And So We Go Through The Great Unknown

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

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