Well that was a year, wasn’t it? Nothing but uncertainty from one week to the next, to the point that I always felt like I was a week or two away from the next covid lockdown and cultivating a textbook case of languishing pandemic fatigue. From the very first time ei broke me out in May to seeing four asylums in a weekend right before Christmas, it’s been nothing but a wild and relentless ride through the levels; unpredictable, but somehow always upward. Meme-tier shitholes, flavors of the month that might have gone a bit sour, mansions too intact for me to have any business even going near — and so many power plants!
For the purposes of being able to finish writing this while it’s still 2021, I’m leaving the photos to one (or sometimes two or three) per location, and captions to pretty much just pure name drops. Someday I’ll come back and tell the rest of the story and fill in all the missing blog posts, but for now, it’s time to tip up the dump truck and pour out an industrial-size load of assorted unrefined pixels we call YEAR IN REVIEW!
1. Cobbs Hill water towers
2. High Falls incinerator
4. The Rochester subway
5. Norton’s Cave
6. Victory Tabernacle Church
7. A non-abandoned church on the west side that the electrician let us see as long we got out before the boss showed up
8. Cresson (self-guided tour – this will be back in 2022 if you somehow don’t know about it yet!)
9. St. Mary’s (Niagara Falls)
10. Otis Elevator factory (Buffalo)
11. Curtiss-Wright
12. Buffalo church
13. Gallagher Beach grain elevator
14. Scajaquada Creek drain infall
15. JN Adam Hospital
16. Nestle factory somewhere in Cattaragus County
17. Jamestown furniture factory
18. Lake Erie lighthouse sunset
19. Detroit church
20. Dinner theater near Grosse Pointe, MI
21. Another Detroit church
Yet another church – couldn’t get into this one but there was still some aesthetic to find…
22. Soda bottling plant
23. Fisher Body
24. Tunnel of Terror (St. Paul)
25. Tiny little drain that isn’t Triple Helix
26. Union Station (Gary)
27. Palace Theater
28. Municipal Building
29. Post-Tribune Building
30. One of the many abandoned storefronts on Broadway
31. Methodist Church
32. Abandoned police/fire lot
33. Horace Mann school
34. Emerson High School
36. Screw and Bolt Factory
37. Democratic Party headquarters
38. Gary Post Office
39. Sheet metal factory in Perry, NY
40. Hickling Station
42. Liminal space in NYC that isn’t actually the Army Terminal
43. Brooklyn Army Terminal
44. Powerhouse at Fort Tilden
45. The Bunkers
46. Not-really-abandoned motel turned to cabanas at Breezy Point
47. The TWA hotel, before it reopened post-covid
48. Violent wards of Kings Park
49. KPPC building 121
50. And Building 22
51. And building 7, with Bryan from the Proper People
I still haven’t actually been to this one…
52. Earth Station Coram, just because @zocbex said I’d never find it
53. Rockland County synagogue
54. Beacon hat works
55. A little too late to Denning’s Point
56. Nevele
57. The even more rotten Homowack
58. Monticello Manor
59. The Pines
60. Gutted theater in Woodbourne
61. Kingston Mines
62. Southwark power plant in Philly. Some people invited me to a BBQ here… and actually showed up. Much more than I expected with my past experiences in Philadelphia, I must say!
63. Gould Street station (Baltimore)
64. “Haunted” house near Letchworth Park
65. Newark State School infirmary
66. Manchester Roundhouse
67. St Mary’s (2nd time)
68. The Hall of Machines (Niagara Falls)
69. Perot Elevator (Buffalo)
70. Silo City, where I sliced my hand open trying to climb through a window
71. Abandoned 1930s heritage train with Broken Down Buffalo
72. Return to Gary with The Ruin Road
73. Methodist Church (2)
74. City Public Works
75. Central library
76. Basic Skills Center
77. Bank turned city permit office
78. Nursing home in Noblesville
79. Another elementary school
80. Lew Wallace High
81. Abandoned subdivision
82. Riley School
83. Nobel School
84. Westover/Goudey Power Plant
85. Jennison/Bainbridge Station
86. Church of the Unholy Hoard, Wilkes-Barre
87. Old York Jail
88. Abandoned rail bridge in York
89. @dnf.n’s first ever drain
90. Furniture store in York
91. Baltimore draining!
92. Butler Correctional Facility. No way in, despite being told it was “easy”.
93. Agway fertilizer factory (Lyons)
94. Newark State School infirmary (2)
95. Hall of Machines (2)
96. Niagara Specialty Machining
97. Altech Steel (Lockport)
98. Buffalo church (2)
Random train near Bethlehem Steel, since security chased us out before we could actually see anything
99. Concrete Central
100. Cargill-S
101. Sacred Heart Cathedral
102. Curtiss-Wright (2)
103. Byrne Dairy (Evans Mills)
104. Titleist golf ball factory
105. Natural Bridge Cave. The cave was flooded, but at least there was a stairway…
106. Newton Falls paper mill
107. Camp Gabriels
108. Hasbrouck Mine (Kingston)
109. Red Lion Hotel (Albany) – don’t go here anymore, there’s both real security and drug cartel security around now.
110. Sunset Lanes
111. First Prize Center
112. Kenwood
113. Mohasco power plant
114. Sonoco cardboard mill
115. Cayadutta Tannery
116. Gundry-Glass (Baltimore)
117. Edmonson Mansion
118. Old Town Mall
119. Mill Run Drain
120. Jones Falls Connector
121. Jones Falls Conduit
122. Upper Gwynns Run
123. Lower Gwynns Run (2)
124. Massawepie (not abandoned, but somewhere I’ve camped every year since 2000)
125. Night sky at Saranac Lake. Probably the first and only time I’ll ever get a Milky Way shot with a phone.
126. Point Mountain Mausoleum (Hancock)
127. Bainbridge power plant (2)
128. Westover power plant (2)
129. Hickling power plant (2)
130. Jackson Sanitarium (Dansville)
131. Akron Caves
132. Altech West (2)
133. Newark State School power plant
134. Newark building “H”
135. St. Mary’s Niagara Falls (3)
136. St. Ann’s Convent (Buffalo)
137. Have you met Drain Friend? (Norton’s Cave – 2)
138. Syracuse Development Center
139. Heritage Train (3)
140. Akron Caves (2)
141. Hall of Machines (3)
142. St. Mary’s Niagara Falls (4)
143. Akron Caves (3)
144. Hall of Machines (4) — this was the peak of my tour guide phase, showing people around the “local” spots…
145. Altech West (3), just before being staked out by the entire city and county police force on duty
146. Lang School (Buffalo)
147. Courtland Middle School
148. Bainbridge power plant (3)
149. Monticello Manor (2)
150. Camp LaGuardia
151. The Pines (2)
152. Brown’s Grandview
153. Camping in the Rosendale mines
154. Nevele (2)
155. Letchworth Village powerhouse
156. Abercrombie Castle
157. Sunset Lanes (2)
158. Kenwood Chapel (3)
159. Green Mountain Racetrack
160.
161. Fownes power plant
162. Fownes Mills (Amsterdam)
163. Mohasco (3)
164. Some unknown factory/mill in Broadalbin
165. Kenwood Convent (4)
166. Sunset Lanes (4) – this was a mysteriously glowing dead scoreboard that added to an already very uncomfortable experience
167. Orange Memorial Hospital
168. Old Essex Jail
169. Proctor’s Theater
170. Underbelly. This is as close as I’ll ever get with my negligible climbing skills so I’m counting it.
171. Ashtabula power plant
172. East Cleveland train car factory
173/174. Three abandoned churches on one block of E79 St in Cleveland
175. Chagrine Falls mansion
176. Abandoned greenhouse on an active shopping mall property
177. Rochester incinerator (2)
178. Rochester subway (3)
179. Rhode Island prison
180. Paint and dye factory (Bradford, CT)
181. A properly Rhode Island-sized power plant
182. The one abandoned building left of Westborough
183. A detached cupola and rooftop
184. Pawtucket lightbulb factory. Full of cameras that are probably active…oops!
185. Providence at night
186. The Artist’s House (Liberty)
187. La Minetta
188. Grandview (2)
189. Monticello Manor (3)
190. Seaview Hospital (Staten Island)
191. Seaview powerhouse/maintenance building
193. Clout Mill (Musconetcong, NJ)
194. Westchester mansion
195. Fairfield Hills State Hospital
196. Harlem Valley Psychiatric Center
