“We do, we do.” – Masonic Temple Pt. 2
We made our way out of the theater to explore the rest of the half demolished building. We climbed past a pile of rubble, and finally located a staircase that was not caved in or demolished. We made our way to the second floor to find a door that opened to absolutely nothing - a crane had demolished the building past this door.
Remnants of what the building used to be used for litter the hallway. Mason-branded seats, paper donning the masonic symbol, even this large masonic symbol. The G in the center of the compass/rule stands for God and geometry, if you were wondering (I was, that's why I Googled it).
The walls to the right of these rooms were completely gone, allowing light to flood into the structure.
Finally, we come to the sad but inevitable demolition photos. I went back on an active demolition day to get one of my favorite and most short-lived abandoned buildings.
“Welcome to the club, Number 493″” – Masonic Temple Pt. 1
I'm usually very secretive about the places that I go, this is not because I'm trying to be stingy with the locations that I photograph or that I wouldn't like others to be able to experience the places that I do, but also because there are a lot of bad people out there looking to scrap, tag, and vandalize these beautiful places. The easiest way to keep my information from leading a vandal to these locations is to only give the information to those that I trust.
In this case, I'm going to be completely open. What I'm about to post are photos of the now completely demolished Hammond Masonic Temple. Unfortunately, this beautiful place went from complete building to pile of rubble so quickly I was only able to get to it twice before it was completely gone.
First off, a few views of the main theater - this place was MASSIVE. A large sign hidden above the stage behind a faux ceiling read "Orak Temple", most likely placed when the theater was originally built and hidden from the public during a renovation at some point.
Gary Homes
I'm so backlogged. I have a ton of photos to post before and after this, but I figured since I'm sitting around doing nothing I'd share a set with you guys.
This particular set consists of a day that we spent primarily exploring a residential area in Gary that is largely abandoned. The place used to be full of incredibly wealthy people and the buildings reflect that. There's nothing under two stories on the block and one of the two houses that we checked out felt like a model home to show off retro technology.
First house was pretty much stripped bare. It looks like whoever owned the house had planned on renovating it at one point, but never got around with it. We could tell that the house was ancient by the method in which the walls were built.
It was a three story house that I unfortunately took no exteriors of. The interior on the bottom two floors was shrouded in complete darkness, so I took most of my photos in the upper story.
This particular photo was taken immediately after I ascended the stairs. They were surprisingly sturdy given the shape of the entire house and the wood banister alongside the steps barely gave even as I leaned on it a bit for balance.
The attic was impressive. Well lit, and the walls were just insane. The place wasn't even that dirty.
This photo came out ridiculously well given the perceived lighting in the room. Since I went from such a bright room to this room, I had no idea that any photo that I took would turn out successfully. The odd angle at which the light came into the room under the planked up window really ended up working well for this one. The photo looks insane, but it was barely edited from my camera to how you see it here. The blobs on the walls are created by water damage I assume.
We left one home and figured out a way into the second. Since they were right next to each other it was a pretty quick trek, although a few of the group and myself became lost in some of the tall weeds and had a bit of trouble finding the entrance to the damn place. Eventually we found an external stairway leading to an open basement door.
The basement was dark, but full of character. We could tell this place was going to be interesting already. Interesting side note: today was the day that I figured out that an animal can become mummified completely naturally in the dry basement of an abandoned building. There was a possum corpse on the floor that a friend of mine accidentally shuffled into. It sounded like paper mache as it slid across the floor. Unfortunately, it was a bit too dark to document.
Two variations of the basement - one underexposed to emphasize the "pi door".
We made our way upstairs and were greeted to a kitchen that would send any retro-fiend into fits of kitsch-induced bliss. Unfortunately, it was a dark kitchen with very little space to set up a tripod. In-counter stovetops, a retro clock built right into the wall, turquoise colors everywhere - the cupboards were actually still stocked with all sorts of old foods. It was crazy.
We moved out of that room and into another. Apparently the study as a bookshelf was built into the wall. The room was interesting, but full of other people trying to get a photo, so I just skipped it and moved to the entryway. The hallway was beautiful, with a curved ceiling and some pretty awesome push-button power switches.
We wandered around a bit more before finding another interesting aspect of the house - a stairway leading to a completely planked over top floor. From what I can tell, it seems as if the owner came upon hard times and ended up leasing the complete top story to a guest. Luckily, we didn't have to do any of the dirty work as someone else had busted through the floor before us. I took the opportunity to take a photo of my friend awkwardly making his way up the stairs and through the hole.
That's it for now! I hope to get back to a few of these places soon because they were really intriguing to me.
See more of my abandoned photos on my main site: http://www.cityeyesphoto.com/index.php?x=browse&category=29
Playing Catch-Up – Gary Exploration Part 2
The Garython continues. I never thought I'd be able to span two posts with one day, but we visited a lot of places.
Following the small housing unit that we hit, we figured we'd take a trip to a large apartment complex across from a high school that I had been observing. Time hasn't treated it well and it's falling apart. The stairs that lead up to the higher floors are crumbling, flights stacked upon each other because they had become detached from the concrete walkways.
The rooms were all shaped the same, but looked completely different from each other:
Two Windows
White Room
Pink Room
Walls are gone
We left the crumbling building for a newer one - a recently closed high school. Jordan had been here before (shortly after it had closed), so he brought us through to a few interesting areas.
First off - the band room:
Empty Band Room + Trophy
We walked back through the empty hallway and found a storage room in which all of the extra instruments and band outfits were stored. As much as I wanted to have one of them for myself, I didn't want to take away the chance for others to see this crazy stuff:
The Band Storage Room
We made our way upstairs to the auditorium. I had one of those moments where I'm just struck by how such an incredible area can just be left to rot like it has. Since the first time Jordan had gone, some scrappers had managed to cut down a giant metal chandelier but apparently didn't have the smarts to figure out that they couldn't get it out of the door.
The Auditorium. Missing chandelier is on the floor near the entrance in the center.
Towards the stage.
On the Stage
Behind the stage was what seemed like an extra rec room, although I have no idea what its true purpose might be. I would have guessed that it might have been a computer lab, but the hardware seemed far too outdated for the time that the school closed. These macs were actually equipped with 5 inch floppy disc drives.
Computer Room
More to come, of course. I have a lot of catching up to do.
To see more of my abandoned photos, check out my main site.
Playing Catch-Up – Gary Exploration Part 1
I haven't posted in months due to extreme lazification. That ends now (hopefully). I'm going to start a weekly (hopefully daily) attempt to catch up to exactly where I am now as it comes to exploration and photos that I've taken for work.
It begins with a trip to Gary I took nearly five months ago, December 2008.
Cold day of course, but most of the buildings that we visited were completely enclosed, shielding us at least partially from the wind outside.
We started with the old standby, the factory. Since it was Mid-Winter, the piles of clothes usually sitting moist and moldy were rigid and frozen completely solid. The light beamed in through the window and reflected off of the shiny piles.
Frozen Piles of Clothes lay on the floor of the factory
Water dripping from the ceiling of the building was creating icicles down the massive warehouse ceiling. The streams of ice were pristine, lined up perfectly along the edge where each piece of roof met.
Ice hangs from the girders.
They continue all the way down the length of the huge building.
Even after decades of abandonment, pieces of the building's history still stick around. It's weird really, knowing how many people have been here before me considering how untouched the building and its contents are.
A packing sticker sits still coiled up perfectly after years of disuse
Even after many times visiting this place, I always find things that are new to me.
Inexplicable Spraypaint near a door.
A wall covered in what looks like soot.
After leaving the bolt factory, we swung by a building that we had always seen from the road, but never attempted to enter. The inside of the building was unremarkable compared to the interesting architecture on the outside, although we did run into a few surprises.
Although the photo might not be remarkable, those stairs definitely are.
Apparently, Efraim liked pastel colors a lot.
Disco inferno?
Stay tuned for the next half of the day which includes an apartment building that is practically falling apart and a recently (then, at least) closed high school. Hopefully, I'll get around to it tomorrow.
To see more of my abandoned photos, check out my main site.
Double Silo Quickie
I hit two silos a while back, figured I'd put them both together. The first was an old grain silo. I have no history on the actual building, but it looks to have been active before the 60's and maybe even as far back as the 30's. The inside was almost too dark to take photos:
We climbed up the hulking structure, crossing frighteningly decayed cement walkways to get to another section where we could climb to the top. I took a quick photo of some of the coolest industrial equipment I'd ever seen:
The relative darkness of the inside compared to the bright winter day made it difficult to take many photos. I snapped one more shot before leaving that I really ended up liking. It turned out looking like it was processed, but this went straight from my camera to my computer with only a little leveling, temperature correction, and sharpening in between:
The second silo, oddly, looks like a gigantic castle. We didn't know exactly where it was, but we followed it's hulking presence on the horizon until we finally were able to park across the street and wander to it from there. We walked along some tracks until we were right next to the structure.
The inside of the first part of the silo was dark and full of dirt. Long rains had obviously washed in every surrounding bit of soil, which cascaded in through the windows. Small holes in the concrete let the light in. Unfortunately, there was no way to the higher floors as time had taken its toll on the steel ladders, which were either sprawled on the floor or barely intact.
As we walked from the first section the second, I took a photo. The wind between them was unbelievable.
There was very little in the second area past the same dirt and holes in the first. Jordan pointed this out to me and I thought it was pretty hilarious.
To see more of my abandoned photos, check out my main site.
Chicago Hospital Complex Exploration pt. 2
We started the day with plans to explore two abandoned hospitals in the area. The hospital has been a historic point of Chicago since it was built and even had a popular TV sitcom based on it. The hallways were gigantic, but also very empty. Being a county hospital, the city had pinched every penny from the closure that they could.
There was almost nothing left but the structure of this building. Rooms stood completely empty with only a scrap or two of metal or a radiator against the wall.:
Making our way up to the top floor, we could see the Chicago skyline outside of the window. I wound my way through a small hallway to find an oddly placed auditorium that was probably used for the observation of surgeries at one point. The floor of the auditorium where the instructor once stood was now completely filled with what seemed to be heating equipment. A hulking wall of aluminum blocked us from going any further down the stairs.
The hallways were as gutted as the actual rooms. I have no idea why, but dirt was covering the ground of this 7th floor hallway.
We exited the first of our destinations and made our way to the second. This hospital, midway between the point where a building is closed and the point where demolition work starts, was much more interesting. It was full of leftover equipment, records, x-rays, film - you name it. Unfortunately, we were running low on daylight so we were forced to rush through.
The hospital felt as if everyone had just gotten up and left. Not a single room in the building that we were able to explore was completely empty. Chairs, piles of records, even medical equipment was just left to rot.
The furniture in the building was dated. Seems the last time that they actually refurnished the place was in the seventies, although I'm pretty sure it closed much more recently.
The halls were dark, full of furniture and debris. Peeling paint coats floors that have paint, other halls are lined with tile that has not yet fallen off.
Meet the most frightening CPR dummy that you'll ever see.
One of the most surprising and incredible things that has ever happened to me while exploring suddenly happened. We were wandering around looking for a way to make it to the basement and something insane happened. We were in a dark stairwell. Dirty floors, peeling paint everywhere, no lights, darkness - suddenly, we opened a door and found ourself in one of the most pristine abandoned buildings that we had ever been in. It felt surreal, almost dreamlike. The colors on the walls were the same as they were when the building closed, the floors almost looked waxed. It was crazy. We were in a hurry (many windows, well lit), so I couldn't get a great photo.
More to come of course.
To see more of my abandoned photos, check out my main site.
Chicago Hospital Complex Exploration
Ok I'm back after a few weeks of slacking for some more uploady goodness.
First off, I returned to the hospital complex that I went to last time. We explored a few different buildings, although I didn't get photos in many of them because it was so dark.
The nurse's residency was one of the places that we hit. The bottom floor actually had a boarded up ballroom with wood floors, chandeliers, a fireplace - the works. There was even wood left in the fireplace from the last time that they had extinguished the flame before they abandoned the building. We walked up a few floors to find room after room.
Colorful rooms, they were painted with almost childlike colors contrasting with the dull decay of the hallway.
One of the rooms was inhabited by a particularly successful bum.
We wandered into an animal testing facility. Jordan was a bad monkey.
In the same area, they were storing all sorts of medical equipment:
To see more of my abandoned photos, check out my main site: http://www.cityeyesphoto.com/index.php?x=browse&category=29
Indiana Exploration
Exploration Catch-Up first post:
First off, an abandoned hotel. 
Second, we hit a schoolhouse in the area. Built in 1922, it has been shut down since somewhere around 1960. 
This hallway is actually in the basement. Originally, it was made of poured concrete and could withstand the blast of an atomic bomb. 
Some of the cool paintings we found in the building: 
For some reason, a single chair and desk were all that was left in this room. The floor was drooping pretty badly, so I didn't spend too much time tromping around up there. There was a hole in the ground that led to a classroom below: 
There were a lot of weird goth things painted around the building: 
One last photo before we left the school - Jordan taking a shot in the stairwell: 
Gary Church Revisited
Here's a few more. I've been busy at the paper with all of the floods going on in the area, but in my downtime I managed to stop by my old favorite to take a few shots.
In the rain, the church takes on a whole new mood. Water floods in from the ceiling and collects on the floor of the once great church. The brickwork is exposed where the water hits, dirt washed away. Water runs down the limestone pillars. It was absolutely beautiful.
I climbed up into the church bell tower in order to get a shot from above. I knew that I probably wouldn't be in the area next time it was raining so hard so I figured I'd capture the moment.
Cold water hitting warm glass caused my lens to fog up a bit. I took advantage of this situation and shot a few more before I left.
Finally, the result of exploring a very wet abandoned church:
