight...

Oral became a household name in the late '50s.

Because of his pioneering exploitation of a new form of communication.

Television.

I didn't mean to hurt you but God's spirit came in my hand then.

How many fingers is that man holding up?

- Four... - Four is right, four is right.

Roberts was a real early adopter when it came to television.

Ratings were pretty small at first but as TV sales took off across America,

so did Robert's television show.

Roberts realized that these mass media broadcast

could bring hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people together.

To the miracle of television, you have been in our great tent cathedral...

The fact that there's Christian television today,

that it's one of the primary means by which people receive the gospel

is a tribute to what he did

so many years ago by putting the gospel non TV, in prime time,

and that the world, religious or non, can watch.

By 1957, his TV show was airing on over 135 stations.

Oral needed a building to run what was now a national operation.

In 1958, work began on his new HQ.

The Abundant Life Building.

So here on the first floor was the destination for those who would come

and to visit this head quarters.

This particular area here was a giant mural

called the Abundant Life Mural

which was painted by a famous sculptor.

He wanted to make this visitor's center,

a place where people will come in, just be in awe

of the magnitude of this ministry.

Oral's extravagant design choices reflected his

unconventional interpretation of Christianity.

He encourages followers not to feel guilty about success but in fact

that their proper devotion to God would help them be successful.

For Oral, devotion means donation.

A huge portion of his programming was fundraising,

it was imploring his audience to make whatever small contribution

they could for this greater cause.

The power of television meant the money came flooding in.

But Oral's thirst for wealth would one day be his undoing.

Oral Roberts had created an extremely profitable media empire.

And the Abundant Life Building was specially designed with incoming money in mind.

It contains an enormous freight elevators so large

that it can carry thousands of pounds

of mail and packages that were coming in. People who were donating

to his ministry, to bring up into the office portion of the building.

So here's the part of the building where they kept the donations that came in.

And here's the safe here, and the safe room.

There's literally hundreds of thousands of dollars that would come every month.

But it wasn't just cash in the envelopes.

The amount of people driving to Oral Roberts to receive

prayer was just immense.

You would've seen this large hall here filled with

just rows and rows of desks of people

typing out letters.

The building's lack of natural light

was part of Oral's obsession with efficiency.

He didn't want his employees gazing out the window.

He wanted a well oiled religious machine.

So there was also a number of prayer partners

who were on duty all the time

to pray not only for the prayer requests that came in through the mail,

but they had a 24 hour prayer line that people could call in and so

there was a room just for that with a massive phone system.

The Abundant Life Building was designed as kind of a central

nerve center of the whole Robert's organization.

And in a way, you can almost look at it kind of like it was

a data center or a server farm in modern technology.

The scale of this ministry is amazing,

there were seven different departments

operating out of here.

There were 600 employees who were processing prayer requests and mailings and

publishing and it was a massive operation.

Oral reeled people in with his TV shows.

His staff here, then connected with them.

The size of his captive audience was unprecedented in the world of evangelism.

I mean, ministry in general are churches that are usually localized

but he found a way of taking his ministry and growing it exponentially.

In 1962, Oral's insatiable appetite for growing his empire

led to ground being broken on a new project.

His very own university.

But it ended up sounding the death note for the Abundant Life Building.

After he completed his Oral Roberts University,

he decided it was time to move his entire operation to that new facility

and the Abundant Life Building went silent.

Oral's popularity continued to rise after he had moved on

form the Abundant Life Building.

But in 1987, there was a pivotal moment when it all began to fall apart.

He called for his followers to donate more than eight million dollars

to his university or else God would call him home.

Some people really viewed Roberts as somebody who

was essentially a huckster or even a charlatan.

I think perception of Christians on television was changing

and so by the 1980s,

the novelty of Oral Roberts was wearing off

and so the more things he was doing,

the more questions and skepticism was there.

The income from his ministry dwindled

and Roberts gradually faded from public life

before passing away in 2009.

In the end, the legacy that Roberts leaves

is a lot like the building in downtown Tulsa.

Some people just don't know quite what to do with it.

It may be an eye sore, it may be something that is

connected to that town and people feel a lot of pride about.

But the Abundant Life building will always be a reminder

of a time when preaching in America radically changed.

On New York's so called forgotten island,

are the haunting remains of a business empire that molded the city.

We used to call this the Psycho House,

because it was designed on Psycho from the movie.

We used to come here and just get close to the house, and get scared, run, take off.

The architecture is classic haunted house there.

The wood work on the outside is all old and faded

and the beams are starting to lean over after years of holding up the weight.

The rounded balcony and needle point roof is a really common feature

of this particular architectural style.

But it really ups the creep factor in this house.

Within are artifacts of another century.

The inside is almost like a parody of a haunted house.

The walls are covered in this material that looks more like flesh than wallpaper.

But one clue reveals the secret

of why this house was built and how it was paid for.

In the living room is the center piece,

the fire place which you would think there's nothing really significant about.

But if you take a closer look at the bricks,

you will see a very specific name.

This mansion once belonged to a multi-millionaire,

one whose name is all but erased from history.

On Staten Island is the former home of a wealthy businessman.

Rick Rispoli came here as a child. Now, he's the caretaker.

This room is basically the main room in the house.

It was used for entertaining, stuff like that,

back in the day, probably the high elites of the town

and of the island back at the time

probably all met here, and hung in this room.

But at the turn of the century, happiness turned to despair.

This house has a dark, tragic history unfortunately.

In 1894, the body of a man was laid there with a gunshot wound to the head.

There is a mystery still to it to this day

if it was a murder or not. There's a little controversy there if...

if it was a murder or it was a suicide?

The deceased was an heir to a business empire.

His father was a man named Kreischer.

Balthasar Kreischer was born in a small village in Germany.

Kreischer was also a businessman

and he would become a very successful one.

In 1836, Kreischer boarded a boat bound for New York.

Just seven months earlier, Manhattan's business district was in flames.

It started on warehouse and then because of the winter wind,

it sort of spread and went everywhere.

Now, there was a fire department but most of the rivers were frozen, so

that hampered their efforts.

And the only thing they could do was to create a firebreak

by blowing up the buildings around the fire.

Hundreds of buildings were lost.

New Yorkers lived in constant fear.

But Kreischer saw an opportunity to make money.

Kreischer was drawn to Statten Island because of rumours

of a treasure in the wetland dirt.

That treasure was clay.

The western bank had copious amounts of clay.

Enough for Balthasar to build his fortune.

This is how the Kreischers made all their money.

Right here with the bricks.

Balthasar Kreischer came here as a German brick maker,

New York city was burning down.

He came here, got all the clay, came built the factory.

Built all these bricks and helped build back Manhattan in the 1800's.

Even at this early date, New York was a major metropolis,

with commodities everywhere,

people packed in and buildings built right next to each other

and out of timber of all things as well.

So, fires were inevitable, especially devastating ones like what they experienced.

Balthasar Kreischer built a factory on the river bank.

The factory was straight across the street

which is right on the waterfront here with the whole factory

where they used to make the bricks

and throw them on a boat if they need to send in to Manhattan up to New York city.

He set up his own kingdom here.

Kreischer was so successful that

eventually he was able to build company town.

This town had everything. Buyer service,

religious institutions and community places for people to gather.

Eventually it became known as Kreischerville.

Kreischer's bricks were used across Manhattan.

Helping ensure the city would never burn down again.

There are still many buildings in the city today that still stand

that are made out of his bricks.

The business made Balthasar Kreischer a multi-millionaire.

Back at kreischerville, he built his family mansions.

They built this one for one of his sons, Charles Kreischer

and right next door, he built another one for his son Edward Kreischer,

identical mansions.

Crystal chandeliers hung from the ceilings.

And oak staircase ascended from the vestibule

and an expensive material covered the walls.

This is called microsta,

a combination of linoleum,

and leather and with linoleum, it doesn't crack.

So this is running over 100 years right now

and still in very good shape.

This was the rich man's wallpaper, back in the day.

Kreischer ensured that his sons and heirs were looked after.

His legacy appeared to be assured.

He didn't know at the time, but one of his sons would eventually end up

laying in the mansion, dead.

But about a year after the mansions were built, Kreischer died.

The business fell to the brothers to run and I cannot stress this enough,

it was a massive undertaking.

Hundreds of employees, moving the earth, baking it, transporting it to clients,

I mean it was a lot.

But they ran it pretty successfully.

But eight years after their father's passing,

Edward's body lay on the floor of the house.

In 1894, the heir to a construction empire,

lay dead in his brother's mansion.

He went to work that day, 8:00 o'clock in the morning,

he was in a good mood,

and his body was found about 10:30 later on that day.

Uh, basically, behind the factory

which is straight across the street.

And then, they brought the body

back into this mansion.

And then, they called the doctors and stuff,

and they pronounced him dead, here in the house.

Historians agree Edward shot himself

for reasons we don't know.

Though there are some who think that he was murdered.

There's a lot of theories

because he was having trouble at the factory.

His older brother George,

was put in charge of the factory.

After Balthasar died,

Edward was still on with him.

So, he was buckin' heads with George apparently

and still to this day it's still a mystery

on who killed Edward Kreischer.

After Edward's death,

Kreischer Brickworks continued for another 30 years,

but in 1927, the business folded

and the mansions were sold.

Uh, mansions changed hands several times,

Balthasar's and Edward's houses actually burned down,

so there was only this one house, kinda left,

creepy, right above the brickworks.

In the First World War,

Kreischerville was renamed Charleston.

The old mansion is one of the few buildings

that remain of the engineering empire

that helped build New York City,

but in some corners of the town

the legacy of Balthasar Kreischer

is still etched in stone.

Today, no one lives at the old mansion

but dark tourists still visit the site

in search of the macabre.

We do everything from drive-in movies,

to concerts, to a haunted house,

which as you can see this is one

of the haunted house rooms.

We do paranormal investigations,

and now we do tours.

So, we're just tying to make it work.

We're doing our best... Keep it...

Little by little, we're fixing up the whole place.

So, we're bringing it back. Bringing it back.

Near the mid-point of the Mississippi River,

the stage is set for a battle for glory.

We're in Memphis, Tennessee,

the birthplace of rock and roll,

and a place that Mark Twain once called,

"The good Samaritan city of the Mississippi."

On the edge of town

is a circular building with a domed roof.

The structure sits in the shadow of

Liberty Bowl Memorial Stadium.

So, it's pretty easy to figure out

what this building may have been used for.

Inside the building today, it's a mixed bag.

You're gonna see ticket stubs, trash strewn all around.

You're gonna see the remnants of a once thriving place,

that had people screaming and yelling.

You're completely sealed off, there's no natural light.

It's tremendously dark, except for a few bulbs

that flicker here and there.

The stands have been empty for a long time.

For locals,

this building is an important part of their history.

When this place was built,

America was divided.

But, an arena for combat

would become a cradle for unity.

Jimmy Kimble has lived in Memphis for 40 years.

He used to come here every week.

The crowds came to watch a violent spectacle.

All attention would have been focused

on what was going on in the center,

a battle royale between two men.

This is the Mid-South Coliseum.

The Mecca for a bloody pastime.

Known locally as Memphis Wrasslin'.

Professional wrestling is about strength,

stamina, agility,

an incredible feat

of showmanship and storytelling.

Back in the days, professional wrestling

was made up of regional markets,

and within those regions, they can make their own rules,

and Memphis Wrasslin' in particular

was pretty intense.

Everybody a bloody mess...

It was a brutal style.

It was all about taking things to the extreme.

You had metal chairs, thumb tacks,

barbed wire, even fireballs.

But, Jimmy Kimble

wasn't watching from the stands,

Memphians know him better as "King Cobra".

Wrestling was an opportunity to let off some steam,

but the Coliseum,

had an even more fundamental

impact on the citizens of Memphis.

The story began in a jail cell

with a wrestler called Sputnik Monroe.

Sputnik Monroe

was one of the biggest names in Memphis wrestling,

a guy with a shock of white through his mostly black hair.

And this dude really put the act on heavy.

He used to say, "Hey, it's hard to be humble

with a body that women love and men fear."

One day, Sputnik was arrested,

for being in a bar for colored people,

was the term that was used at the time.

Segregation was still on the books,

and remember, we're in the deep South.

We're in Memphis, Tennessee.

And, here's a man going against the grain

in every possible way.

But, this wasn't Sputnik's first offence.

Sputnik Monroe would regularly challenge segregation laws,

by attending African-American bars,

and reaching out to the patrons of those bars

and even giving them free tickets to the shows.

Sputnik's arrest made local headlines.

The case went to trial.

He did what Sputnik would do.

Which was, an act of defiance.

And, how can you upset

these other white racists even more?

You hire a negro attorney.

Go figure, the man was brilliant.

He was brilliant.

Sputnik lost the case,

but his actions made a statement.

At the same time,

the city was planning the Mid-South Coliseum.

In the 1960s, they begin drawing up plans

for the new stadium

which is gonna be the home of wrestling

but also a stadium for basketball

and music concerts.

And, one of the questions they tackle in these designs

is where they're going to put the African-American fans.

Venues like this place and others

were definitely segregated.

The black folk all had to sit in the balcony seats.

Possibly come in the side entrance.

And not be treated equally as the white patrons at a venue.

But, the Coliseum would be different.

When the Mid-South Coliseum first opened,

it was the first racially integrated stadium

in that part of the country.

Over the following four decades,

the Mid-South Coliseum became legendary,

and in 1989, King Cobra fulfilled

a lifelong ambition here.

This is largely an unknown venue.

It's an unknown aspect of civil rights.

It's an unknown story of interracial activity,

based off of the shoulders of a 235 lbs. man

named Sputnik Monroe.

The Mid-South Coliseum was a place of unity

in an era of division.

But, Memphis wrestling,

was about to face a bigger opponent.

By the 1990's,

professional wrestling had gone national

and became a billion-dollar industry.

But venues like the Coliseum were left behind.

In the 1980s and 1990s,

professional wrestling was going through a big change.

The smaller markets, the more regional markets,

couldn't keep up with these bigger brands

that had deeper pockets.

Unfortunately, smaller markets like Memphis,

just couldn't keep up.

As local wrestling faded,

the crowds stopped coming to the Coliseum.

And, in 2006,

it closed its doors.

Today, the Coliseum is silent.

Now, it stands as a monument

to Memphis Wrasslin'.

And, legends of the squared circle

like Sputnik Monroe,

who, in 2006, passed away in his sleep.

We know about Hulk Hogan,

We know about "Macho Man" Randy Savage.

We know about countless other folk,

but... we really need to know about

Sputnik Monroe.

In my mind, he's a hero.

On the edge of Lake Erie,

in a quiet neighborhood, is the old gateway

to Motor City.

We are in Detroit, Michigan,

a city that in many ways built America,

and, a city that has also famously and tragically

declined over the decades.

In the satellite neighborhood of Corktown

this building stands above all others.

The most striking thing about this building

is its sheer size.

It's something you definitely expect to see

in the center of the city,

but not necessarily two miles outside of it.

The grand architecture continues inside.

This place is absolutely beautiful.

I mean, the place inside is very ornate,

there's grand columns and the arches.

For three quarters of a century,

the fate of this building and Detroit were tied.

It's been empty for 30 years.

But, now there are signs of change.

Not long ago this building was a decaying hulk.

Today, there's a lot of activity here.

Something's going on

to bring this old building back to life.

Everywhere I go, and I sit next to somebody

and I tell them what I do,

they have a story about this building.

When you think about,

you know, Detroit is the Motor City.

We were part of that original revolution.

It's iconic and we want it to continue to be iconic,

in a number of meaningful ways.

Ashton Parsons,

first heard of this place from an article

on the internet.

Now, he helps preserve it's history.

The first time I ever came into this space,

I couldn't believe how large it was.

The scale is unbelievable.

It can be about numbers and sizes

but the overall beauty and attention to detail,

it's incredible.

The centerpiece is it's domed ceiling.

What we're looking at is the topside

of one of the three...

incredibly massive arches or domes.

Each one of these domes is...

thousands upon thousands of tiles interlaced together

to create not only a beautiful look,

but, some of the strongest domes

that you could imagine.

But the expensive architecture is only a facade.

This structure was built for a desperate need,

before Detroit earned the name Motor City.

Detroit had always been

in a remarkable location

for all kinds of economic activity.

It started as a trading post for beaver pelts.

By 1910, Detroit was already a major city,

known for its metalworks.

It also became home to Henry Ford's

famous automotive factory on Piquette Avenue.

Manufacturing in Detroit was booming.

But to become a true powerhouse

the city needed a modern transport system.

This is the Michigan Central Station,

connecting Detroit to the rest of the United States.

Michigan Central Station

was meant to be both a cutting edge facility,

to handle all this rail traffic,

but also a symbol of Detroit's

growth and strength.

But, before the station even opened,

tragedy struck.

On a freezing December afternoon,

Detroit's existing train station was on fire.

In 1913,

a fire at Detroit's old train station,

cut off rail access to the city.

Trains were pretty much the only way

to get to a major city.

Not too many people could afford to travel

any distance by car.

Passenger airplanes were years in the future.

If you wanted to get around this country,

you travelled by rail.

In an act of desperation,

the new Michigan Central Station

was opened early.

Trains were going in and out of the new station,

with only a few hours' notice.

This was a testament

to the ingenuity of the people of Detroit.

Within a few months,

thousands of travelers from across the United States

poured through the station.

We're here in the concourse.

You would have had offices upstairs,

people walking to and fro.

You would have had...

all manner of people coming in and out of their trains,

up this ramp, porters coming in and out with their bags.

By the 1920s,

200 trains would leave Michigan Central every day.

But the palace of the locomotive,

would usher in the age of the automobile.

Henry Ford had introduced

his revolutionary Model T automobile,

and as demand for that car grew,

so did Ford's need for workers.

The Detroit Board of Commerce, contacted New York's

immigrant reception center,

and asked them to direct manual laborers

into their city.

Tens of thousands of immigrants

passed through Michigan Central Station,

and into Detroit,

where factory jobs were waiting for them.

They would come here from all different walks of life

all over the world,

and this is where they would come to.

And, so because of that, Michigan Central station has

sort of rightly earned the nickname,

"The Ellis Island of Detroit."

Detroit's new workforce

created Motor City.

But, by the 1950s,

boom had already turned to bust.

As more people got cars,

they didn't need to live in dense downtown areas anymore.

And, at the same time...

the growing interstate highway system,

also made it easier to build automobile factories

in other locations, especially in the south.

All of this meant that Detroit was no longer

the center of the manufacturing universe.

And, employment began to fall

and it's population gradually began to drop.

As the economy shrunk

so did the importance of this main terminal.

The last train left Michigan Central Station

in 1988.

For three decades, the building stood silent,

but now, another Detroit crown jewel

is bringing the station back to life.

So I've been on the project since March of 2020,

and really my role is to deliver Michigan Central.

In 2018, the Ford Motor Company

announced that it was taking over

the Michigan Central Station.

The company plans to take the neighborhood

and turn it into kind of a automotive campus

for research, design, testing,

of the next generation of automobiles,

electric cars, autonomous vehicles.

We have really committed to bringing 5000 employees

down to Michigan Central.

This main floor will be open to the public.

So, we really want people to feel welcome to come in.

The refreshed station will revitalize

the neighborhood of Corktown,

and again be a jewel in Detroit's crown.

Instead of building something shiny and new,

why not bring it back to life?

And, build around it, and support it,

and have it be that beacon as it always has been,

and the focus of the new.

Michigan's Central Station is to become

a defining feature of Detroit once more.

There's kind of a paradox here.

This is Motor City, the city that...

built the automobile

and was built by the automobile,

and yet, the most visible symbol

of this city is a train station.

Bit of an irony there.