Abandoned Places

Малая Сухаревская площадь, Москва.

Wed, 30 May 2012 07:44:48 GMT

Volksbad Nuremberg

Tue, 29 May 2012 17:13:42 GMT

First post - sorry if anything goes wrong here.

The Volksbad (public bath) in Nuremberg, lies outside of the ancient city wall, in the middle of an otherwise busy street. Hundreds of cars pass the old buildung, built according to the then-popular style of art nouveau, it gives a huge impression even when just standing at the entrance.

In 1914, this bath first opened it's doors for the people of Nuremeberg and it's surrounding cities. Complete with 3 swimming pools for men and women, 66 bathtubs and 14 showers, a steam bath as well as several hairdressing and refreshment rooms. A built-in laundry service and even a pool for dogs could be found within this structure. Between 1942 and 1945 it was hit several times by bombs of the british and american army. Renovated and rebuilt in 1947, it openend it's doors once again, but only one pool was actually usable. It would take until 1959 for the other two pools to be granted access again. In 1994 this precious treasure of German architecture was closed because of poor attendance and "outdated" appearance.

Until today, a lot of different uses were seen for the old bath. Varying from techno parties to a runway shows, it has seen a lot since it's closure - except water in it's pools or people enjoying a nice swim after a hard day of work. A booster club has been founded for the Volksbad and until a month ago or so, they had people from the club giving tours to freaks like me, for us to be able to capture the beauty of this stunning building for whatever may come after an investor has been found for this poor old bath.

So, technically, this place is not as "abandoned", since some events take place there every now and then. But it's not like it would be on a regular basis or that somebody would care and clean up the place. I still wanted to share this piece of history with you guys, because buildings like this are a total rarity nowadays.

Upon entering this building you feel an immediate suction of the cold air inside the main hall. And that's no surprise, given the way the whole thing was built (as told by the tourguide). To keep the warm air from the heating system inside, back then, they managed to create an overpressure, so that when hundreds of school kids came inside for swimming lessons with their classes, the warm air was basically "pushed out" of the building, instead of the cold air getting sucked in. Talking about swimming, my mother used to go swimming there for p.e. when she was still in school.

But, no more talk, here are the pics I took, hope you like'em!

http://pine-is-not-elm.livejournal.com/524.html

Abandoned homestead

Tue, 29 May 2012 16:32:21 GMT

Saint-Petersburgh, May 2012.

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Iola Tuberculosis Sanitarium

Sun, 27 May 2012 19:36:38 GMT

The Iola Tuberculosis Sanitarium served the public in Rochester for over 50 years, beginning some time in the early 20th century. Since its closure in the 1960s parts of the campus have been re-purposed as a factory, a traffic control center and a veteran's outreach center, though the latter two have slipped back into abandonment.

Today, Iola seems to be a popular spot for local teens to get trashed and party and for scrappers to steal piping, radiators and whatever else they can get their hands on.

Quite some time ago I posted another small photoset of Iola to this community, here. The photos in this post are from a range of time between then (late 2010) and now. The earlier ones were taken with a point and shoot (Canon SX20IS), but late last year I decided to step up and get myself an EOS 60D and I'm still getting the hang of it (but also loving it!). Advice, criticism, etc are all welcome. I'm a noob, I admit it.

The main building on the campus. The outside is in fairly good shape, and apparently the city still maintains the lawn here.

These two are from inside one of the peripheral structures on the campus. The main building is fronted and flanked by around seven separate, smaller buildings which appeared to have been maintenance shops, dormitories and general storage.

Another two from inside what I'm assuming was the maintenance building. The outside is completely overgrown, lending the interior a bright green glow through the windows. After this point, all the shots are of the main building.

The site has been slated for demolition since 2006. The contractor's sign has since fallen and grown a healthy coat of moss.

This fire escape was my exit route from the third floor when I spotted a pack of teenagers entering the building at dusk. I know this place is sometimes a party spot for the teens in the area, as evidenced by some of the tagging inside and from all the discarded red Solo cups and beer cans on the second floor.

Not sure what this used to be, but it shattered in a fun way.

The lower floors are full of dark, foreboding hallways.

Exposed support structure.

The area to the left is an old, open elevator shaft. The elevator rests at the bottom, steel cables coiled atop it. I hope to take a few decent shots of the elevator itself in the future.

A small wing of the main building was apparently the Traffic Control Center for Rochester at some point. This map was pressed against clear plastic and had pieces cut out at various intersections. The area behind the maps was exposed, and allowed light to shine through. Presumably they originally had actual lighting equipment behind the maps to illuminate problem areas as necessary, but now anything attached there is missing. The light I caught in these shots was cast by a broken window from an external door.

One entire hallway on the second floor was dominated by graffiti. Oddly enough, most of the interior displayed only childish tagging, whereas this area alone had a far more complex feel.

The scrappers left these behind despite looting the metals from every other one I came across.

There are some long, narrow balconies overlooking the immensely overgrown courtyard. This is one of the railings, surprisingly intact after all this time.

A view through a destroyed window of the one structure still in use on the campus.

In one section of the building there's the remains of an old theater. I think this is some sort of cue card... I'm guessing someone was shooting an indie film here.

I also came across the conveniently placed chair. Had I been any later in visiting this room, the sun wouldn't have cast through the hole in the window so dramatically.

Westinghouse Electric

Fri, 25 May 2012 21:05:24 GMT

Scenes from the Avengers movie were shot here. I have re-edited all photos from this set and added new ones, enjoy!

For more pictures from this set on Westinghouse Electric, click here - Flickr, 100 photos.

Follow me on Twitter and "Like" my page on Facebook!

Abandoned school near Moscow

Wed, 23 May 2012 19:51:23 GMT

Greetings) Today I post a blog with an interesting abandoned school. The school is a classic of abandoned places. As well as hospital. But personally, I like more to visit the abandoned school than the hospital.

Once with a friend, we decided to go to a town near Moscow. Walking along the streets, we noticed a small building is obviously of some institutions. See, all the doors are locked, the window dusty. Everything is clear - the potential deserted place. Already ten minutes later, due to the mistake of a local security of the building and not using any special effort, get inside. Of course, this school does not compare with many of the previous schools. But still interesting to walk inside, not every day such finding. The first thing see the class with old desks, on some written "message" from the recent past, when the school is still functioning. Walked on down the hall, go to the class of physics. Many old instruments, models, rulers, dynamometers, the school Board, as always. Go ahead, here and study Russian. Here more than empty, only a couple of announcements elective classes remind us of the study. Soon we find the pantry Cabinet of physics, a few posters on the space theme and the variety of instruments for training. Go to the stairs. The building is old, wooden stairs creaked under their feet. On the second floor - rooms with scattered test-books, study chemistry and interesting room with chemicals, reagents and utensils. Also stands for methodological education, dark room with a library and class with the posters and slogans. In General, the feelings are very controversial - as interesting to walk along the lonely classes, so sad, that this building already nobody wants.

1. So, let's begin.

2. Study of physics is filled with many different devices, models, manuals and other things typical of the cabinet of physics.

3. Magnets! The classic, from children's books)

4. The dream of almost every child in a child - collection of minerals. I'd always wanted to get it and liked to collect different found stones.

5. Different devices, gears, our reflection.

6. In the study of physics

7. Methodical area in the school

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9. the second floor of the climb up the old wooden staircase

10. In the rooms there are different books.

11. Go to the pantry cabinet of chemistry. Forbidden for all students of the place. Above the entrance is located poster with different definitions, you need to know by heart. "Remember this!"

12. Everywhere are chemical reagents, special glass.

13. On the table we find a record book - there was not an ordinary school with diplomas and journals. Performance is not the most brilliant.

14. And this cabinets with porcelain tableware. Quite a lot and in good condition.

15. In the next room find Globus - probably, it came from the Cabinet of geography. Globus curious what made before shooting back half of the moon, in its place a blank surface without the signatures.

16. And such cards on the unplanned control works, we all very afraid. Mainly, of course it was easy, but sometimes there were unrealistic tasks)

17. Ruler, crayons, the weights.

18. Meet and Soviet slogans. Where do without them? In a dark room with a library were still a few. "Each young worker - secondary education"

19. Model, showing the structure of a molecule of DNA.

20. In the study of chemistry in addition to the periodic table of elements specially nothing.

21. A bottle of xylene, cups for weighing and another glass.

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23. Pantry with slide shows and stands devoted to the cosmonautics.

School size is not very big, but the condition of the room is quite good.

Camp Evans

Mon, 21 May 2012 23:21:03 GMT

What is modern day Camp Evans, in Wall, NJ, started life long ago and has operated under several different banners since its opening.
Begun in 1912 and completed in 1914, Belmar Station was created by the Marconi Company, as one of their bases in a “wireless girdle” that
spanned around the globe. The Marconi Company, founded by Guglielmo Marconi, was at the cutting edge of wireless communications,
and was arguably the leader of the field during their time. The company was responsible for many of the major advancements in the field,
including the first transatlantic wireless communications, covering a distance of some 2,000 miles.

At the onset of WWI, the Marconi Company's Belmar Station was seized by the United States military... for obvious reasons.
At the conclusion of the war, the property was once again returned to the Marconi Company, who shortly thereafter was purchased by General Electric.
General Electric went on to create RCA, utilizing the assets they gained through the purchase of the Marconi Company. In 1924 RCA sold off the property
after they consolidated their receiver stations to Riverhead Receiver Station, in Long Island, NY. From there the property switched hands a couple times,
first to the “Monmouth County Pleasure Seeker's Club” (which had close ties to the Ku Klux Klan). This lasted until 1936, when King's College purchased
the land and established a school on the property.

In 1941 the United States Army purchased the land for use as a top-secret research and development center. Great advancements in radar technology
were made here, and Camp Evans is often cited as a major factor to the victory of the United States in WWII. After the war, Camp Evans was kept on
as a military research facility. The base had an active role in Project Paperclip, wherein German scientists were brought over to the United States
at the close of the war - an effort not only to gain the knowledge of Germany's leading minds, but to keep said intelligence from the USSR and the UK.
The scientific advancements made here gave us the ability to transmit through the ionosphere, allowing for communications between the earth and space.
Other notable creations to come out of the base were LED lights, nigh-vision goggles, and many advancements in things from nuclear dosimetry to silicon transistors.

Modern-day Camp Evans once again finds itself under new ownership. Titled “InfoAge”, this non-profit organization is currently at work turning the old
grounds into a kind of public museum. A place one can visit, and see first-hand the history which had unfolded here throughout its century of existence.

Sorry no video this time around, on account of it being crazy windy.
Obviously you can't really tell from the photos, but we were experiencing 40mph gusts.
(Which made my final shot from atop the tower more nerve-wracking than I wanted)

Abandoned hospital

Sun, 20 May 2012 20:30:50 GMT

Moscow, May 2012.

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Disused dyeworks - UK, May 2012

Sun, 20 May 2012 20:10:41 GMT

The original buildings were built in the early 19th century, although the site was later extended. It was run as a colourworks from 1973, up until its closure in 2006. The industrial site is accompanied by a row of terraced cottages, some used as accommodation for workers and some as offices for the business.

Welcome to the dyeworks! Please wipe your feet.

The abandoned mansion of count N

Sun, 20 May 2012 18:31:50 GMT

From time to time in Russia can be found unusual places. This mansion is such a place.

So dark and empty unusual place I have not seen a long time. Immediately comes to mind a similar spot, visited back in 2010 - an abandoned children's hospital/school. What we can see here? The gloomy weather, the clouds in the sky, a wide-old gate, fir alley which leads to the main house. Wet dew under the feet on the grass, at the end of the alley a gloomy monument is not the young pupil of high school Volodya Ulyanov (in the future - Lenin), not the nameless pioneer, minus nose. The silence around, a huge mansion in front of us. Quietly beginning to rain, and I want to have more get inside, to know that hides the mystery house. And behold, a small loophole was found, and we are already in. Stunning staircase leading us to the first floor to the second and the third. Huge rooms, where previously played music, conducted the wedding. A little later, all was silent, 1917-th year...the rest House, a school for children with disabilities. A Palace got kids. The years pass, the house gradually deteriorates, and that's the new coups, there is neither merchants, no people, no children...Just empty the house is in a Russian province, close to the lock and thrown to the mercy of fate, all the same fir alley away from the gate to the house, and the monument in the middle of the front of the mansion of the court as a reminder of bygone past...

1. We enter the old gate and go through the dark fir alley. Soon in the distance is shown gloomy count's mansion.

2. And here's a silent guardian of the estate. Who is it? Unnamed young pioneer ? Volodya Ulyanov?

3. Soon we get inside the house. The first thing we pass in the former kitchen. All of the cast, rusty exhaust, the old plates.

4. From the kitchen out into the great hall, to the left from the front door of the mansion. Vaulted ceilings, emptiness and an unusual form of the passage in the following part of the estate.

5. Soon we find ourselves in a corridor, in which before the servants were all necessary to their masters. Now it is very uncomfortable and I remember the stories about ghosts in the castle. Not a particularly wide passage, dark corners, peeling paint on both sides of the walls as if trying to reach out to us...

6. But here's the first floor is passed, and the old beautiful stairs we climb up to a well-lit the second floor. The Windows are beautifully decorated with decorative columns on the sides.

7. The Central hall of the manor. Beautiful picture on the wall reminds us about the past greatness. Several alarming children's palms on the sides of the painting. What is it? Jokes restorers? Greetings from the soviet boarding school?

8. After inspection of the other halls are back to the main staircase.

9. Painted butterfly, surrounded by cracks in the paint, makes you think about the boarding school for children with disabilities...

10. Time takes its own, the building gradually deteriorates, the column break.

11. On the front of the manor staircase hiding Lenin - from a past epoch. Someone wrote on the side finely "And only Lenin was a good leader...(c)."

12. Through the open doors of the rooms are viewed from one end of the estates in the other.

13. A small reminder of the school the past in one of the rooms in the lodge.

14. Descend back to the ground floor. It seems that the staircase goes nowhere, as in the classic horror films.

15. Fanciful curves of extracts in the kitchen.

16. Before I go and take a picture again the General plan of the main staircase - is, undoubtedly, one of the main attractions of the estate.

17. Leaving the territory of the mansion, turn around. In the Wake us from a pedestal looks all the same unnamed young man. From his hard glance it becomes uncomfortable.

18. The old gates of the estate, and it makes sad grin inscription "access denied".

To what unusual and beautiful, and at the same time, several ominous and frightening place. The manor, which has undergone several epochs, what will happen to you then?

P.S. Sorry for my English=)

Abandoned boarding school - UK, May 2012

Sat, 19 May 2012 21:42:00 GMT

This house was built in 1905 and ended up being run as a boarding school. It's a huge house with several outbuildings (and tennis courts) so there is a lot here that didn't end up in the photographs.

This is one of the 'outbuildings' viewed from the main house.

Disused lime kilns - UK, May 2012

Sat, 19 May 2012 01:16:16 GMT

I believe there used to be five buildings in total - I know some demolition has been carried out there and we passed one pile of rubble where a building used to stand.

Photo with my friend to show the scale of this one.

Teufelsberg

Fri, 18 May 2012 08:19:37 GMT

Yesterday a crew of friends and I went out to Teufelsberg, which is an old abandoned listening station located in the Grunewald forest, on the west edge of Berlin.

Standing in the middle of the domes and speaking was like talking into a microphone; everything was wildly amplified and sounded like my own words were beind spoken directly into my ears by an outside source – a very strange sensation.

Interesting places in the Midwest?

Thu, 17 May 2012 14:10:39 GMT

Hello all,

I'm looking for some good ideas of places to go- I'm living mostly in western Oklahoma and have easy access to New Mexico, Kansas, and Colorado. Just start driving on random country roads and see what happens? Research old mining and oil areas that aren't in use? I need somewhere interesting to go when I'm not at work.

Saying goodbye to a childhood home.

Thu, 17 May 2012 00:01:17 GMT

(Someone replied to my LJ post that it would make a good post for this community. So, here it is.)

I begin with: And this, too, shall pass.

From about December 1977 (and possibly for periods before- I turned four in January 1978, so my memories are cloudy), roughly (not long before my fourth birthday) to November 1980 I lived in what at one point had been my grandparents' honeymoon cottage- a house cobbled together from two or three squatters' shacks sometime around 1941, about the time when the oil boom first touched this particular spot in southeastern Texas. It was pretty much a shack back then, and time was not kind to it over the years. I live next to it now, and have done for the past fourteen years.

After I lived in it, it was left to sit for a while, unused. In 1993 my father, due to much nagging and excruciatingly poor advice from my grandmother, added a room to the front of it to make it an antique shop... on a highway twenty miles from gas... behind a fence and gate. As you might guess, it didn't work well.

When my father died in February 1999, the shop-warehouse became the junk shed- our storage place for anything that had to be kept out of the weather.

Then Hurricane Rita came, and pulled part of the roof off. We had no money to fix the roof- our homeowner's insurance classified the building as an "outlying structure" along with the fence, trees, etc. and included it in the $500 maximum payout for all damage to such. Rain came in the hole, and we did nothing about it. We couldn't afford to. Nobody else in the family was interested in doing anything about it, either.

Hurricane Ike came and made the hole in the roof even bigger.

And now it's like this:

Most of what you see here is the addition Dad built, mostly from second-class or reject lumber. The house itself has yaupon and other brush grown up in front of it in the years since Dad died.

On the other side you can see the damage clearly, including where wood rot from the rain has started to tear the building apart.

In the back you can see a little bit of what the house looked like back when it was still a house, still kept up, still inhabitable.

Now for the inside.

This is the front room of what was the shop- the first thing you see as you enter the door. This played no part of my childhood- there was a front porch here when I lived in it, with a screen door that fastened by a hook and eye. Mostly this room represents to me a grave mistake in my father's life- it cost him several thousand dollars to build, when he could have (and wanted to) pay down credit cards instead. He ended up declaring bankruptcy somewhere around 1996, losing a truck, a boat, and most other possessions of value.

This room is why I never, ever listen to my grandmother's advice on any business matters. Between this and other moves she nagged my grandfather into when he was alive, her advice was always, without exception, 100% BAD.

Onward to the worst damage...

This was, when I was little, the living room- the first room you entered coming in from the porch. You can see a bit of the master bedroom through the door in background. When I tell the Magical Disappearing Beer story, this is the room I remember when I tell it (though I much doubt, looking back, that it actually was in this room). If you look at the red patches on the part of the sheet rock that hasn't fallen in? I used to see animals and cartoon characters in the patterns it made.

Water and mold have pretty much destroyed everything that was in here- including the floor. Part has fallen in, and much of the rest is too rotten to walk on safely.

The master bedroom. My first clear memory of Forbidden Territory; the lair of the parents. As you see, the sheet rock is sagging here too where some rainwater has come this way.

The wooden box you see with peeling paneling is an old wire recorder. It hasn't worked for years, and the only recording we have left is the tangled spool in it. My dad wouldn't sell it- practically the only thing he never, ever considered selling, because one spool we used to have had a recording of my aunt, as a young woman, singing, something I can't recall her doing myself.

The louvers you see in the back wall open and close to reveal a giant fan. That fan was the sole cooling system the house had in summer when I was a kid. In winter there was one propane radiator in the living room, plus the gas stove.

The window I looked out as a child. The only phone in the house was in my room. Also, you had to walk through my room to get to the kitchen/dining room; the door between master bedroom and kitchen was often jammed and usually blocked by the dining table.

I don't know whether Dad got them for me, or for someone else, but I had a full fifteen-volume set of Childcraft since as long as I can remember. Sadly, they're long gone; haven't seen any of them since high school.

The kitchen. Despite the jumble you see, this is the room most like as it was when it was lived in. The stove you see actually came out of the house I currently live in when we quit using propane.

The back room, used during my childhood as a guest bedroom. To my recollection it was used for that purpose only once, when my mother's parents came up from Corpus Christi to escape Hurricane Fred. (I -think- it was Fred...)

Among the boxes here are a couple that were never unpacked since I moved back to the Thicket from San Antonio- mostly 3 1/2 floppies for games and such, old paperwork I didn't need then, much less now, Robert Jordan books I couldn't sell and got sick of reading, etc.

The bathroom. Part of me wants to say I completed toilet training in this room; if I did, I was horribly late!!

So, what memories do I have? I remember many times reaching up over my bed to the breaker box to switch on or off the air compressor that drove water up from the well into the concrete septic tank my grandfather used to build a cistern. (This system was used until I was in junior high; after my grandfather died, a new well was dug to a different aquifer that wasn't full of iron oxide and sulfur. For that one we had an in-line pump and a pressurized tank.)

I remember being hung-over and sick as hell, when Dad let me drink under his supervision as a very little kid. Intentionally or not, it was a totally effective way to put me off alcohol for life.

I remember long, hot days of being bored out of my mind, re-reading the school textbooks the distant cousins brought to me when they discovered my ability to read before entering school.

I remember wetting the bed and using the throw pillows on my bed to soak it up, terrified of the whipping I would get if discovered. (I didn't get whipped nearly as much as I feared at the time, but at the time I feared ANY bad thing would lead to a whipping.)

I remember running around outside in my underwear until my father told me, without any whippings needed, that it was an embarrassment to him and my mother when I did so.

I remember my terror of stinging insects (which I mostly retain), especially the highly territorial carpenter bees... that don't actually sting, but when they hover an inch from your nose trying to scare you into backing off, it's effective.

I remember being up at 5 AM because the school bus came at 5:30, taking an hour and a half to cover a route not longer than ten miles long, and watching the first thing that came on KJAC NBC-4 Beaumont weekday mornings- "Battle of the Planets."

I remember freezing in winter and sweltering in summer, spending a lot of time in my grandparents' trailer house because it was climate-controlled.

I remember my parents and some of their friends playing Pong around about 1979 or so. I wasn't allowed to even lay hands on it, and the system vanished before we got the Atari 2600 for Christmas 1980.

I remember, as a middle schooler entering puberty, sneaking over to the abandoned house and digging around in the master bedroom closet for my dad's porn collection. Even then I focused on the comics, taking most of them to my room at mom's house (where, one way or another, they eventually vanished).

I remember being awakened in the night to be told that we were going to Corpus Christi, immediately, get in the car. My mother's mother had died.

I remember being completely useless at slot cars and at a woodburning kit, both set up in the kitchen of the abandoned house to keep potential fire hazards out of my grandmother's trailer.

I remember Christmases where half the toys would be hand-me-downs from my aunt's kids, the other half either very cheap or educational.

I have a lot of other vague memories associated with that building... but most of them are of a building that hasn't existed since my dad added that shop room to the front. The house of my youth died, for all purposes, when that was done. It wasn't the same since.

And now the structure itself is about to die.

I'm writing this now, and taking these photographs, because by the time I get back from A-Kon, probably sooner, the building will be torn down and all its contents and components hauled away. The people doing it want the salvagable lumber, roof tin, and contents, plus some scrap metal we have. We won't be out a dime. The brush will be cleared back, fences and stuff removed, and the spot of ground on which it sits will be bare for the first time in seventy years.

My memories will fade, and when I die they'll either vanish or go with me to whatever afterlife might await. These photos likely won't even last that long, even with the forever nature of the Internet. Something new, a shed or a used portable building of some sort, will eventually go up on the spot, and WLP's stock will move into it. And that, too, eventually will pass, and something new will be built, or else the Big Thicket will reclaim what man once took from it.

And this too, shall pass. One life, or one portion of life, vanishes from view, leaving no trace... but something new always comes afterwards.

I'm a little sad to see it die... and much relieved that the rotting deathtrap and all its junk will soon be out of my life.

Derelict mill and house - UK, May 2012

Wed, 16 May 2012 21:00:26 GMT

This was a quick visit on the way home from somewhere else and I didn't have a torch with me so didn't look around the house - it actually operated as a restaurant prior to its abandonment. The mill building is very rotten inside, there are a lot of holes in the wooden floors. If I'm heading over that way again I'll stick a torch in the car and have a look inside the house too.

NYT: Last Ones Left in a Toxic Town

Wed, 16 May 2012 13:14:52 GMT

The last vacant house in an almost-empty town awaits demolition. More Photos

www.nytimes.com/2012/05/20/magazine/last-ones-left-in-treece-kan-a-toxic-town.html?_r=1&emc=eta1

Treece, Kansas, former mining town, is so polluted that the last residents have left; it's about to be wiped off the maps for good.

'States of Decay' video trailer

Tue, 15 May 2012 22:19:52 GMT

I hope I'm not reposting old news; this link came around on my Facebook feed today and I found it interesting. Apparently these folks were (or still are?) hoping to make a documentary series on the old Catskills hotels.

An Elegant Death

Tue, 15 May 2012 03:54:57 GMT

This entry is primarily (like 90%) about the video which can be found behind the cut...
It's been a long time since Christina and I have been to the old finishing school, and during that span we have both learned a great deal.
I, of course, shot a couple pics of the place upon our revisit, but Christina went on two different occasions to film it.
Once was pre-dawn (hence the golden sunrise hues throughout the video), and another time to wrap up all the shots she couldn't get that day.
And now, onto the entry...

Constructed in 1890 as a resort, this grand hall only served for a brief time in its original role.
By 1900 it was in use as an the upper class finishing school for young women. Built of wood and stone, the structure is equal parts elegance and frailty.
Intricate carvings can still be seen adorning corners and peaks, reminding passers-by that it must once have appeared a palace on its hilltop. Today, it more
closely resembles the classic image of a haunted mansion, the long lines of its architecture bowed and uneven as its windows stare blankly to the horizon.

The students here would likely have been the daughter's of industrialists, bankers and other members of society who's wealth permitted such an education.
Here, young women would learn fine arts and languages, and be schooled in all the lessons of societal behavior and etiquette that would make them
successful in their future roles as the wives of future bankers and industrialists.

As time progressed, such an institution began to seem more and more archaic. As the once-radical ideas of feminism became mainstream, finishing
schools became a symbol of sexism and a greater number of women began attending true colleges. In the 1970's, the school made a last-ditch effort to
modernize by expanding to a four year college, but the expanded curriculum only delayed its inevitable close in 1977.

Some places keep time differently from the rest of the world. Within these halls, it is still an era of floor-length dresses, horseback riding,
etiquette lessons and the long forgotten art of the curtsy. The very fibers of the decaying wood excrete these ideals, and cast them in long shadows across
the filth covered floors. The smell of lavender and the sound of a softly played piano are almost expected, even among the damp and dimly lit hallways
which have so gently replaced them.

*Remember to click it into HD*

Thanks for your time,
~Rusty

chernobyl diaries

Sat, 12 May 2012 18:50:27 GMT

i don't know if Russia know about this movie or not but "Chernobyl Diaries"
could lead to some bad tourist in other abandoned places around the would.
we might need to be vigilant in our neck of the woods to keep those sites we love clean

More Desert Center Palms

Fri, 11 May 2012 23:44:44 GMT

Taking Things From the Places You Visit: Ethical or Not?

Fri, 11 May 2012 19:00:35 GMT

Do you ever take things from the abandoned places that you visit and photograph?

Do external factors ever matter (e.g. the building is condemned and you know it will be torn down by x date, the building's in terrible shape and likely won't last much longer, most of it's undamaged, but part of it already suffers from water damage and/or mold, it's in an area vulnerable to taggers and vandals, you know it's highly unlikely anyone will ever come back to it, etc.) or should urban explorers always stick to the creed "take only photographs and nothing else"?

I'm curious because I've seen a whole range of responses from "never take anything" to "free stuff!" and I wonder what people here think.

Chippewa Lake Park

Fri, 11 May 2012 06:42:25 GMT

This abandoned amusement park was my very first urbex location. I shot it twice in 2007. It was open from 1878 through 1978 and is no longer standing. I have re-edited all my flickr photos and added 20 new ones to the set.

For more pictures from this set on Chippewa Lake Park, click here - Flickr, 49 photos.

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Nizhny Novgorod, Russia

Fri, 11 May 2012 06:12:18 GMT

The center of NN.

facade

molding

molding in my house for comparison :))

maid's room

Заброшенная водостанция в Калуге.

Fri, 11 May 2012 06:11:26 GMT