Abandoned but not forgotten.
July 26, 2007 12:00 PM   Subscribe

Abandoned places: A satellite facility. A drag strip. A sports arena. A factory. A highway. A school. Another factory. An industrial park. A missile site. A church. A brewery. And much more at Abandoned But Not Forgotten. (Warning: Web 0.2 site with very large photos of variable quality...)
posted by dersins (41 comments total) 29 users marked this as a favorite
 
As I looked at the highway link, I thought, "what a great bike lane!" Sure enough, it seems that it's being turned into a bike trail. Too bad for me it's in Western PA.
posted by Mister_A at 12:05 PM on July 26, 2007


I'd pay some good money for a couple of the Falstaff Beer crates in the brewery link. Falstaff! Beer! I can hear the chimes at midnight now.
posted by OmieWise at 12:09 PM on July 26, 2007 [1 favorite]


Woah. Time for a road trip!
posted by loquacious at 12:09 PM on July 26, 2007


I see they also have Centralia Pa, my own favorite abandoned place (although I've never actually been). This site has more pictures of it.
posted by frobozz at 12:12 PM on July 26, 2007


I hope the folks in the metal theft thread don't find out about that satellite facility...
posted by These Premises Are Alarmed at 12:18 PM on July 26, 2007


Related, but Rhode Island-centric.
posted by mkb at 12:21 PM on July 26, 2007


Regarding the "Freight Yard" link - pardon me for just a moment...

*dons his detective and urban spelunker caps*

Those trailers aren't exactly abandoned. Abused, perhaps, but most certainly very recently inhabited. You don't get that kind of accumulated, un-faded, non-decomposing trash without an active consumer present. The squalor has obviously been stirred recently, as there's very little dust - which usually settles and accumulates quite quickly when a room is left undisturbed, even with open windows.

Heck, there's even a washing machine and dryer with obvious signs of recent use.

Also, considering the industrial sized box of Lexapro and the "Bizarre Obsessions" fetish porno rag - combined with what is likely a great deal of solitude - well, it's entirely possible that the current inhabitant is a wee bit unstable.

Fellow explorers, I don't know what you would have done but that would have been my cue to make a hasty retreat.
posted by loquacious at 12:28 PM on July 26, 2007




The satellite one is pretty damn spiffy.

I'm with loquacious on the "freight yard" link. Which isn't even really a freight yard. It looks to be a parking space for dying trailer homes.
posted by craven_morhead at 12:43 PM on July 26, 2007


More photos of Shuffletown drag strip can be found here.
posted by Token Meme at 12:45 PM on July 26, 2007


The right to demolish and scrap the dishes and other structures has been auctioned off on ebay on March 13, 2005 for $136.20. (scroll down a bit)

::cries:: And here I was hoping I still had a chance at my very own Secondhand Evil Overlord Base.
posted by casarkos at 12:48 PM on July 26, 2007


I am less than a half mile away from the Pabst brewery remains. (I can literally see the entire compound from a window by my desk) I've been wanting to explore them ever since I realized it was abandoned.

It's absolutely massive. The pictures here are fantastic, but they really don't convey how huge the buildings are.

I'll have to find out if the site did anything to get permission to enter, of if they just snuck in. I really want to get in there and take some photos of my own.
posted by quin at 12:50 PM on July 26, 2007


Heineken? Fuck that shit! Pabst Blue Ribbon!
posted by phirleh at 12:51 PM on July 26, 2007


We really like musty old places around here.

Indeed. This isn't even the first time I've posted this sort of thing.
posted by dersins at 12:55 PM on July 26, 2007


Oh man, that satellite facility is cool.

Bet it's seen many a teenage tryst.

Ruins are fascinating. Ruins in the Andaman Islands. British colonial ruins in Northern India. The mystery of new electricity for a beautiful and abandoned village in France, Perillos.

My likeable, personal account of places abandoned and neglected by J. Eric Smith, Hidden in Suburbia, a photo-essay about Latham, New York and its environs.
posted by nickyskye at 1:02 PM on July 26, 2007


Love love these posts.
posted by M.C. Lo-Carb! at 1:03 PM on July 26, 2007


Hate hate these posts. All I need is some sweet abandoned places pr0n so I can waste the rest of the week on this site. You bastards.
posted by Skygazer at 1:11 PM on July 26, 2007


I wish there was more info on how long the places have been abandoned for.
posted by b_thinky at 1:18 PM on July 26, 2007


That sports arena looks like it's been "abandoned" for all of a couple months. There's even a sign that has Feb. 16, 2007 on it. I don't really think that qualifies as abandoned. More like temporarily closed.
posted by puke & cry at 1:30 PM on July 26, 2007


Oh, and I was totally waiting for the freight yard to turn into a "I found a digital camera in the woods" kind of thing. That shit is creepy.
posted by puke & cry at 1:33 PM on July 26, 2007


Great post. This made me think of one of the dying creatures from the movie version of War of the Worlds.
posted by aerotive at 1:41 PM on July 26, 2007


Great stuff. Too bad none of it's anywhere near me, although pretty much all of downtown East Saint Louis could be included in that gallery.

Also, these are the best photos of the Pabst brewery I've seen
posted by slogger at 1:52 PM on July 26, 2007


Anybody in Northern California ought to make it out to Bodie sometime. Way cooler than I expected.
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur at 1:53 PM on July 26, 2007


Urban exploration is a lot of fun, and I was never so much concerned with trespassing charges as I was with stumbling across a mentally unstable homeless person high on god knows what who would then proceed to stab the shit out of me. The decay is so beautiful I suppose it's only natural they attract similarly wayward human inhabitants...

You've got to visit these places before they are demolished and imploded, they take on such a surreal afterlife it's hard to describe just by viewing images, as striking as they are... as loquacious notes, the devil is always in the details.
posted by prostyle at 1:53 PM on July 26, 2007


The Hoover Dam looks like the place they filmed transformers.
It also looks like the place they based part of Black Mesa on for Half Life 1.
posted by Dillenger69 at 2:04 PM on July 26, 2007


That sports arena looks like it's been "abandoned" for all of a couple months. There's even a sign that has Feb. 16, 2007 on it. I don't really think that qualifies as abandoned. More like temporarily closed.

Not just temporarily, puke & cry. And now it's being torn down.
posted by dersins at 2:11 PM on July 26, 2007


That satellite dish looks like a great place for a skating video. But the grafitti is embarrassingly bad.
posted by Kraftmatic Adjustable Cheese at 2:23 PM on July 26, 2007


I love this stuff. More images for my art reference file! :)
posted by zoogleplex at 2:42 PM on July 26, 2007


One of my favourites is the Abandoned and Little-Known Airfields website. Some highlights:
  • Grand Central Air Terminal, Los Angeles, CA. Currently an abandoned building in the middle of Glendale with an inexplicably wide road running beside it, Grand Central was once TWA's main airport in Los Angeles.
  • Flushing Airport, Queens, NY. It's now the physical plant for the New York Times but you can still see the runway on the Google Maps satellite view.
  • Roosevelt Field, Queens, NY. Where Lindbergh began his voyage across the Atlantic. They paved aircraft paradise and put up a shopping mall.
posted by watsondog at 4:28 PM on July 26, 2007


Who wants to email the webmaster and break the news to him/her that Toledo is in Ohio, not Canada?
posted by evilcolonel at 4:32 PM on July 26, 2007


My likeable, personal account

*yikes, meant to write A likeable, personal account...not My
posted by nickyskye at 4:54 PM on July 26, 2007


ha. my favorite is chernobyl. i think this was a a meta post, but i'm too drunk to bother looking it up.
posted by lester's sock puppet at 6:24 PM on July 26, 2007


Why would you abandon a highway? Especially with tunnels?

Regarding Centralia, PA. Holy shit.

However, the underground fire is still burning and will continue to do so for the indefinite future. There are no current plans to extinguish the fire, which is consuming an eight-mile seam containing enough coal to fuel it for 250 years

I quite literally had no idea such a thing existed before tonight. Absolutely incredible.
posted by Ynoxas at 9:28 PM on July 26, 2007


You've all been hoodwinked. Those are just high-def screenshots from Half-Life 3.
posted by Avenger at 9:49 PM on July 26, 2007 [1 favorite]


The Old Mill near my house is a gorgeous pile of of old buildings, at some point to be replaced by overpriced condos.
posted by saucysault at 11:50 AM on July 27, 2007


From your abandoned But Not Forgotten site, a beautiful abandoned village in Italy, Balestrino.
posted by nickyskye at 11:52 AM on July 27, 2007


Why would you abandon a highway? Especially with tunnels?

That was the point, they wanted less tunnels.
posted by ALongDecember at 2:42 PM on July 31, 2007


Interesting. It's always amazing to find your pictures used on someone's web site without any attribution. The Pabst pics would be mine. Thx for posting this, BTW.
posted by JJ86 at 9:50 AM on August 2, 2007


For reals JJ86? They're great pictures-- thanks for taking them in the first place!
posted by dersins at 11:45 AM on August 2, 2007


That is awesome JJ86, nice work.

So, did you get any kind of permission, or did you just go in? I ask purely our of curiosity. Also, was it the kind of thing where a hard hat would be advisable?
posted by quin at 11:58 AM on August 2, 2007


Thanks. quin, I emailed you.
posted by JJ86 at 12:50 PM on August 2, 2007


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