Interstice

Glossa Nazilicum

The Reading Room

A place temporarily released from the ordinary obligations of civic life.

Interstices emerge where the rhythms of commerce, governance, and routine human occupation have receded but have not yet vanished entirely. They are seldom planned and almost never recognized while they exist. Abandoned hotels, condemned warehouses, derelict theaters, burned libraries, forgotten military installations, vacant churches, and unfinished buildings have all been proposed as examples. Such places possess no intrinsic supernatural quality. Rather, they permit an uncommon freedom of attention. Within an Interstice, conversations unfold that would not occur elsewhere, artifacts remain unnoticed by those who would ordinarily remove them, and unlikely communities assemble without invitation.

Early Bell commentators observed that many documented Encroachments first appeared within Interstices. The abandoned Eastman Building in Boise is perhaps the best-known example, having served informally as a gathering place for members of the Boise and Caldwell Encroachments during the final decades before its destruction in 1987. Whether Interstices create unusual events or merely preserve the conditions under which they become visible remains an unresolved question. The prevailing opinion among Library scholars is that an Interstice should be understood less as a location than as a temporary condition of place