Browsing category Abandoned

Building a Church


  This block, part of a desolate stretch of shuttered businesses in West Detroit, was once occupied by the Bible Community Mission. While the mission has long been abandoned, an apparent devotee has decided to keep spreading the word, tagging the nearby storefronts with religious messages. A vacant bar across the street now has a hand-painted sign declaring "wine is a mocker". Around the corner, a derelict training center serves as a new billboard for Jesus, although the interior -

Illinois


  Waking up with this new president in place, it already feels like a better world than yesterday. And there are such beauties in his most recent home state. I first heard of Obama a few years ago in connection with my very favorite abandoned hospital. I had recently discovered it in a small town in southern Illinois and its creepy hallways, moss-carpeted floors and decaying beds inspired a continuous work in progress called Funeral Play. The (then) senator, I read while doing some

I Want To Curate Rot


  In this museum – otherwise known as a shuttered regional hospital – a special room is dedicated to the science of deterioration. Enter this glass-framed exhibition space and you can admire an astonishing specimen of wall decomposition with its characteristic folds of drooping paint. Stay as long as you like, the show will only get better. There is even a bench for those who would like to sit and sketch or simply contemplate the epidermal changes in the scenery. All that’s missing are a

Three Doors, Three Years


  Above, the upper floor of a mental hospital building as seen in December 2006. Below are the same three doors in December 2007 (top) and December 2008. The green door took a hit; otherwise there are surprisingly few changes, even though this area no longer has a roof. If it's still possible to return in December 2009, it will have been a good year.    

Mall of the Apocalypse


  Apparently the zombies already rolled through here a few years ago, when this site was used as the set of a horror flick. So the worst has passed. Instead of an unattractive, flesh-eating mob of cadavers, which would seem the most appropriate life form here, all that can now be expected are the ghosts of desiccated cashiers and shoe salesmen, squinty tech experts from the 70s and the dreaded proponents of rayon slacks. Luckily the escalator is out of commission to spare us the

Reading Gary


    In the great heap of architectural detritus that makes up downtown Gary, Indiana, this small abandoned structure did not immediately seem striking. Marked "East Side Branch Library", it sits amidst burnt-out houses and is itself entirely gutted. But I thought that my friend Gayle, who works at the New York Public Library and writes on urbanlandscaped, would enjoy some snapshots. Upon closer inspection, the building revealed interesting details - open books carved above

Buried in the Woods


  Recent talk about how to commemorate the patient cemetery of Western State Hospital, where patients were buried for 160 years with only a number on their tombstones, once again calls attention to the sporadic dehumanization of the mentally ill. In this case, among other things, the separation of a body from its name. Burying patients without clear identification was standard practice across the country. Nonetheless, stumbling across one of those grave sites unexpectedly - like the

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... this travelogue

Explorations and ruminations about time capsules near and far, with an eye towards the structures, textures and playgrounds of decay. A companion blog for darkpassage.com.

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