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.
Gary Indiana Exploration 08-31-08
Ok, as you guys know, I went out to the most abandoned city in America again on Saturday. Said I'd post a few photos. As always, more photos and larger versions available at my flickr stream at http://www.flickr.com/photos/cityeyes
Here they are:
A shutter, busted out from either wear through time or a vandal, sits in the center of the hallway of an abandoned apartment complex connected to one of the most famous theaters of the 1950's.
Stage lights litter the floor near the exit to the theater. I'm surprised they haven't been broken, but many explorers that come to this area of town are dedicated enough to leave things where they were found and smart enough to watch their step - you never know when you'll hit some rotten wood and burst through the floor.
The main hall of a disused auditorium. This is actually the first time that I've visited this area. The actual "auditorium" part of the building is completely overgrown with weeds. The stairs of the auditorium were carved out of ornate limestone. It almost seems as if someone had swept them because they were oddly clean considering the condition of the building that they were in.
Obligatory Peeling Paint Shot. I don't usually like to take these, but the lighting in this room was too good to pass up. I also couldn't get over how green that paint was.
A gigantic pile of clothes sits among many others in the abandoned warehouse. I ran into another explorer on the same day and he filled me in on the whole situation - apparently some woman had promised to fly all of these articles of clothing over to third world countries and instead ditched it all in abandoned buildings across the city. Sneaky. Equally messy - piles of paper littered the floors in what seemed to be a storage room. Receipts from the 50's on are present in this room.
Andrew sees the light - the dust from the floor of the old warehouse highlights two beams of light which happen to fall right on my friend. In another room, a door sits - signatures dotting the entire surface. Some of them even date back to the 50's.
