The Cathedral of the Most Blessed Sacrament sits on the east side of Woodward Avenue, fairly far north from downtown in a largely residential area. While the above aerial image accurately captures that there is some demolition and abandonment around the cathedral, when you’re on the ground you see there are actually several historic districts…
Category: Afield
Posts from further afield
Woodward Avenue, Churches and Other Buildings, Detroit
We’ll leave Brush Park behind and turn on to Woodward Avenue at the Ecumenical Theological Seminary and head north. Woodward Avenue is perhaps one of the most iconic streets in Detroit, and stretches all the way from the Detroit River all the way past Eight Mile Road, the city limits, all the way to the…
Brush Park, Detroit
Perhaps there is no better place to start our examination of Detroit than the Brush Park neighborhood, just northwest of the downtown area, separated by one of many interstates, in this case, the Fisher Freeway, or Interstate 75. The aerial photograph captures the neighborhood in 1998. It is certainly not 1998 anymore! The whole area…
The Motor City: Detroit, Michigan
If I understand the point of this somewhat incoherent essay, it’s that a tension exists between various groups who want to define the “real” Detroit — is it the Detroit of the bustling past, the shockingly ruined present, or the inevitably gentrified future? While this debate is inexorably being proved pointless — nostalgia will prove…
City Methodist and Other Places, Gary, August 2023
Oh my, I was expecting this by looking up recent photos on the internet, but nothing can really prepare you for what you see when you’re there in person. There roof over the nave of City Methodist Church has almost completely collapsed, and it is totally dangerous to get anywhere near this structure. The nearby…
Cathedral of the Holy Angels, Gary, August 2023
I visited the second of two cathedral on my trip, the second that was closed when I visited, and the first of a diocese in Gary, reflecting the rapid growth in northwest Indiana after World War II. The diocese was only created in 1956 out of the diocese of Fort Wayne. The Cathedral of the…
Gary, Indiana, August 2023
I’m sure these two photos, above and below, are the classic “ruin porn” photos that most people seek out to take when they visit Gary, Indiana. And I’m not going to pretend that the city doesn’t have serious problems, and no one who lives there, I’m sure, is going pretend there aren’t thousands of acres…
From the Vault: Union Station, Gary
Update: Announced in August of 2023, the station will undergo an $8 million dollar renovation, which I covered in this post from September of 2023. The impressive Beaux-Arts edifice of Gary Union Station opened in 1910, only four years after the founding of the town it served. Abandoned since the 1970s, I find a certain…
From the Vault: City Methodist Church, Gary
Update: I revisited the church in August of 2023. The building has continued to suffer severe deterioration and much of the nave’s roof have collapsed. City Methodist Church in downtown Gary is perhaps one of the more famous abandoned buildings in the United States. The congregation also had a sadly short run, founded in 1925,…
From the Vault: Gary, Indiana
Update: I went back in the summer of 2023. This is Gary, Indiana. A city only founded in 1906, which peaked at a population of 178,320 in 1960, an increase of 33% from the 1950 federal census. In the most recent census of 2020, it has dropped to 69,093, a drop of 61%. These photos…