Urban Decay

So as not to derail Wheal Dream's ancient ruins thread --- post pics of abandoned buildings, wwII-era factories, old railyards etc here.

Jimmy the Mod's great pics of Michigan Central station, for example.

http://www.vagabondish.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/08/michigan-central-station.jpg

I will also allow signs for places that no longer exist, because the fact that they are left standing never ceases to fascinate me.

Like this place in Davis, CA

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/30/42155291_172f06e110_z.jpg

the old ithaca gun factory in ithaca NY (gone now, i think?)

http://www.youngna.com/youngna/040513_Cornell%20044.jpg

Excellent! Good idea. I do actually belong to a couple of Flickr groups for this sort of thing so will try to dig some out when I'm done lusting after Mayan temples and things... :-D

Crystal Ice Factory, downtown Sacramento (it's right next to a newly developed supermarket complex (out of frame), but the contrast between shiny! new! and old & sort of haunted looking is interesting

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2248/2211090877_c5033d8d70.jpg

those pix of mcs aren't mine, but THESE PICTURES OF THE BUCKNER BUILDING ARE!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/richardgin/sets/72157608541428456/

I just meant the ones you posted, not that they were yours :) I didn't want to steal your thunder is all

Abandoned train station, Oakland (last used as an Amtrak stop)

http://lh3.ggpht.com/_uFv6Tj7MBPo/SI1uj4HeQXI/AAAAAAAAJSc/6Wvc6CAxlfc/Front-of-Station.jpg

the old ithaca gun factory in ithaca NY (gone now, i think?)

Makes me kinda sad seeing that building as that's where my parents first met.

Ithaca Gun Co. is still around but left Ithaca in 1987 (they're based in Ohio now. wtf)

xp - i actually went to a noise show in that train station a couple years ago - it was totally surreal and amazing. The interior is still fairly well-preserved.

Wow, how cool!!

the promoter bribed the security guard with a $30 bottle of whiskey.

lol. Gotta grease the wheels!

http://i274.photobucket.com/albums/jj242/donaldparsley/auroraelephant.jpg

b siness

there used to be a pile of prolapsed elephant innards rotting away on his I-beam pedestal. cleaned up by the time this photo was taken. in true fact, they've since replaced and/or rebuilt him, so that he's fresh and new, holding court over "aurora rents." the magic, however, is gone. his shiny new eyes look all creepy.

i'm not entirely sure why, but i love that post intensely.

Aurora, when I lived in Seattle in the early 90s, was such a great stretch of old motels and signage. I imagine lots of it has been urban-renawalized by now.

Er, renewalized, obviously.

For a look at a pretty much entirely abandoned downtown, this youtube of Cairo, Illinois is fascinating:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJW8lOzJJPE

Amazing abandoned Buzludzha monument in Bulgaria (it's an actual building)

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_Q-PuSGjFHvY/SU2YaWB5esI/AAAAAAAAC4g/r7jjGEUzuvs/s640/14408863.jpg

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_Q-PuSGjFHvY/SU2YaJXvDWI/AAAAAAAAC4Q/AQMjaGp9Me0/s640/13028638.jpg

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_Q-PuSGjFHvY/SU2YlJRoDjI/AAAAAAAAC40/89F6swyI7p8/s640/acxcz.jpg

Background: So what is the story of this construction exactly? In 1891 the socialists led by Dimitar Blagoev assembled secretly in the area to form an organised socialist movement. In honour of this act was built the Buzludzha Monument, one of the symbols of the socialism in Bulgaria.

weak bulgarian tagging

haha

There are so many abandoned buildings in southern Maine that I don't know where I'd start. A lot of shoe shop factories and closed up strip malls.

Pigeon House power station, Dublin

http://commondatastorage.googleapis.com/static.panoramio.com/photos/original/2872590.jpg

Broadstone Train Station, also Dublin.

http://irelandposters.com/dublin/images/broadstone_railway_station.jpg

Wow that first factory is huge!

Think I'm going to take a few pics around Sac, there are quite a few abandoned places that I haven't found online.

Power station I mean, oops

There are so many places on Detroit that could end up on this list -- I was driving through downtown at sunset yesterday and it looked very sad and creepy but also beautiful.

Yeah, I've spent tons of time on The Fabulous Ruins of Detroit.

http://detroityes.com/home.htm

I was just reading about the abandoned Mike Tyson mansion in Ohio. Totally bizarre. I guess the guy who bought it off him never lived there and got busted by the FBI for money-laundering, and it's sat since empty since like, 1999.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3377/3650200367_d0169337aa.jpg

what's the name of that former-resort town that someone posted a photo of in the "Guess The City" thread...it featured a sign that warned people they'd be shot if they passed a certain point?

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1068/1340874056_54abc47303_z.jpg

hahah wow

That Cairo, Illinois video is like something out of a zombie apocalypse film. I can't get my head around it.

one of my favorites in baltimore:

http://k53.pbase.com/g3/62/635962/2/66982630.T3afdFtc.jpg

and the inside:

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_6ivs_6w0SJM/St04s1bPQ3I/AAAAAAAAAEo/g5Rnv45vUQw/s400/Chips010.jpg

urban decay makes for great art.

Hurrah! So nice you can find an upside in recession and the mortgage crisis. Lots more decaying wasteland for photographers to play in!

oops, my first link died:

http://i.imgur.com/fkjg7.jpg

and we've got about 30,000 of these:

http://imgur.com/qu8y6.jpg

Designed by Marcel Breuer. There's always some plan to bring it back into use that never pan out but it's abandoned as of now.

http://www.clevelandskyscrapers.com/cleveland/attower.jpg

Hurrah! So nice you can find an upside in recession and the mortgage crisis. Lots more decaying wasteland for photographers to play in!

my point wasn't to take pleasure in others' misery.

sometimes bad things make good art; urban decay is one of those "bad things."

sometimes bad things make good art; urban decay is one of those "bad things."

Agreed; we're all intriqued by this stuff, or we wouldn't be on this thread. There is much to be said about the politics of how things get this way, and stay this way, yet I find that pic of Baltimore rowhouses simultaneously repellent and fascinating.

Wow at Mayfair Theater. I photographed that marquee when I was last in Baltimore, but I think that was 20 years ago.

what I wanna know is, who threw all the chairs into mike tyson's pool?

vegemite:

the weird thing about that Hulk Hogan Pastamania picture is that the restaurant was in the Mall of America...so somehow that sign migrated to south minneapolis and got hung on the back of a weird building in an alley!

Really? Bizarre

what I wanna know is, who threw all the chairs into mike tyson's pool?

That's the only thing I could think about when I saw that picture.

There is much to be said about the politics of how things get this way, and stay this way

otm

See, this is why my enjoyment of "urban decay" is not as keen and untroubled as my enjoyment of "ancient ruins." Like, I can look at something that has been wrecked since the Reformation and think "good on you, Henry, for kicking out the Pope" - or not even that, just have this contemplation of the Sublime (in the Romantic sense, the whole "history is bigger than you" thing.)

But when I see entire modern (i.e. under 100 years old!) city centres just left to rack and ruin, a little bit of me thinks "oh such beautiful decay..." but most of me gets really angry.

(Perhaps the latter is more *great* art, because it makes me think that way, and maybe even what can be done about it. But it's not the same simple kind of enjoyment.)

Actually, Sublime in the "Romantic" sense would be more "Nature is bigger than History" but you know what I mean. I hope.

Yeah, I understand that. I appreciate that Milk Farm Restaurant sign in one way (old roadside attractions left to molder), train stations and theaters in a different way (colossal buildings no longer needed because current society prefers airplanes and DVD players) and then I get to something like downtown Detroit, where that scale of auto manufacturing -- and employment in same -- is gone and not coming back, and it does make me angry/frightened for the future.

I also live in a country where finding a structure over 200 years old is a rarity, and a city (Minneapolis) that for the most part demolishes obsolete buildings before they can ever have new-growth trees sprouting through their decaying roofs. Our ability to re-use buildings is getting better, too (we demolished a TON of interesting architecture in the 50s/60s.)

speaking of ruins and detroit: there is a gorgeous new book called Detroit Disassembled, highly recommend it

http://valerielpalmer.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/nationaltime-thumb-350x437-27341.jpg?w=349&h=437

(photography book, i meant to add)

I'll have to check that out Justin3, looks interesting.

xpost:

It was something that struck me when I first moved to the US from Australia, the bankrupt business left standing, signs and all. Old restaurants, lumber yards, sign still in tact, weeds coming up through the parking lot.

I can't really remember seeing much like this back home. If a business went bellyup, either the signs got taken down and it stayed empty for however long...or it got turned into something else.

I guess I find the 'business graveyard' concept unique in a way. Not in a good way. In a mostly disturbing way. But it's just such an oddity to me I can't help be morbidly fascinated by it.

I mean, a new example is the Mervyn's here in Folsom. Big ugly strip mall building, completely empty, signs still up...it went belly up 2 or more years ago and the signs are still there, as though it's still open. Kinda confounds me in a way. At least take the signs down...

mcmahon's timber yard, limerick

http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc4/hs923.snc4/73683_10150117688229918_709809917_7723307_1011392_n.jpg

awesome clock is awesome

We had a business near my old house outside of Baltimore called Value City Furniture. It was an anchor store in an outdoor strip mall that had originally been an indoor mall. Like, the indoor mall was all closed-up and off-limits and if you went up to a window, it looked like an apocalyptic wasteland but the side facing the street had been repurposed. Anyway, Value City was huge – like the size of a Macy’s or something but filled up with crappy furniture and floor lamps and panther statues and the like.

http://www.eurostylelighting.com/images/splashes/floor-lamp.jpg
http://www.fabulousfurniture.co.uk/media/catalog/product/cache/1/small_image/300x300/5e06319eda06f020e43594a9c230972d/c/s/cs1121_1.jpg

So one day, I was driving buy and Value City had a CLOSED sign on it and there was garbage in the parking lot and I was like “Well, that’s how it goes in this economy…” But months later, I was driving through the alley next to the store, so I could get to the hardware store next door and discovered that Value City was still operating out of its own basement while the first and second floors were closed up and desolate. It was pretty weird to discover that they had been there the whole time.

wow. So were they keeping it hush hush? I picture something liek "Talk to Hal the baker, he'll give you the secret password. Knock once on the blue mailbox on the corner and wait for further instructions."

Well, no. Down in the alley, there was a window into a well-lit showroom and a sign, but facing the 4 lane highway, there was just an empty parking lot and a huge shuttered-up building with unlit signage.

How weird.

do the row houses have decomposing dead bodies in them in real life?

lol sarah. I saw the row houses and my first thought was 'Hamsterdam!'.

The one deserted west Baltimore rowhouse that I’ve ever been in (for a Habitat for Humanity volunteer gig with my church group) had a dirty mattress in it with magazine pictures of r&b singers tacked to the wall. The floor was strewn with broken glass, feces, the occasional condom and lots and lots and lots of hypodermic needles.

there was one last week: http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/baltimore-city/bs-md-ci-vacant-home-fatal-20101108,0,643733.story

http://docomomo.ie/wordpress1/wpcontent/uploads/2014/02/16012014_DOCO01_Limerick_Competition_Docks_003LR.jpg

Ranks Mill, Limerick. They tried to topple it with dynamite a few years back but weren't successful.

https://irishurbanexplorations.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/img_5460.jpg?w=1200

now spreading in NYC: "ZOMBIE URBANISM"

http://vanishingnewyork.blogspot.com/2016/08/zombie-urbanism.html