Victorian-era (“gingerbread”) adornments are one of my favorite architectural highlights of any building, transforming otherwise dull designs into lavish representations.
An exploratory group of veterans wants to relocate the dilapidated USS Ling, a Balao-class submarine of the United States Navy, from Hackensack, New Jersey to Louisville, Kentucky.
A late autumn drive in the fog and rain along Upper Delaware Scenic Byway along the Delaware River on the edge of the Catskill Mountains of New York can take anyone’s breath away.
One of the Mountain State’s best-kept secrets, Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum is a former mental hospital turned tourist attraction in Weston, West Virginia.
Uplands is a 42-room Victorian-style mansion that was constructed in the western fringes of Baltimore, Maryland in 1850.
Housing 155,000 inmates over its 104 years of operation, the Ohio State Reformatory in Mansfield, Ohio commanded attention. Designed by Levi T. Scofield in the Richardsonian Romanesque style, the exterior of the prison resembled the appearance of several castles in western Europe. Aptly, it received the nickname “Dracula’s Castle” for its gothic presentation.
The Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary Parish contains an abandoned church, school, and parish house in the Newburgh neighborhood of Cleveland, Ohio.
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.
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.
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.