It's been about two years since my last entry in this series. As some of you may have noticed, I got a little distracted by my entries from the mountains of Colorado and Montana. The photos in this entry are all from 2021, but I figured I'd get back into posting photosets. After all, I've got a backlog of nearly two years worth of spots.
This next compilation is of the various churches I explored in Gary during that point in my urbex journey. Due to their proximity to Chicago and the tendency of any location east of the Mississippi to get wrecked when publicly posted online, this entry will not be one of the historical deep dives that have become my usual style. Posting history means posting details, details make spots easy to find, and easy to find spots in this region get destroyed. So it's just pictures this time.
Honestly I'm not as satisfied with these pics as I was back then. Two additional years of practice and camera upgrades makes what I once thought of as excellent just look meh to me now, but it's not terrible so I guess I'll still share them. Just know that this isn't representative of my current photography work, it's older stuff from a less experienced time.
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You thought I was going to start with City Meth, didn't you? Nope, this is a different church. According to its Facebook page, it was last active in 2021- but considering it was completely abandoned, filled with mold, and so structurally unstable that my friend put his foot through the floor in the center aisle, I highly doubt that Facebook page is accurate. The stained glass was easily the coolest part of it, and despite being in Gary it had almost no vandalism- only natural decay.
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Here's another church that has almost entirely natural decay. There was one large tag in the lobby, but everything else was completely untouched by vandalism. This church was a lot smaller and less intricate, but still pretty cool.
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Here's the smallest church I explored. It's little more than a storefront with some pews and the floor had nearly completely collapsed, so it was really just a quick five minute in-out exploration. There were some priest robes in a side room that were good for a few slightly blasphemous self portraits though.
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And of course, the Gary classic. You all knew this one was coming- presenting, City Methodist Church, or City Meth. Perhaps one of the most explored spots in midwest, no exploration of Gary is complete without a visit to this spot. While I could go into a historical writeup on this one, I won't. I'd pretty much be regurgitating the
very comprehensive Wikipedia article anyway, so give that a read if you want the history. I already made a
thread back in 2019 from my initial visit, but these new photos were taken during several return visits throughout 2021.
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I've got a few more posts worth of Gary pics in the archives, so maybe it's time I dust them off and finally post them. Who knows, maybe I'll even clear my backlog someday.
