Sherman Cahal is a historian and photographer based in a small town in upstate New York.
The printing operations for the Crowell-Collier Publishing Company, then the world’s largest magazine publishing house, was located on High Street in Springfield, Ohio. After years of underutilization and disuse, the remainder of the once-storied complex will be demolished.
The Millard F. Field Building, located at Winchester Avenue and 16th Street in downtown Ashland, Kentucky, was home to the Field Department Store and Sears.
The first impressions of the historic Proctor’s Palace Theatre included several floors of debris, seats, and metalwork piled high, stairs that had devolved into ramps devised out of plater and asbestos, and dingy darkness. But the second tier offered views of the theater’s mammoth size and its remarkable, intact features, such as the balconies, orchestra pit, and extensive stenciling.
The Lonaconing, Maryland silk mill, last operated by General Textile Mills, is one of my favorite buildings to photograph. From its early 20th century machinery to its dated calendars and papers, it is remarkable that this testament to industrial heritage remains standing well over 50 years past its closure.
The historic Hotel Belvedere in Apollo, Pennsylvania burned to the ground shortly after midnight on July 24, 2019.
While living in the now-demolished Friar’s Club in Cincinnati, Ohio between 1941 and 1944, Lumen Martin Winter painted murals on the walls of the residents’ lounge. The 1,600 square-foot scenes, painted in tempera emulsion on a casein ground, depicted regional highlights of industry, music, religion, and literature.
Some time back, I was afforded an opportunity to view the private collection of airplanes of the late Walter Soplata in Ohio. Over the ensuing decades, he saved countless aircraft from being sold to the highest bidder and scrapped.
Warwick State Training School, a former alcohol and drug treatment center, youth rehabilitation complex, and prison will now be host to a brewery and medical marijuana farm in upstate New York.
The Palmer Park Apartment Building Historic District, well regarded for its ornate and varied examples of active and abandoned apartment buildings, is located in the Palmer Park neighborhood of Detroit, Michigan.
The Rust Belt defines a vast declining industrial corridor of the United States roughly between Chicago and Albany, New York, and dominating many of those once-bustling communities are churches. Many were built as domestic steel mills were being constructed across the country in the early 20th century, and many were closed with the collapse of the steel industry.
I visited the long-abandoned Van Nattas Pumping Station in Ithaca, New York while on a life-changing several-week-long road trip to the Finger Lakes in 2016.
The former Belvedere Hotel in Apollo, Pennsylvania was a hoarder’s paradise.
At 2,500 feet in elevation, exploring the former Allegheny Tuberculosis Sanatorium was a delight. With heavy fog blanketing the campus in the early mornings, perpetual overcast days, and cooler temperatures even in the dead of summer, its location along the Allegheny Mountain front in Pennsylvania was ideal.
Many years ago, I night hiked into the Indiana Army Ammunition Plant (IAAP) in southern Indiana—the most substantial industrial abandonment in the United States. Sprawling over 19,000 acres, IAAP was overwhelming.
Driving home to upstate New York on a cold, blustery evening, I stopped to visit a childhood memory: the everlasting tourist attraction, Roadside America, but I arrived too late, and the kitschy gift shop and model railroad exhibit was closed for the day. Determined to make the best of the waning evening, I stopped by next door to visit the ruined Suwannee Belle.
Sources report that the Ford Motor Company began negotiations to acquire the long-abandoned Michigan Central Station in Detroitl, Michigan.
Or singles day. Whatever.
Several years ago, I hiked to the east abutment of the abandoned Young’s High Bridge in central Kentucky to photograph the sunset and blue hour. Little did I know that I was about to witness a suicide—or did I?
Do we have any X-Files fans on here? You can guess my excitement when I found out when the episode Kitten was centered around Mud Lick, Kentucky.