Abandoned Churches and other places left behind
May 30, 2022 6:50 PM Subscribe
I've been to more abandoned churches than I can count. I like to give them each their own gallery but sometimes I only get to an image to two. Holy places are built to worship a higher power; what becomes of them, and of us, when they are left behind?
Abandoned Religious Sites
Abandoned Health Care Facilities
Abandoned Entertainment Venues
Abandoned Hotels and Resorts
Abandoned Industrial Sites
Abandoned Homes and Neighborhoods
Abandoned Prisons
Abandoned Research Facilities and Schools
Abandoned Places
Abandoned Religious Sites
Abandoned Health Care Facilities
Abandoned Entertainment Venues
Abandoned Hotels and Resorts
Abandoned Industrial Sites
Abandoned Homes and Neighborhoods
Abandoned Prisons
Abandoned Research Facilities and Schools
Abandoned Places
We are such a wasteful, greedy bunch, aren't we? So many beautiful buildings just abandoned when so many people have nowhere to sleep. I get that many of these are no longer suitable for their original purpose (particularly hospitals and prisons), but it's just such a shame to see them abandoned. Local governments should be mandating efforts to re-purpose abandoned buildings where possible before approving new buildings.
Having said that, I think some buildings like asylums and prisons may harbour so much negative energy of some sort that knocking them down is best for everyone. So much concentrated suffering over so many years :-(
posted by dg at 7:55 PM on May 30, 2022 [2 favorites]
Having said that, I think some buildings like asylums and prisons may harbour so much negative energy of some sort that knocking them down is best for everyone. So much concentrated suffering over so many years :-(
posted by dg at 7:55 PM on May 30, 2022 [2 favorites]
MeFi’s Own jscalzi buys them.
posted by infinitewindow at 8:13 PM on May 30, 2022 [4 favorites]
posted by infinitewindow at 8:13 PM on May 30, 2022 [4 favorites]
Detroit World Outreach
198,085 SF Specialty Building Offered at $7,100,000 in Redford, MI.
jottleing around the google...
Religious Real Estate.com
posted by clavdivs at 9:01 PM on May 30, 2022
198,085 SF Specialty Building Offered at $7,100,000 in Redford, MI.
jottleing around the google...
Religious Real Estate.com
posted by clavdivs at 9:01 PM on May 30, 2022
The why is pretty straightforward, especially with something like a church. These are aging buildings that will often require absolutely enormous costs to keep up and operate, due to their age and style of construction. And the building's usefulness is pretty much limited to churches and other similar but less well funded community organizations. Almost anything you could use one of these building for, including another church, would be more efficiently and less expensively achieved by knocking the building down and building the structure you wanted in the first place.
posted by wotsac at 9:19 PM on May 30, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by wotsac at 9:19 PM on May 30, 2022 [2 favorites]
These Houses of God are being overtaken by nature, but nature is just another facet of God, so maybe there’s no abandonment at all.
posted by Capt. Renault at 9:40 PM on May 30, 2022 [7 favorites]
posted by Capt. Renault at 9:40 PM on May 30, 2022 [7 favorites]
Ophthalmic surgeon Sir William Wilde [Oscar's dad] built an eye hospital in the centre of Dublin, conveniently round the corner from his home. The design brief was that it could be easily converted into a Methodist chapel if the hospital business failed. That didn't happen but, by the mid-20thC, the building, then named O'Hara's, was being simultaneously used as a builders' merchant, a dance-studio, a dental laboratory and the Trinity College Department of Genetics. Demolished in 1997 for redevelopment as a single purpose genetics facility.
posted by BobTheScientist at 11:13 PM on May 30, 2022 [7 favorites]
posted by BobTheScientist at 11:13 PM on May 30, 2022 [7 favorites]
I daydream about buying them and turning then into community centers / really cool bar.
posted by St. Peepsburg at 12:07 AM on May 31, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by St. Peepsburg at 12:07 AM on May 31, 2022 [1 favorite]
The only answer is gay dance clubs
posted by thedaniel at 12:35 AM on May 31, 2022 [8 favorites]
posted by thedaniel at 12:35 AM on May 31, 2022 [8 favorites]
I daydream about buying them and turning then into community centers / really cool bar.
Your prayers answered.
posted by Wet Spot at 3:01 AM on May 31, 2022 [1 favorite]
Your prayers answered.
posted by Wet Spot at 3:01 AM on May 31, 2022 [1 favorite]
A friend of mine leads legal photo shoot excursions to abandoned sites in Eastern Ohio and Western PA. I went with her to shoot an entire street of abandoned apartment buildings in East Cleveland last fall. There's so much abandoned stuff here in the Rust Belt.
posted by octothorpe at 4:31 AM on May 31, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by octothorpe at 4:31 AM on May 31, 2022 [2 favorites]
"The only answer is gay dance clubs"
Oh please not another NYC Limelight!
posted by DJZouke at 5:15 AM on May 31, 2022
Oh please not another NYC Limelight!
posted by DJZouke at 5:15 AM on May 31, 2022
Weirdly we had a church converted into a metal/punk concert venue that recently converted back into being a church.
posted by octothorpe at 5:28 AM on May 31, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by octothorpe at 5:28 AM on May 31, 2022 [1 favorite]
I daydream about buying them and turning then into community centers / really cool bar.
Me too! My vision is as a sort of configurable community event space where people could host small events of varying sizes and purposes with available catering or a shared bar / café for cash and carry. Modular walls and furniture for different purposes, secure storage space available for clubs and associations with standing meetings and things they'd like to leave behind. A sort of WeWork but for NotWork.
posted by jacquilynne at 5:57 AM on May 31, 2022 [1 favorite]
Me too! My vision is as a sort of configurable community event space where people could host small events of varying sizes and purposes with available catering or a shared bar / café for cash and carry. Modular walls and furniture for different purposes, secure storage space available for clubs and associations with standing meetings and things they'd like to leave behind. A sort of WeWork but for NotWork.
posted by jacquilynne at 5:57 AM on May 31, 2022 [1 favorite]
Weirdly we had a church converted into a metal/punk concert venue that recently converted back into being a church.
I'm sure the reality is more prosaic, but I am imagining a world-class exorcism as the first step in their returning it to church service.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:29 AM on May 31, 2022
I'm sure the reality is more prosaic, but I am imagining a world-class exorcism as the first step in their returning it to church service.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:29 AM on May 31, 2022
Abandoned America is a pretty great Twitter follow, just in case you aren’t already.
posted by Ghidorah at 6:29 AM on May 31, 2022
posted by Ghidorah at 6:29 AM on May 31, 2022
As I was invoked:
Yup, we bought a church in our town. Our plan for it is to use it as
a) business space, with offices for myself and my wife;
b) storage;
c) guest housing when friends/family come to visit;
d) entertainment and event space, both personally and for community events we decide to host.
The latter of these is not insignificant. The church housed a Methodist congregation for decades and any number of people in town went to worship there, got married there, said their last goodbyes to loved ones there, and so on. We don't want to cut it off entirely from the community. We're improving the sanctuary space but are otherwise keeping it as a place where people can congregate, and our (at this point nebulous) plan is to have events like performance and readings and so forth that the community will be invited to.
That will be after the renovations, currently underway, which are not trivial (new roof, new retaining wall, remodeling the balcony area, etc). If you're wondering how I'm spending my royalty money recently, this is it. But when it's done, it'd going to be pretty great, and the building will have a new life, for us, and for the town.
posted by jscalzi at 8:10 AM on May 31, 2022 [18 favorites]
Yup, we bought a church in our town. Our plan for it is to use it as
a) business space, with offices for myself and my wife;
b) storage;
c) guest housing when friends/family come to visit;
d) entertainment and event space, both personally and for community events we decide to host.
The latter of these is not insignificant. The church housed a Methodist congregation for decades and any number of people in town went to worship there, got married there, said their last goodbyes to loved ones there, and so on. We don't want to cut it off entirely from the community. We're improving the sanctuary space but are otherwise keeping it as a place where people can congregate, and our (at this point nebulous) plan is to have events like performance and readings and so forth that the community will be invited to.
That will be after the renovations, currently underway, which are not trivial (new roof, new retaining wall, remodeling the balcony area, etc). If you're wondering how I'm spending my royalty money recently, this is it. But when it's done, it'd going to be pretty great, and the building will have a new life, for us, and for the town.
posted by jscalzi at 8:10 AM on May 31, 2022 [18 favorites]
Nobody else has the "You can get any thing you want at Alice's..." going through their head reading this? As the song said: “Alice didn’t live in a restaurant. She lived in the church nearby the restaurant…”
Which is now a community center.
"And the old Trinity Church, where Alice once lived and where the saga began has become home to The Guthrie Center."
posted by aleph at 9:05 AM on May 31, 2022 [4 favorites]
Which is now a community center.
"And the old Trinity Church, where Alice once lived and where the saga began has become home to The Guthrie Center."
posted by aleph at 9:05 AM on May 31, 2022 [4 favorites]
A belltower seems like a natural thing for a SFF author to have, but a belltower and crenelations! Irresistible!
The depressed coast town my mother lived in for a while had several church buildings operating as bars and flat-top* bar buildings operating as churches.
*not in the UK, and yet an identifiable species
posted by clew at 9:08 AM on May 31, 2022 [1 favorite]
The depressed coast town my mother lived in for a while had several church buildings operating as bars and flat-top* bar buildings operating as churches.
*not in the UK, and yet an identifiable species
posted by clew at 9:08 AM on May 31, 2022 [1 favorite]
Were I to buy one I'd probably have to put a huge "(expletive) your god" sign behind the altar space, regardless of my intended reuse strategy.
...I mean, it's pretty much mandatory, when you think about it.
posted by aramaic at 9:52 AM on May 31, 2022
...I mean, it's pretty much mandatory, when you think about it.
posted by aramaic at 9:52 AM on May 31, 2022
And yet the one person in this thread who has actually bought a church to transform into something else is doing so in a manner that is sensitive to the positive meaning it had to the community as a church, so I guess it isn't, actually.
posted by jacquilynne at 1:03 PM on May 31, 2022 [10 favorites]
posted by jacquilynne at 1:03 PM on May 31, 2022 [10 favorites]
The why is pretty straightforward, especially with something like a church. These are aging buildings that will often require absolutely enormous costs to keep up and operate, due to their age and style of construction. And the building's usefulness is pretty much limited to churches and other similar but less well funded community organizations. Almost anything you could use one of these building for, including another church, would be more efficiently and less expensively achieved by knocking the building down and building the structure you wanted in the first place.
Sure, the why is obvious. But I don't buy the argument that many of these buildings cannot be repurposed effectively. In a situation where the building has been allowed to decay to the point it's structurally unsound, sure, knocking it down and building a new shiny generic cube is the only viable choice. But so many of these buildings are very sound and, for a similar cost to building a glass-clad cube, could be sympathetically repurposed into an equally efficient building that retains the character of the original. Buildings are part of the history of a place and, wherever possible, should be retained to the extent possible. All it takes is the vision to start with the structure and build what you want into it, as opposed to the usual approach of deciding what can be built on the piece of ground the building currently occupies. The local government authorities should be taking the lead in this by requiring that the owners of buildings maintain them or forfeit their ownership (so stopping them from falling into disrepair in the first place) and requiring that re-development must retain at least the original shell. Buildings have forever been re-purposed and re-built over and over but we're so obsessed with the new and shiny that we refuse to see the value in retaining that history, so we lose the soul of our towns and cities in the process.
posted by dg at 1:33 PM on May 31, 2022 [4 favorites]
Sure, the why is obvious. But I don't buy the argument that many of these buildings cannot be repurposed effectively. In a situation where the building has been allowed to decay to the point it's structurally unsound, sure, knocking it down and building a new shiny generic cube is the only viable choice. But so many of these buildings are very sound and, for a similar cost to building a glass-clad cube, could be sympathetically repurposed into an equally efficient building that retains the character of the original. Buildings are part of the history of a place and, wherever possible, should be retained to the extent possible. All it takes is the vision to start with the structure and build what you want into it, as opposed to the usual approach of deciding what can be built on the piece of ground the building currently occupies. The local government authorities should be taking the lead in this by requiring that the owners of buildings maintain them or forfeit their ownership (so stopping them from falling into disrepair in the first place) and requiring that re-development must retain at least the original shell. Buildings have forever been re-purposed and re-built over and over but we're so obsessed with the new and shiny that we refuse to see the value in retaining that history, so we lose the soul of our towns and cities in the process.
posted by dg at 1:33 PM on May 31, 2022 [4 favorites]
“ Oh please not another NYC Limelight!”
I was thinking of Heaven in London but sorry I don’t make the rules
posted by thedaniel at 4:41 PM on May 31, 2022
I was thinking of Heaven in London but sorry I don’t make the rules
posted by thedaniel at 4:41 PM on May 31, 2022
But I don't buy the argument that many of these buildings cannot be repurposed effectively. In a situation where the building has been allowed to decay to the point it's structurally unsound, sure, knocking it down and building a new shiny generic cube is the only viable choice. But so many of these buildings are very sound and, for a similar cost to building a glass-clad cube, could be sympathetically repurposed into an equally efficient building that retains the character of the original.
There is some weird math that only applies to commercial real estate, such that it is often advantageous (or at least not non-advantageous) for an owner of a commercial building to leave it empty and unmaintained. I've always assumed it has to do with the tax writeoffs, as well as so much off the value of a commercial property is in its zoning and speculative future land value, not in the structure that is on it. But it is frustrating to walk around the downtown here and see some of the beautiful buildings that are just slowly falling down. Someday they will get redeveloped, but in the meantime there is no incentive to the owner to do much of anything with the building.
Churches seem a bit similar, in that there don't seem to be the same consequences to letting a church deteriorate as there would be if it was your own house.
posted by Dip Flash at 4:44 PM on May 31, 2022 [1 favorite]
There is some weird math that only applies to commercial real estate, such that it is often advantageous (or at least not non-advantageous) for an owner of a commercial building to leave it empty and unmaintained. I've always assumed it has to do with the tax writeoffs, as well as so much off the value of a commercial property is in its zoning and speculative future land value, not in the structure that is on it. But it is frustrating to walk around the downtown here and see some of the beautiful buildings that are just slowly falling down. Someday they will get redeveloped, but in the meantime there is no incentive to the owner to do much of anything with the building.
Churches seem a bit similar, in that there don't seem to be the same consequences to letting a church deteriorate as there would be if it was your own house.
posted by Dip Flash at 4:44 PM on May 31, 2022 [1 favorite]
You don't shut down (let alone abandon) a church for funsies. I'd at least imagine that many shut down at the point where the decreasing size of the congregation intersects with a bill to keep the church operating that the congregation can't pay. That's probably going to be the roof, but at that point there's good odds that the windows, boiler, tuck pointing, etc have been living on a prayer for a decade or three. So on the day the doors close it's already the 11th hour for the building.
If somebody external has pulled the plug before matters have gotten too tenuous, if the demographics have shifted in a way that the gay dance club or funky brew pub can afford to buy it and put a new roof on it? Then it didn't get abandoned. But if your community organization doesn't have a healthy percentage of the size that built the church to start with, a skilled grant writer and reasonable hopes to grow? Hopefully you had the sense to stay far away.
Also, looking over clavdivs link, zoning looks to range from single family residential to weird - which might work for you but it's liable to cause some amount of heartburn.
posted by wotsac at 4:51 PM on May 31, 2022
If somebody external has pulled the plug before matters have gotten too tenuous, if the demographics have shifted in a way that the gay dance club or funky brew pub can afford to buy it and put a new roof on it? Then it didn't get abandoned. But if your community organization doesn't have a healthy percentage of the size that built the church to start with, a skilled grant writer and reasonable hopes to grow? Hopefully you had the sense to stay far away.
Also, looking over clavdivs link, zoning looks to range from single family residential to weird - which might work for you but it's liable to cause some amount of heartburn.
posted by wotsac at 4:51 PM on May 31, 2022
The beautiful little bijou of a 200-year-old church where I was baptized is now covered in beige aluminum siding to better blend in with the soulless box of an apartment building it currently serves as a foyer/office for. I’m no longer a religious person, but it’s hard to look at.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 6:34 PM on May 31, 2022
posted by The Underpants Monster at 6:34 PM on May 31, 2022
Abandonment is fascinating; where I live it simply doesn't happen, land value is so enormous that anything underutilised gets picked up like a dead fish falling to the sea floor crabs. That said, significance and use! What amazing arguments to have!
There was a church near where I live, in Marrickville in Sydney, that became a minor political storm when its owners, the Church of Christ (a dissenting 19thC Methodist sect) proposed to demolish it in order to build an affordable/social boarding house, which is what that church does now. In NSW Councils have to approve development in a standard way, with specific things to consider, and if there's any question about heritage they have to properly assess it—which they did, and found that it was certainly of architectural and social heritage significance, rare and worthy of statutory protection. I read the commissioned report, which is also my work expertise, and it was right, the Church building really did pass the criteria as written. It was the Church's owners and congregants who wanted to demolish and reuse the land, and the heritage experts and the neighbours who wanted it retained for its history.
It split the Council, and not on Party lines; some of the Greens and some of the Labor councillors argued for retention on the general grounds of conservation, while other Greens, other Labor, and the Liberals (i.e. the right-wing party) argued that we really do need more housing in the inner city, a need that trumps heritage protection. In the end Council had to make a half-solution, to vote to overrule the expert, and to deny that the building had significance in spite of the report they commissioned—in order to allow the development, which would otherwise have been illegal, despite the desires of the actual members of the Church of Christ. Fulfilling the law, as the saying goes, not abolishing it...
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 7:38 PM on May 31, 2022 [2 favorites]
There was a church near where I live, in Marrickville in Sydney, that became a minor political storm when its owners, the Church of Christ (a dissenting 19thC Methodist sect) proposed to demolish it in order to build an affordable/social boarding house, which is what that church does now. In NSW Councils have to approve development in a standard way, with specific things to consider, and if there's any question about heritage they have to properly assess it—which they did, and found that it was certainly of architectural and social heritage significance, rare and worthy of statutory protection. I read the commissioned report, which is also my work expertise, and it was right, the Church building really did pass the criteria as written. It was the Church's owners and congregants who wanted to demolish and reuse the land, and the heritage experts and the neighbours who wanted it retained for its history.
It split the Council, and not on Party lines; some of the Greens and some of the Labor councillors argued for retention on the general grounds of conservation, while other Greens, other Labor, and the Liberals (i.e. the right-wing party) argued that we really do need more housing in the inner city, a need that trumps heritage protection. In the end Council had to make a half-solution, to vote to overrule the expert, and to deny that the building had significance in spite of the report they commissioned—in order to allow the development, which would otherwise have been illegal, despite the desires of the actual members of the Church of Christ. Fulfilling the law, as the saying goes, not abolishing it...
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 7:38 PM on May 31, 2022 [2 favorites]
The abandonded chuch in my village became a firehall (at an enourmous cost of restoration when the village has had no money spent on community resources for decades by our larger municipality). The firetruck garage doors are huge arched windows that look beautiful. Every time my girlfriends drives past she comments that it is the prettiest firehall she has every seen.
posted by saucysault at 6:45 AM on June 1, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by saucysault at 6:45 AM on June 1, 2022 [1 favorite]
It's difficult, because so many of these buildings would merit preservation, but their floor plan, condition and location can constrain away future uses to nothing, or to spending enormous sums on a restoration in an underserved community when that money could go to offering services in the community instead of paying what will probably be outside contractors
posted by wotsac at 6:59 AM on June 1, 2022
posted by wotsac at 6:59 AM on June 1, 2022
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