Boarding houses began to develop in the Catskill Mountains in the late 1800s as working-class families sought refuge from the dirty, unhealthy city in the mountains. Lodgers would rent one or more rooms for one or more nights, and meals were usually not included in the tab.
Category: Explorations
There is nothing like coming across a wayside junkyard nestled deep in the Appalachian Mountains while traveling in Pennsylvania. Following up on the incredible Volkswagen graveyard, this junkyard is far smaller with only a handful of vehicles but every bit as photogenic.
Stumbling upon an untouched apartment above a long-abandoned pharmacy in New York made me reflect on my own mortality and the finite nature of life.
Towering over the modest residences in its vicinity, the soaring blue limestone and Ohio sandstone faced Roman Catholic church is one of the most recognizable symbols of Albany, New York’s rich history. It’s also one of the most endangered.
I recently I visited the abandoned Hickling Power Station in the Southern Tier of New York on two separate occasions, and from my first visit early in 2017, not much has thankfully changed. Absent a camper’s fire in the turbine hall, nothing has been scrapped, nothing has been graffitied, nothing has been vandalized.
I piloted a drone over the abandoned Genesee Power Station in the Southern Tier of New York on a recent evening.
A building at the long-closed Frenchburg Presbyterian School burned to the ground around 1:30 PM on Saturday, April 15.
Along the southern harbors of Buffalo, New York are the ruins of several elevators. Some of those giants, such as the former Cargill Superior, and Canadian Pool, have been derelict for decades, but they can all point their decline to the development of the St. Lawrence Seaway and the unpreparedness of Buffalo’s industrial leaders as the reason for their closure.
This stunning Gothic Revival residence in Ithaca, New York, was constructed in 1880. The long-vacant property served as Turback’s Restaurant for many years, and it closed in 1997. It was previously Chef Yeppi Presents and the Gables Inn restaurants.
Once considered outdated and redneck, dirt oval racetracks have made a resurgence across the rural swaths of America as unending regulations and expensive fares make it hard to justify trips to a NASCAR race track. Local dirt track racing has come back full throttle, although that resurgence has not spread to the abandoned West Virginia Motor Speedway near Parkersburg, West Virginia.
East Liverpool, Ohio, once lovingly referred to as the “Crockery City” and the “Pottery Capital of the World,” is the classic definition of the Rust Belt. Much like Pittsburgh’s reliance on steel mills and Cleveland’s manufacturing plants, East Liverpool depended on the pottery industry because of ample natural resources, access to newly laid railroads, the Ohio River, and an untapped market.
The factory that produced the first welded steel pipe is partially abandoned. Wheeling Steel’s Benwood Works dates to 1884 when Riverside Iron Works, its earliest predecessor, became the second mill in the area to produce steel.
Once a bustling healthcare facility, the St. Joseph Riverside Hospital in Warren, Ohio, has been reduced to a desolate shell, ravaged by scrap metal scavengers, water damage, and fire.
Coming fresh from a visit to Vermont, I ventured on the back roads around upstate New York. The country was far too beautiful to pass up with rolling, overcast skies for as far as the eye can see. Autumn colors were plentiful. Rounding the corner, I look over and out of the corner of my eye, I sighted derelict locomotives. I did a quick turnabout in the car and hurried back. This was too photogenic to pass up.
Sometimes, I revisit an old friend and discover something new, such as the long-abandoned Jefferson School in Wheeling, West Virginia. I had not discovered much about the historic structure other than its demolition in 2013.
When the Dennison Hotel on Main Street in downtown Cincinnati, Ohio closed in 2011, it marked the end of a hoteling era. The single room occupancy extended stay facility once competed with the Browne Hotel, Fort Washington Hotel, Fountain Square Hotel, and others — all of which are long closed and demolished.
America is not unique in having desolate shopping malls, but the sheer number of underperforming, closed, and abandoned malls—including the mammoth Century III Mall near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania—should give cause for alarm.
Several years ago, I was able to visit the former printing operation for the Crowell-Collier Publishing Company, once the world’s largest magazine publishing house, in Springfield, Ohio.
Before the completion of the Detroit Harbor Terminals complex along the Detroit River in Detroit, Michigan, most of the commodities and raw materials used in Detroit were shipped first by water to Cleveland, Chicago, or Toledo and sent to Detroit via the railroad.
The Fisher Body Company Plant No. 21, located in Detroit, Michigan, produced automobile bodies for General Motors (GM). The Albert Kahn-designed facility was constructed in 1919 to provide wooden automobile bodies for a variety of companies, later manufacturing exclusively for GM. As early as 1930, GM downgraded the status of Fisher Body’s Plant 21 as being inefficient. GM began moving body manufacturing from Plant 21 to other, more efficient locations. However, the limousine body assembly was moved to Plant 21 from GM’s Fleetwood plant in 1955 because its output was only about 1,000 cars annually. On November 29, 1982, GM…