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…
Tag: Indiana
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…
From the Vault: South Shore Industry, Chicagoland
Heading south down the shore of Lake Michigan from the Chicago Loop, you encounter a landscape that is both sublime and ineffable at the same time. There are no words to describe it. As I planned my journey to a series of Midwest industrial powerhouses, I realized I had never used these old, very old…
Lockerbie Square, Indianapolis, Indiana
Moving on on our tour of Midwestern neighborhoods and their relation to downtowns, we next come to the Lockerbie community of Indianapolis, Indiana. First of all, I had never realized that Indianapolis had a planned street grid, with radiating arteries coming out from a central roundabout (we’ll look at that sometime in the future). Lockerbie…
Saints Peter and Paul Cathedral, Indianapolis
The Cathedral of Sts. Peter and Paul was the only cathedral I was not able to enter due to Monday being the Labor Day holiday, but I was still able to view the exterior, which dominates Meridian Avenue north of downtown Indianapolis. The front facade is placed close to the street, so it sticks out…
Marktown, Indiana
Update: Portions of the town were demolished in the Spring 2014; see a house in St. Louis that looks similar to many of the buildings in Marktown. Marktown is the closest you’ll ever get to being on another planet on the southeast side of Chicagoland. It sits in the middle of an oil refinery, and…