Abandoned Buildings/Spaces

[la bombe]

Are one of my strange fascinations. I wasn't sure where to post this since there's no Architecture section, so I'll just stick it here. For those who are interested, http://opacity.us is a great site with a lot of cool abandoned buildings from around the world.



Chateau Miranda or Chateau de Noisy, abandoned castle in Belgium







Beelitz-Heilstätten, abandoned German sanatorium









Abandoned church





I have a special fondness for abandoned theatres, there's an extra element of drama IMO. The really grand theatre here is in Russia I believe.







It's not a building but the "Neon Boneyard" in Las Vegas is quite cool, it's been used in a number of international photoshoots

http://www.neonmuseum.org/index.html












You can see the original placement of the Silver Slipper in the last image in this old episode of The Twilight Zone at around 52 seconds

[YOUTUBE]atmk4Wvgc2A[/YOUTUBE]

[Electronic God-Man]

Centralia, Pennsylvania

If I remember the story correctly, Centralia has a huge coal reservoir underneath it and the Centralia local government set fire to a landfill sometime in the 60's in order to get rid of the trash there. However, something obviously went wrong and the fire ignited the mines.

It burned for some time without anyone really knowing until eventually a sink hole opened up and some kid fell into it. Lots of people then started coming out reporting things like having horrible migraine headaches all the time, memory loss, falling asleep in the middle of the day and waking up the next day, etc. due to the levels of carbon monoxide apparently. Eventually, they started noticing the ground heat up as well.

An interesting thing is that the local government tried to cover it all up for quite some time saying that nothing was wrong at all. I think that there were actually some shootings involved where local politicians were trying to silence people who were speaking out.

Nowadays it's clear that there's a fire in the mines underneath Centralia and it is largely abandoned. Though there are apparently still a few families who refused to evacuate. The roads are all tore up in the town, but you can still drive by around the outside of the town and see the smoke rising from the streets. They tried putting the fires out, but it looks as if they will only go out when all the fuel in the mines has been consumed. It will be many years before that happens.

[The Lawspeaker]

Abandoned buildings and abandoned villages (if they are in safe areas. I am not talking about Centralia here) always make me feel somewhat sad. Particularly if it is traditional architecture. I always think that some people should get those areas for free AND receive money to develop it if they can't pay for it.

If someone is interested in the property and no one is using it then the one holding it should have no right whatsoever to complain about property rights and loose his rights without a compensation as this person had numerous opportunities to develop it and instead decided to let it rot away.

Cañada de Benatanduz (Spain):


Kolmanskop (Namibia)




Mynydd Epynt (UK)



A couple of years ago I read that in France alone some 20.000 small parishes, villages and hamlets were abandoned..

[Megrez]

[YOUTUBE]PXSuZNK6HA4[/YOUTUBE]
[YOUTUBE]mQWqis6V9Gc[/YOUTUBE]
[YOUTUBE]lex-Ffs3ONQ[/YOUTUBE]
[YOUTUBE]PsWuh6E2Log[/YOUTUBE]

All videos above contain footage of abandoned places.

[la bombe]

Someone in the chatbox mentioned wolves overtaking abandoned cities and I find that (I like to call it 'wildlife reclamation' ) pretty interesting as well.

Here's a city abandoned after the Chernobyl disaster: Pripyat, Ukraine





































http://photo.stream24.ru/users/deviant_man-24-/1001973/

Now, instead of people, Pripyat is home to herds of endangered wild Przewalski horses

[The Lawspeaker]

Abandoned Communities

Since the Middle Ages thousands of towns, villages, and other human communities in Great Britain have been abandoned.

Some places have been abandoned at a single point in time, while others have been gradually depopulated until there was no-one left. In some cases the forces of nature have made a major contribution to the abandonment, but more often economic and social changes have caused people to move away, or the decision of a powerful individual, organisation, or government has compelled inhabitants to leave.

This website commemorates all abandoned communities. But we will focus on a number of specific places that have been deserted at various times, for various reasons. In each case we will consider what type of community it was, the events leading up to its abandonment, and what happened to the inhabitants after they moved away. We will also be interested in what you are likely to find if you visit the place today, and in this respect you will notice that the observations and experiences of the author will often be recorded.

[The Lawspeaker]

Around Rievaulx Abbey, England:

And this is just one of the many abbey's and churches that were dissolved under Henry VIII - not to mention the Scottish Reformation.
I do hope that someday some of those ruined buildings (not all of them are ruined) can be restored and used for a purpose once more.

And then we have Whitby Abbey, England:

[SwordoftheVistula]

Centralia is cool not dangerous at all, they have the roads blocked off, but we drove the car up and around them and down by where that guy is standing with the smoke coming out, and then all around the dirt roads in that area. It was a rental, so whatever.

They used to have some sanitariums around where I lived, but they all got boarded up real good, and then torn down.

The slaughterhouse in the town where I grew up is now abandoned, I explored it a year ago when I was back in town, that was interesting.

[Zankapfel]

Have you any idea how old would those B-Heilstätten photos would be?
I have my own series and the graffiti in this picture is certainly not there anymore. Odd.



East Berlin is truly a gem for urban exploration. I do not go out and photograph nearly as often as I did a couple of years back, so most of my stuff is relatively old now and I'm not sure it's worth posting.
Great thread though, I am an UrbEx freak too.

[Treffie]

Near me.

Built in 1810 the copper works in hafod was designed and laid out by John Vivian. When it was open it was the largest industrial works in Europe and the largest exporter of copper in the UK. Over the course of the next 100 years the Vivians also built a village for the workers called Trevivian or Vivianstown which is now called the hafod. By the middleof the 19th century it also produced naval brass, ferro bronze, lead ingots, spelter, silver, gold, sulphuric acid, zinc chloride and superphosphate fertilisers.