Urban exploration should be defined as the draw to a romanticized past of the, generally, modern forgotten. A few months ago I fell down the rabbit hole of looking into this within the Minneapolis area and ran across: http://www.actionsquad.org/index.html
Warning: I got so caught up in exploring what's been explored I spent over 4 hours of a Friday night engulfed in the secrets hidden in plain sight of somewhere I've lived for 10 years.
While not maintained as of recent the archives are a blast and I made me long for a small, yet trustworthy group of people willing to put some time and effort into continuing the legacy. Then again, sometimes the dream is far more entertainment than the reality...
I noticed a few photos of folks chillin' in storm drainage tunnels. Seriously, be careful. Check the weather forecasts before exploring these. We used to do that as a kid... until a neighbor boy died during a flash flood.
When I was a teenager, there were a number of abandoned multistory office buildings in suburban Atlanta where I lived. Maybe 7-8 within 10 miles of my house, and a couple of cool abandoned restaurants too. There had been a commercial real estate boom, followed by the inevitable bust.
Anyway, we got in to all of them at one time or another, sometimes via ridiculously elaborate plans.
What finally put an end to it for most of us was returning to one of our favorite buildings and finding someone had set up a wire tied to the inner doorknob that went off somewhere in to the dark hvac room. Our imaginations about what might be at the other end of that wire convinced us that maybe we weren't as invincible as we thought. You never know who else is going in those places.
There was also this weird abandoned castle out in the woods. It was like a funhouse castle, wooden walls, but with fake stone on the outside. Turrets, fake drawbridge, the whole thing. No clue whatsoever how it got there. Must have been some old amusement park? But no one ever found any info on it.
Anyway, it involved parking on the side of this long stretch of country road, then walking a couple hundred yards through some woods. One night as we pulled over to park, this fat redneck dude comes out of the dark woods over to our car. Our windows are down and I'm in the passenger seat.
He points a MAC-10 right at my chest and tells us we need to be leaving.
For one time in my life I have literally nothing to say.
We drive off at a crazy rate of speed and never go back.
Being the south, there's a lot of things that could have been going on there that night, but the place was a few miles from where a crazy mercenary type had his commando training compound, so our theory was his people were using the place that night.
Interesting article... this quote struck me a kind of weird though:
"The mission, which (according to Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the Special Subcommittee on Investigations of the House Commerce Committee) was financially subsidized, and to be filmed by CBS news, was aborted when the participants were arrested by the FBI. WerBell was released without being charged."
There were always a lot of rumors swirling around him. Probably a healthy mix of lies, half-lies, and truths.
His compound was along this road that ran between towns, fenced in, with a rotating police light on a tall pole next to the gate. Supposedly when the light was on, that meant training was "in session", I guess as a warning to anyone who might want to enter. Anyway, it meant that all the locals were aware of him.
One rumor was that he provided School Of The Americas* (a couple hours away) with special training the military couldn't / didn't want to provide directly.
After his death, his son ran the place for a while, and one of this instructors, Jason Lau, opened a specialized kung fu school in the area. Their military supply retail outfit, Brigade Quartermasters, continues in operation- http://www.brigadeqm.com/aboutus.asp
The county I grew up in was very, very, very right wing. Still is to some extent. So he was in the right place.
I noticed (especially on the linked-in-another-comment detroiturbex) that there are tons of abandoned offices, buildings, libraries and schools in America. Who owns these? How difficult would it be to purchase one, and how expensive? It would be cool to live in one of these (with power and running water, of course) and have freight elevators, PA systems and escalators in your home.
15 years ago, downtown St. Louis was largely vacant except for a few big name companies. Since then it's come back in a big way, with a solid loft district, new sports and entertainment facilities, and a steady progression of rehabbing and revitalization.
But there's still a number of large buildings waiting to be rehabbed. The Railway Exchange is the biggest of these (but at least it's partially occupied!)
One of the best (and first) success stories is the City Museum:
The City Museum is an awesome place (though, let's be honest, it's not really a museum). A massive, ingenious playground with an element of real danger to it -- awesome.
There was a Grand Designs episode (2003, Series 3, Ep 2 - "The Water-Works") where a couple took on an old facility that was in very poor condition but had some potential if you had imagination:
"The 1930s derelict water works Chris Jones and Leanne Smith fell in love with was huge and its design had clearly been inspired by Gilbert Scott's Bankside power station, now better known as the Tate Modern. But nothing would deter the couple. 'We looked at it,' said Chris, 'and saw our home.'"
Took insane amounts of work from the two of them, but they really made something of it. The interior looked fantastic by the end of the process. Their work desk was made out of a Mini, I think it was?
Worth watching if you can track it down and have an interest in that sort of thing.
It varies. Sometimes they are still owned by the original tenants but often they are owned by a real estate investor that did triple net leases to large clients. In some cases, the buildings are owned by the city or some other government entity.
The best way to find out is to take a trip to the local courthouse.
> How difficult would it be to purchase one?
Assuming the owner wants to sell, probably a bit difficult. But no more difficult than any other large commercial real estate purchase. The buildings usually don't have some special status just because they are "abandoned". Things that WILL make acquisition more difficult, however, is if the building is an historical landmark, condemned, has asbestos or other environmental problems, is scheduled for demolition by the city, has lots of lien holders and a complicated title, etc. But all of this is just another way of saying that large real estate transactions can be challenging. There's a reason there are large law firms exclusively devoted to this stuff.
> how expensive?
It depends on why it was abandoned. If the existing tenant just went out of business or otherwise moved out due to their own problems or reasons, then the building will probably be priced similarly to other properties in the area (in other words, it's not a given that 'abandoned' somehow entails a price break).
If there are severe location problems (like many places in Detroit, for example) then there may be breaks based on that.
Lastly, if there are severe environmental, structural, or other problems with the property itself, you might be able to purchase it for a song, but that doesn't mean you won't have to spend megabucks to fix it so you can get a certificate of occupancy. Watch out!
Another way to think of all this is that the word 'abandoned' is a romantic term with connotations of artistic urban decay. However, sometimes it's just a vacant building. There's nothing special about it just because no one is currently in there.
> It would be cool to live in one of these (with power and running water, of course) and have freight elevators, PA systems and escalators in your home.
Probably not as cool as you're envisioning. Every one of these things has to be maintained and/or replaced. That's probably going to be just slightly more expensive than calling a residential plumber. Your heating, water, and sanitation bills are likely to be atrocious simply because it's a large building in (probably) an area zoned for commerce. What good is all that space if you have to keep all of it dark except for a few hundred square feet?
Then, of course, you have to worry about squatters and other people who won't realize or won't care that there's someone living in there. I don't know about you, but I'd prefer my home to be a sanctuary and not have to constantly worry whether I'm going to run into a trespasser who may or may not be friendly.
But hey, despite all this if you can find a really cool abandoned building and live in it, be sure to blog about it and take pictures so we can all live vicariously through you!
You might be able to get a discount if you find a building which is worse than useless. For instance, an abandoned grain silo in the middle of a city that no one wants to store grain in is useless and also horribly expensive to tear down. So you might be able to buy it for less than the cost of an empty lot in the same area (which could still be quite a lot!) because the people you're bidding against would buy it and bulldoze it.
Don't forget that some buildings are not zoned as residential, and therefore cannot have people actually living there. (Not that you can't live there - just that eventually, some people from the city will show up with a lot of fines for you to pay.)
"How difficult would it be to purchase one, and how expensive?"
This sort of real-estate tends to be priced based on the income it can produce. Or might produce. If you have enough money, probably not that difficult.
But keep in mind that the building probably sits empty for good reasons. Obsolescence being the most obvious. There isn't much call for that type of retail space.
This is an absurdly amazing blog! Thanks so much for this! To better brighten my day, I didn't know about the pending conversion of the Post Office building to help wash away the mistake of the terrible new Penn Station.
The old one was as beautiful as Grand Central in it's time, I feel like we really lost something when it was demolished for and replaced with the present day abomination. It's like they finally realized what a loss it was and are trying to remedy it AND preserve another nearby beautiful building.
I wholeheartedly agree with everything you wrote, and I see we share the same taste in architecture.
I love GCT, it's one of my favorite train stations in the world. London Paddington [1] and Antwerp Central [2] are also quite stunning and both have an interesting history.
In the same vein, I'd like to recommend watching the new drama series 'Mr Selfridge' starring Jeremy Piven. It depicts the early days of legendary London department store Selfridges [3]. Starting March 31, it'll air on PBS [4].
I appreciate the recommendations and will definitely check them out.
As an aside, I read reddit's r/architecture and find lots of the modern architecture discussed there quite dreadful, the group think seems to think that lots of flat rectangles with random material use. Everything looks same-same, unlivable and boring.
Walk around Grand Central and it's a model of efficiency, the number of people that can move about that facility without getting jammed up on thresholds and transitions, and oddball "innovative" hallways is staggering. Tall ceilings bring in ample natural light, the information desk is stunningly easy to find and offers the most important piece of information a train rider needs, a clock, large and high enough you can see it clearly from pretty much everywhere.
And it's simply a beautiful building as well.
It's magnificent. I'm convinced that the post WWII reaction to these older styles is where we collectively lost our minds, and we're only now starting to get them back.
I agree. I like the neo-classicist, Victorian, and Beaux-Arts styles of architecture. Apart from the aesthetics, the buildings of that time were (overall) certainly thought out well. As Steve Jobs said: “Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.”
However, I know of contemporary architecture that accomplishes that as well. For example, take a gander at Louis Kahn’s National Assembly Building of Bangladesh [1] or Ton Albers' Gas Union building in Groningen, The Netherlands [2]
One thing that's great about Neoclassical, etc. style of architecture is how well it blended in and complemented earlier styles.
The Baroque Château de Maisons-Laffitte [1] would look splendid next to the Palais Garnier [2] built 200 years later all in a fictional city next to the Pantheon [3] built 2000 prior!
I love love love the Chrysler building's spire, and Art Deco in general. My fondest memory of an art outing is of when I went to a general exhibit of Art Deco architecture, furniture, fashion, jewelry, music, and poster art at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London in 2003. It was truly amazing. Amongst other great works, they had rebuilt an entire authentic 30s art deco hotel foyer in the museum.
I've always found this stuff to be interesting on a variety of levels. What happens when maintenance stops? What state did they leave things? In the cases where you have before and after shots - or multiple visits spread out over a long time - it can be even more interesting to see how things turn out.
If anyone else wants to see more of this kind of thing, I've spent a lot of time looking at places on the Detroit Urbex site.
I'm sure there are some other good explorations out there, and I hope this thread turns up a couple other hidden gems that don't pop right up on a Google search.
Because there is a functioning Macy's mall on the first few floors, they still play mall music. However, they never disconnected the upper floors from the PA system, so music still plays through these floors 24 hours a day.
Wow. Eerie as hell.
The main thing on my mind as I was going through the pictures and their descriptions was, "this is what everything is going to look like after World War 3. Except with more dust, ash and perhaps dead bodies."
In Detroit we call it ruin porn and unfortunately it forms outsiders image of the entire city which is tragically wrong. You can spend entire weeks on the web exploring, there's even Europeans who have visited and created sites with thousands of images.
Hey St. Louis'ers - The T-REx is also home to our local startup meetup group. Once a month we have a kickass St. Louis entrepreneur come out and share their story. Usually we have 40-60 folks turn out, hope you can join us sometime!
Wow- Lemme say first I didn't think there were many St. Louisans on HN. Thanks for sharing a bit about our growing startup community.
I've been in that building plenty of times- most recently for startup events- and the lobby + 13th floors definitely have a languished feel to them (12th floor has been better refurbished and has a lot more activity). I had absolutely no idea, though, the rest of building was so empty.
Quite a bit different from my childhood: that was the flagship downtown Famous-Barr department store . . . where they decorated the window displays every Christmas . . . getting nostalgic here.
*Ever been in the WU tunnels (not just the big one between Duncker & January halls)? Pretty expansive system right under students feet that most have no idea about :)
Ever been in the WU tunnels (not just the big one between Duncker & January halls)? Pretty expansive system right under students feet that most have no idea about :)
I've not been in the tunnels, but in my undergrad I spent a lot of time up on the roof of the library (I was the KWUR engineer and our transmitter rack and antenna lived on the roof). Pretty awesome view from up there.
I haven't been in the WU tunnels - they started arresting people for that. Plenty of rooftops, though. They use all Best locks here, including on padlocks, so they are practically unpickable.
"Because there is a functioning Macy's mall on the first few floors, they still play mall music. However, they never disconnected the upper floors from the PA system, so music still plays through these floors 24 hours a day."
Actually... looking at the pictures, I'm surprised about how much was left behind in general. For example, the kitchen had industrial baking and mixing equipment, etc., which I'm sure is all worth a decent amount of dough (pun very very much intended =).
Anyway, all of this reminds me about a documentary I saw called Urban Explorers (you can probably find it on netflix)... pretty interesting stuff out there.
The only thing I can think of is it would cost more to pay somebody to go through it all and put it up for sale than they could make back. I have a hard time believing it, though.
I suspect the money they'd get from selling it is insignificant compared to the money they have tied up in the whole building.
So they're probably holding off until they have some sort of actual plan for the place, then they'll bring in some company that specializes in turning over that kind of stuff.
Minneapolis has a similar building, formerly a Sears warehouse and retail store, now known as the Midtown Exchange. It houses retail, a hospital, a DMV office, apartments and condos.
Atlanta had a giant Sears building too. Warehouse, retail store, offices. Then it was City Hall East for a while, housing govt offices and the city homicide detectives.
Now it looks like they're turning into some sort of giant food market. That place is huge, gonna be a lot of food I guess.
It was connected to a mall called St. Louis Centre. The Macy's itself was the flagship store and headquarters of Famous Barr, a St. Louis based retailer bought by Macy's.
Warning: I got so caught up in exploring what's been explored I spent over 4 hours of a Friday night engulfed in the secrets hidden in plain sight of somewhere I've lived for 10 years.
While not maintained as of recent the archives are a blast and I made me long for a small, yet trustworthy group of people willing to put some time and effort into continuing the legacy. Then again, sometimes the dream is far more entertainment than the reality...