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Recently went to some spots in the city, Either got just demolished or is heavy under construction with barricade gates and all. Always a bummer. Seems like many old buildings got destroyed in the late 00's. So much gentrification going on these days! To all the folk that did their exploring in the early 00's-2011, congrats! I don't think it helps when all these new school urbex YouTube videos pop up as well. Started to watch some of em, and oh boy.. None of these people have any common sense to be covert. Plus providing locations in the comments section, people begging for the locations without any effort in hard work.. Truly sad times!
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I can think of a few times when I was relieved to see something demolished. And a couple prominent times when sites were demolished due to overexposure.
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Posted by Steed
I can think of a few times when I was relieved to see something demolished. And a couple prominent times when sites were demolished due to overexposure.
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Like this one.
http://www.uer.ca/...ow.asp?locid=30592
In order to use your head, you have to go out of your mind. |
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As in you were relieved, or it was overexposed?
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I'm quite relieved sometimes when I see a long abandoned location finally find a reuse, just recently one of the most well known abandoned buildings here in the south of the UK finally had work start on it to convert it into apartments after years of neglect and decay, and a year of idiots running rampant in it when security all but vanished.
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What I like: Seeing a place I've explored get re-purposed.
What I don't like: Seeing a place I haven't explored get demolished.
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Posted by Steed
As in you were relieved, or it was overexposed?
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Probably both.
It got blown up on Facebook and went from a nice, easy explore to totally trashed in a matter of weeks.
Also of note is this wreck that got repurposed.
http://www.uer.ca/...ow.asp?locid=27246
I have some pics somewhere of it from the 1990s which I should post some time.
In order to use your head, you have to go out of your mind. |
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Is Chicago, they reused an abandoned steel mill to build a rock climbing park. I think that's an example demolishing and recreating correctly
https://www.chicag.../steelworkers-park
[last edit 5/21/2020 5:48 PM by MysteriousExpedition - edited 1 times]
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Generally I’m a type of person who doesn’t like change but I don’t think to the point of a flaw or anything.
I think many of us UrbEx individuals have at least one first or otherwise special place that piqued our interest into the pursuit of this hobby. For me it was an old tannery in the small town where I grew up.
The tannery had shut its doors the same year that I was born and remained condemned for after the next 13 years when group of friends my age explored the factory building for the first time. Even at that young age I was interested in the history of the building and the people that made their living from the wages they earned while working in its wall’s - long before they began to crumble.
The tannery had an intimidating old Victorian look to it, L- Shaped with a large red brick square chimney and rows of glass windows on a rectangular red brick frame. The lot was a couple acres in size and there was a few smaller buildings on the property including the one large main red brick building which had some wooded portions in the construction, painted red at one point but chipped and mouldy. This place looked like the factories kids would work in during the industrial revolution. Directly in front of the factory by only a few meters was an old Victorian residential home that was used as the factory office. I actually had mild nightmares of the place for a while as a child. Though I didn’t explore the place until I was 13 years old, I had actually been in one of the sheds before then and much younger. Some years before, when I was let’s say about 9 or 10 my father was doing renovations on a small apartment for my uncle who was the landlord of that building. It wasn’t uncommon for my father to just take us to his projects instead of paying a sitter to watch us at home. But we wanted to be with him too. This apartment was near some of the old Victorian large homes directly across this tiny one lane gravel road from the tannery. My unsupervised brothers and I ended up inside a large shed with chipping weather beaten red paint. I just remember it was used to store a large pile of dirt that seemed to fill half of the rooms capacity. Why we played on the mound inside this spooky old shed I don’t know but the place gave me the creeps as a lad.
Before a succession of different tannery companies that occupied the structure during the last century the building had actually had its origin as one of Canada’s first railway cabin works and even made Toronto’s early street cars in the last decades of the 19th Century. An old neighbour of mine was a photographer and I asked him about the tannery and he told me he knew an old man that lost an arm working there. The original founder of the building back in 1870 is buried in a prominent grave at a nearby cemetery. It seemed the more I learned of the place the greater the desire to explore it.
This old rotting building, that could have been turned into a historic site had it been better taken care of seemed like nothing but an eye sore to everyone else; a hazard, an expensive clean up and a constant complaint of the tax paying denizens of the town. But to me this derelict and haunting factory was for some reason in my mind something to be saved as a monument to the past. These old factories were one of a kind and we can only see them now in photographs. Photographs of what is now an unfamiliar time when in North American there was an industry and/ or factory production in almost every small working class town; before and up until almost all manufacturing went overseas for cheaper labour by exploiting the poorer people of poorer countries by our nations corporate citizens.
I followed in the local newspaper over the last years of the buildings existence the periodic town council proposals on the status changes of the old the place. It was around I think 2006 or 2007 that town finally had the court matter settled with the last former owner of the tannery and the required permission for the town to move ahead with demolition.
The Lot still sits vacant to this day over 14 years later. The old tanning racks and other tanning equipment still litters the area as well as a few mounds of left over brick and other piles of rubble and debris.
A rusty and decrepit chain link fence that is overgrown with ivy’s keeps the demolished place secure from intruders. A chain and a padlock keeps the double gate entry shuddered. Nosy senior neighbours right across the street of the ruins are ever eager to call the police at the first stranger to even walk by the site. The Commissionaire guard trailer that sat at closed off front gate has long since gone.
In short, it sucks when a location gets demolished.
- Dave
[last edit 5/23/2020 5:48 AM by pirate88 - edited 1 times]
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A lot of the surface information about spots on Google is outdated, lots of beautiful demolished buildings. I get envious when I see photos of Edgewater Hospital and St. Boniface in Chicago.
viking metal punks forever |
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I guess I can expand on my previous post having read pirate88's reply.
If a location does end up being demolished I would far rather the land get used for something very soon afterwards. Over the years there have been a few really notable examples of some of the best explores in the UK being flattened and then nothing being done with the land for years. Cane Hill Asylum was demolished in 2008 through 2009 and it took almost a whole decade for housing to start being built on the land. Pyestock was torn down during 2013 for a proposed mega size supermarket distribution depot which never materialised, instead the vast swathe of empty land was used to store new vehicles and is only now in the beginning stages of redevelopment.
The saddest one for me though was Westworld Raceway down in the southwest of the country as it crosses into both my major hobbies, short circuit oval racing and exploring. It was closed in around 2008 as the land was apparently going to be redeveloped into a water park attraction, the site was half demolished and then the plans were shelved indefinitely and nothing has happened since.
If places get demolished there is nothing worse than seeing the empty land sit there for years on end.
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In all honestly, i think 9/10 times, if a building is just left standing, abandoned and still be vandalized,then tear it down. I mean whats the good?? It's just depressing. I will never understand why people gotta tear down the stores after its been closed down. I can relate to taking things like scrap, getting extra cash. But when people go inside and break windows, tear signs, trash shit everywhere, WHY??????????????? Once a place closes, does it really matter if the structure is left standing for years?? I don't think so. If someone buys the land and use'es it for something, i get that.
[last edit 5/25/2020 7:36 AM by benwalk23 - edited 1 times]
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I'm in agreement that it stinks when a place is demolished and the land is used for nothing, but the worst thing is definitely having a place exposed and people then flock to it... kind of like secret fishing spots.
When it comes to demolition, yeah it really sucks when something gets torn down before you can get to it. I almost had this happen with a city house, I explored the place the day before it was demolished (I did not know at the time).
breathe in the atmosphere.... and the asbestos :) |
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