243/365 No You’re Not!
243/365
This is one abandoned building that I know is being renovated. I’ve been there. And even though I’m sad that the beauty of its dereliction is being destroyed, it is better for the neighborhood.
A dear photographer friend and I went there to do a photo shoot back in 2009.
Having fun! Photo by Zach Rosing.
207/365 Burnt Paper in the Foundry
207/365 From the abandoned foundry
204/365 I Entered Anyway Even Though I Was Alone
204/365
Along the railroad tracks on Mass Ave, I slipped through an opening in the chain-linked fence to an old, abandoned foundry. The day was cool and beautiful and the air behind the fence and between the buildings was crisp. I stepped tentatively through low-lying shrubs and weeds. The broken gravel crunched beneath my feet. My skin prickled because I didn’t know what I would find. The railroad tracks attract the under-life and I could very well be walking into someone’s territory.
I was alone and vulnerable and nervous but it didn’t stop me from taking photos, like this one of a rusted mattress spring. I didn’t take as many photos as I wanted because of the uneasy solitude. I swore I would return with a friend.
The next time I went back, it was boarded up. I regret not having courage long enough to really explore the foundry. But I relish that I had enough courage to enter in the first place.
Out of Ruins Comes New Growth
Near the Carmel Arts and Design District in wealthy Carmel, Indiana an old church deteriorates. Out of the ruins comes new growth and if left alone, the new growth will consume the ruins and reclaim it. If left alone.
Church in Ruins
191/365 Lush growth takes root and begins to grow
Vines grow beside iron-barred windows
192/365 Virginia Creeper slowly surrounds the arched door
It winds its way to the window above
Vines carpet the steps
Ivy breaks down brick
193/365 Green leaves continue to emerge
A metaphor for life. Nature reclaims the neglected and forgotten. I like to think that all the old paradigms that no longer serve me are reclaimed and result in new growth.
[I took these photos in 2008 before the Carmel Arts and Design District began to flourish. I have not been back to see if the church still exists. It may. But in what state?]
157/365 Detail of the Rivoli
157/365
I fell in love with the Rivoli Theater the first time I saw it in all its decaying glory. It is a magical theater, conjuring up visions of the Roaring Twenties with fashionable women and dapper men strolling along the street, tickets in hand, waiting for the show to start. I don’t know if that’s really how it was, but that’s what I saw and felt. I immediately called a friend who has lived in Indianapolis all his life and asked, “What’s the story? How did something so magnificent fall into such disgrace?”
I will leave the answers for another post because I want to do it justice. But for now in this single photo, I hope you enjoy the beauty of the decay.
Insane Asylum Revisited
I admit that I was not thinking of storytelling when I went to the mental hospital back in 2010 to get photos. I was just curious and wondered what I’d find. I had my Canon EOS 30D and a 50mm f1.8 prime lens with me. The 50mm lens precluded any kind of wide-angle shot so some of these photos are a bit cropped.
Crazy Blue Car
That’s my car. Yes, it’s blue. It’s not inconspicuous so it didn’t surprise me when I returned from a short jaunt into the broken window building that a cop car was slowly passing by, probably noting down the license plate. When he saw me and my camera, he waved me on and said, “Be careful.”
The above is the only wide shot I have of the premises and I had to take it from a distance. This is one building of many and for some reason I must have really liked it because I have lots of photos of it. Perhaps it’s because I love the mechanical-looking thing right there in front of my car. The building is, I believe, the 1894 laundry building. My impression of the other buildings were of dormitories—long buildings with lots of windows, one for each room.
Mechanical Device---It's a bit high key, intentionally.
I love this thing. It has something to do with the laundry building. I don’t know what its function is…steam venting? clothes chute? ??? I slipped between the fence and the wall on the right and was able to look down into what I am calling the incinerator. It seems to be a place where they build fire in brick ovens.
Incinerator---entryway 01
When I said that the premises are not secured, I really mean they are not secured. The place is easily accessed right here through the incinerator…
Unsecured Entrance 02
…and here, through a basement door.
Don't cut yourself as you squeeze through the window!
Please don’t ask what I was thinking when I took this photo at such a bizarre angle! I think I was trying to be cute and failed. Anyway, another way in. I would go back just to get a decent shot of this door.
My guess as to why the premises are not as secure as they should be is because of the on-sight police station. Cops were patrolling all over the place…I think they were keeping an eye on me to make sure I maintained my innocent-photographer profile.
Arched Window
What intrigued me the most about this window is it’s symbolic relationship to a church. I included the poles just to add a sense of the cross to this image. This is the 1886 power plant.
Insanity Please
Looking through the arched windows and into the power plant you find appropriate graffiti. INSANITY, PLEASE.
Electric St
Around the corner is Electric St. More than any other image, this gives me the chills because I believe electric shock therapy was one way they treated the insane. I’m sure this is really connected to the power plant, but still…. (Actually, if you look at the sign, it doesn’t say St., it says Sh…Electric SHOCK??? I’m sticking with St.)
Textured Door---Just because I love weathered doors
A beautiful door.
Trashed Fence
Discarded Chain Links
Behind the Power Plant is a pile of trash. I chose the photos that showed discarded fencing material…odd, since I think of fences as keeping people either in or out and this place definitely fits the description of keeping people in or out. I didn’t show smashed TV’s or broken toilets, though.
Oh, all right. Here’s the toilet.
Broken Toilet
There. I really do not like photos like this. Grime makes me uncomfortable. If I had to clean this area up, I would insist on a hazmat suit with huge gloves and head gear.
What's over the wall?
Sometimes I wonder what the inmates (yes, I will call them inmates) saw when they passed by this tower with the high wall. Did they long to leave? Or did they care? I don’t have the answer.
[Central State Hospital for the Insane opened in 1848 and closed in 1994, 146 years of serving Indiana's mentally ill. And if you wonder what happened to the patients when it closed, well, I'm not quite sure. Some went home to their families, but not as many as you would think; some ended up rooming together; few ended up homeless. I am unable to find specifics and the research done is sketchy as to outcomes of the patients, whether that is due to privacy issues or due to not asking the questions to which I wanted answers!]
140-142/365 Abandoned High School
On a Sunday two years ago I had to get away. I was feeling trapped and isolated in my falling-apart bungalow in Irvington so I took off east on SR40 out into the flat countryside of Indiana where the cornfields and soy beans had yet to be planted for the year. I had never traveled SR40 since the freeway parallels the road and I usually drive the freeway, but on that day I didn’t want the freeway. I wanted country.
It was a bizarre trip. The further away from Indianapolis I got, the more surreal the landscape became. Every small mom-and-pop store loomed large in various stages of deterioration even as their “open” signs invited people in. I wanted to get away from the blight around me. That was the whole point! I was tired of living in a squalid area and wanted to see something refreshing and new.
Instead, I saw this imposing abandoned high school. It sat on high ground and dared me to stop! The previous day I had wandered all over the crumbling grounds of the insane asylum so I was prepped for another exploration of a different abandoned building. I did an illegal U-turn and pulled up the drive to the building.
140/365
141/365
142/365
The above three photos are the ones I chose to represent days 140, 141, and 142, but I couldn’t let the rest of the building go unnoticed.
Just a bit more information about this building. It is not isolated. All around it is a subdivision of nice homes. But no one paid any attention to the woman in the bright blue car parked against the red brick walls. No one glanced at me as I wandered around the grounds, pulling vines and trees out of my way so I could get closer to a window or door. A dog barked nearby and the owner shushed it, but he didn’t look up at me even though I watched him to make sure the dog was contained. A car drove past the left side of the building to get to a driveway, but I didn’t see the driver look up at the building, nor at me. It was as if this big, sprawling building was invisible, and because I was there for the building, I became invisible. It was truly bizarre.
Anyway, here are more photos:
Abandoned High School Close Up
Two Pots in Window
Broken Window Panes
Recess Bell
Greenfield Christian Academy
Lots of trees and things to scrounge through in the back.
No Trespassing, Private Property
Of all the photos I took, I detest this one the most. It repulses me. But because I hate it so much, I am including it. Not all interesting things have to be positive.
It has been two years since I took these photos. For all I know, the building has been torn down or repurposed. I tried to find out more info on it by doing a Google search, but the keywords I used netted nothing. If I find out more about this building, I’ll update.
Aladdin’s Lamp Revisited
Silo---the tiny red arrow is where Aladdin's Lamp is found
When I was married, I didn’t have a car, at least, not one available to me during the day. I hated staying in the house so I walked everywhere. I lived a few blocks from the Monon Trail (a converted railroad track) and I would walk from 106th street in Indianapolis, Indiana up to Main Street in Carmel, Indiana, roughly a three mile walk. Along the way is an industrial area that is not in use anymore. Some kitschy shops have sprung up in the warehouses along the trail but there is this HUGE silo that has been abandoned for years. It always fascinated me and I loved to photograph it.
The last time I walked the Monon Trail was back in 2008. Following my divorce I moved south to a small community called Irvington, still part of Indianapolis but too far away to walk the Monon. However, Irvington was not a good place for me. Even though it’s a wonderful little community where everyone knows everyone else and they have summer picnics and music on the circle on south Audubon Ave, it’s not my preferred life-style. After a series of funny-but-terrifying experiences (and some not-so-funny) I left Irvington and moved back north where I felt safer.
I’ve been doing this 365 Days Journey Through the Past project where I upload a photo taken on today’s date but on a day sometime in my past. Recently I posted a couple of photos that I took of portions of this silo in 2006 and that I titled “Aladdin’s Lamps” and “Aladdin’s Companion”. I began to wonder what has time done to them? Today I drove to the Monon Trail to find out.
I parked my car in a parking lot near the Monon and went for a short walk through brisk, cold air and gloppy mud in order to check my lamps. Below I’ve posted the photos I took back in 2006 next to the photos I took today. Perhaps I should have rubbed the lamp, and kept rubbing the lamp hoping for a genie. Perhaps all that rubbing would have kept it from the inevitable decay of time.
Aladdin's Lamp 2006
Aladdin's Lamp 2012
Aladdin’s Lamp 2012 looks gaunt compared to what it looked like six years ago. I didn’t think that was possible for metal. The connections look eroded, like ill-fitting, painful joints and the surface is pock-marked with age. Vines reach out for it and grasp it, whispering how they will embrace it and build a strong shelter for it. But what the vines don’t tell it is that they will one day consume it. I know this; I have seen it. It takes time, but it happens.
Silo Door 2006
Silo Door 2012
The difference between the silo doors is obvious, also. One of my lamps is gone. I added red arrows to show where the lamps are and as you can see in Silo Door 2012, the right lamp is missing. In Silo Door 2006 vines crawl across the facade, and in Silo Door 2012 they hang all over the front like an abandoned web. The skeletal canopy juts out over the landing in both photos but Silo Door 2012 is starting to bow and what was left of the sheet metal roofing has tumbled to the ground. In Silo Door 2012 there are added swatches of pale-blue paint; to cover up graffiti?
I love abandoned things. I love the character that comes through. However, I’m worried about my silo. I knew it during an earlier stage in its decline and it was perfect then. Now it’s looking old and waiting for demolition. But who will do the demolition—man? nature? or time?
