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.
Dead Mall: Exploration of an Abandoned Shopping Center
Went out to Chicago again this weekend. Took a few photos of some new places.
First destination - An abandoned shopping mall. Once in an area of great promise, now the area has descended into high crime and depression. The mall, used for the chase scene in the Blues Brothers movie, closed in 1978 and since then had been the site of a murder, multiple rapes, and a few other very nasty things until the police station moved nearby.
Fire damage is apparent in the building and the once sturdy concrete upper floor has caved in at multiple sites within.
A sign hangs from the position where it once stood. Vandalism has removed much of what was once in the mall, but sometimes you'll stumble upon signs of what used to be:
Walls are torn down - only flaps of wallpaper and wood grid remains in some areas:
This room was particularly interesting to me. I'm not sure if I'm right, but I think that the blue tint in my photo is due to the holes in the ceiling becoming a giant pinhole camera type device. The blue and white is actually a projection of the sky above:
An escalator, once part of a bustling JC Penny, now stands silent. Water collecting at the bottom makes for a tricky climb as well as corroding metal steps:
Two escalators cross in a large department store area:
Colorful murals and wallpaper adorn the dreary halls of the old mall:
My second destination was, as far as I could tell, an abandoned chemical research factory. I'm told that it was once an oil company, but I can't for the life of me tell exactly what they did in there because I found all sorts of obscure chemicals not related at all to petroleum.
A piano is in the hallway across from a lab. I have no idea why it's there:
Some insane machinery fills up one of the rooms in the building:
Various equipment, bottles, and papers create shadows in this room. It smelled of sulfur, so I didn't stay in there for long:
Notice the "asb 9" in this photo. I'm pretty sure that means that there was asbestos present and needed to be removed. Still, the least of our worries:
As always, you know where to find more and larger.