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Came across some photos I took almost 3 years ago exploring an abandoned factory near where I went to school up in Ithaca. I'd been eyeing it all throughout college but couldn't find a way in due to security on site. One day after a big snow in early 2021 my friends and I finally found a way inside. The place was built in the late 1800s and used to make various different industrial components over the years including chains, transmissions and even airplanes. The site is over 90 acres and contains over 30 buildings - yet is almost invisible from the road since its built on a hillside. Here are the best photos I took while visiting:
Much of the machinery was long gone, minus a few old dismantled generators (my friends were in all those photos so I can't post them) but the colors on the inside were beautiful and the place was still in pretty good shape. The photos don't quite capture the scale of the place.
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After leaving the factory floor, we found the office areas. Except for a few old empty filing cabinets, the place was also totally stripped.
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In the office area we would pass the occasional ladder that would remind us that someone was doing some sort of work on the ceiling, it didn't seem to be doing much good though as tiles were dropping like flies
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Some beautiful overgrowth in the stairwell
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Found an ashtray complete with some old cigarettes - this place has apparently been abandoned since '07 or '08
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For whatever reason, this site still has power in some areas. I'm guessing this is because the thing is next to a substation or maybe its just to help out security. First time I came up to this site at night one of them turned on right in front of me and freaked me out a little.
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A quick look outside
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Couldn't resist taking this one. Security at this place were real assholes to me when I first stumbled on the place, so you can imagine the joy I felt stumbling upon this PC in a corner with nobody home. Decided this would be a good symbolic middle finger:
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That's pretty much it! Unfortunately there was so much left to explore but we couldn't stick around, this was just one of ~30 buildings on the site. I was hoping that there'd be some way for me to get from this building to the others, but the door was blocked and we couldn't get onto the roof to cross over. We also watched security pull up outside so we decided it was time to go. They saw us on the way out and we were never able to get back in again.
Here's an old drawing of the site - we were in the building on the very top left
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I wish I'd gotten to explore the other buildings but the best I could ever do was look through ground-floor windows. Strangely enough there were lots of old vehicles parked in the main factory buildings that looked like they were from the 60s, 70s and 80s including cars, tractors and RVs.
I've got even more bad news. While writing this I did a quick google search about the property and found that after nearly 20 years in bureaucratic purgatory, they finally agreed to a redevelopment project last year and work has started as far as I can tell. On the website they claim that they'll be renovating the whole thing without actually knocking down any of the buildings in an effort to maintain the site's history, including preserving the smokestack which would be a nice silver lining. Hopefully they stick to that plan, but regardless I'm absolutely kicking myself for never making it into the main section while I still lived there and very sad it will be gone forever. This is the first time I've ever made a post like this, hope y'all liked it.
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Pretty cool! Thanks for sharing.
Everyone has a dark side, mines just a little more illuminated. | |
You did a really bang-up job shooting this. The colors of the interior are fantastic. A lost era of industrial history for sure.
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Oh is that the big white building up on the hillside west of the lake? Cool, surprised it's still around WAS still around up till recently. All the coolest bandos in Ithaca get turned into crappy apartments/dorms
[last edit 12/7/2023 4:51 PM by BudPiffo - edited 1 times]
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Posted by BudPiffo
Oh is that the big white building up on the hillside west of the lake? Cool, surprised it's still around WAS still around up till recently. All the coolest bandos in Ithaca get turned into crappy apartments/dorms
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Yes it is! Haven't lived there in 2 years so I don't know the current extent of the development but they claim on their website not to be demolishing the building outright. And yeah by the time I got there the Gun Factory was just a smokestack in an empty lot
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Back in my day (twenty years ago, oy vey) the third floor of that building was home to a store of sorts called Babbage's Basement & Einstein's Attic.
The Babbage part was computers. Floor to ceiling computers. So many old computers you couldn't move through most of it. Picture a lot of old computers, all kinda of every variety from the 70's-90's. Now take what you just imagined and multiply it by like fifty. It was insane and to this day I regret never getting any pictures of the insanity.
The Einstein part was retired lab equipment from Cornell and local businesses, and was somewhat more under control. Fewer piles compared to Babbage's. Again, had I known that one day around 2010 everything in there would just disappear, I would have saved more than pictures ;/
I believe a few of the good folks who ran this business are now hooked up with Ithaca ReUse, which is awesome and good, though it ain't Babbage's, that's for sure...
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