Abandoned/Decaying Buildings

I found this abandoned schoolhouse while driving around rural Kane County. The dead vines growing up around it are just spectacular. At the corner of Old Route 64 and Bolcum Roads near Wasco, IL in Kane County. The photos were taken in Summer 2003. As of Spring 2004, the windows have been boarded up and the brush cleared away from the sides. I sense this isn't far from demolition...

Screw humility. Sometimes I take just amazing pictures. This is one of the buildings of the Jane Addams Houses built in the early 1930s near the intersection of Racine and Taylor (near the UIC campus). This was one of the first examples of public housing in the Midwest. Instead of refurbishing the buildings, they are demolishing them. This was taken in early December 2003 as the sun was setting. The building, along with the complex, is now demolished

These four pictures are of a public housing building being demolished in early December 2003. There is beauty in the way the facade has been stripped away. The uniformity and stark decay is disturbing. It is located near the corner of Van Buren and Campbell in Chicago right next to the Eisenhower Expressway. The building is now demolished. In the picture immediately below, please notice the rain gracefully falling from floor to floor.

The next five pictures are of a farmhouse near the intersection of Route 47 and Beith Road north of Elburn, IL. March 2004 (above) The farmouse itself. (right) The living room (one window beneath porch in above photograph). The woodwork is spectacular and isn't it interesting what people leave behind?

(upper left) As you can see, the ceiling plaster has crumbled leaving a natural skylight in the stairwell. (above right) A bedroom in the back of the house on the second floor. The roof has collapsed leaving the ceiling open to the elements and thus, we have another natural skylight (left) Note the woodwork and the bedframe. That bedframe would fetch a good $500 at an antique mall.

The following four pictures are of a smaller abandoned farmhouse on Route 47 just north of North Plato, IL. March 2004. (right) Though abandoned longer than the house above, this was in much better condition. It even had a barn behind it that was nifty.

(above left) The living room right off the entryway. Amazing how wonderful natural light looks when there's no window. (above) This house's imitation of that scene in "The Sixth Sense." Again...interesting what people leave when they abandon their house. (left) The upstairs master bedroom. What's behind the door?!?!?!

Part of a huge former apartment building at Susquehanna and 33rd St on the north side of Philadelphia. Jessica and I were first going to live here and then renovate it which would spontaneously begin a rejuvenation of that whole neighborhood. All the abandoned buildings in the area would be lived in by artists who would also help the community. Then...we moved away...and the dream went with us though the buildings could not.

Creepy gothic jailhouse near the courthouse in Norristown, PA. As much as I wanted to break in, the barbed wire fence kinda stopped me. That and the feeling that it was haunted. I mean...just look at it!

CHECK BACK SOON! THEY'LL BE MORE TO COME!