Disclaimer: The hospital discussed in this post will be referred to under the pseudonym “SIM hospital.” I do this only rarely, when a location is on active grounds and/or fairly unexplored/unknown, as I don’t want to be responsible for vandals and scrappers finding an undisturbed place and going all Carrie Nation in there and and ruining it for everyone. The Seaman’s retreat was Staten Island’s first hospital, constructed in 1831. It shares property with the […read more…]
Built in 1850, The Freeman Avenue United Church of Christ was originally known as the First German Reformed Church. In 1918, they dropped the German part of the name due to the spreading of anti-German sentiment following WWI. Fortuitous move, considering what happened about 20 years later. The church began to struggle financially in the 60s, as the changing demographic and economic decline of the neighborhood saw a marked decrease in attendance. The church closed […read more…]
When I think of things I did NOT enjoy as a child, the list is surprisingly short: Math, church service, the tuna fish and crumbled crackers dinner my dad made when ma was at work (“because it’s simple; it’s what we ate during The War.”) and antiques. Not the antiques themselves, but the act of shopping for them. Few childhood memories evoke that very specific type of hopeless dread I feel when someone mentions, “going antiquing.” […read more…]
Time for another addition of Found Things! As always, many of these images and captions are taken directly from my Instagram, so my apologies if you already follow me and some of these are repeats. This post is all stuff found at Greystone Park State Hospital. I try to avoid themed found lists, but as I stated in this gallery post, I’m pushing Greystone stuff due to its impending demolition. Letterhead/paper ephemera is one of the lesser-known […read more…]
FYI: “Gallery” posts mean mostly photos instead of my usual half photos/half writing posts. I do gallery posts when I’m saving the history write ups for a later date. Update, August 2014: Demolition of Greystone started in the spring and progressed with unprecedented speed, despite multiple lawsuits and appeals to stop the process and save the building. RIP Greystone. Fuck you, Chris Christie. I’ve been hoarding my Greystone photos for a couple of years now, […read more…]
At a time when New York City real estate is stupid expensive, and historic landmarks are being turned into high rises that look like a game of Tetris, it’s surprising when anything remains abandoned, especially large buildings like the Greenpoint Hospital in Brooklyn. To clarify, the building in the photos of this post were the nurses’ residence and a rehab facility. The main hospital was repurposed into other uses and is not abandoned. Before I […read more…]
It seems like a good time to run some Harlem Valley photos because the asylum is currently undergoing renovation by Olivet.* Soon, it will be a college campus subjected to all kinds of dumb horror stories, and curious students will start discovering the underground labyrinth of utility tunnels that explorers and scrappers have been dicking around in for decades. Eventually, enough time will pass, and most people will forget it was ever an asylum, except […read more…]
Disclaimer: This location is not completely abandoned, one of the floors is occupied. The short story of this factory building is that it manufactured many different things, from paint rollers to medicine bottles to ball bearings. The longer story is once I was out exploring by myself in Dover, New York (not where this factory is located) when I ran into Rob Yasinsac outside an old farmhouse. Rob’s Hudson Valley Ruins site has been a decades-long exploring […read more…]