Paper Shreds and Uneven Floors
The other day Jason and I checked out an abandoned building that used to be home to a decent sized mattress company beginning in the 1920s, and most recently was part of an illegal dumping operation. That may sound familiar as another building that I recently checked out, which happens to be down the street, had a similar fate with THOUSANDS of tons of residential trash being dumped inside it. Thankfully there were only piles of shredded paper products in this building. I’m guessing it was last inhabited in any major capacity around 2004, from some paperwork that we found.
There were a couple things that made this building so interesting. Each floor was completely different, something that is usually rare in these types of factory buildings. Also, since it is the dead of winter there was a lot of interesting ice on the floors. There was one area where a giant pipe had burst in this tiny room and it was pretty thick with ice. Another spot where another pipe broke had a good 2-3 inches thick of ice with all kinds of little things frozen inside it. The most interesting thing in this building though were the crazy humps in the wood flooring on all of the upper floors. This happens all the time in buildings with wood floors but the amount that this building had was pretty impressive! Overall we spend a good amount of time photographing this place because it was so interesting.
I also tried out something new that I think I’ll continue to do in abandoned buildings. I brought my audio recorder with me for the purpose of capturing the ambient sounds of an abandoned building. I was pretty happy with the results from this first test. It paints a good audible picture of why being in a giant empty building can sometimes be really spooky. Many times I’ve found myself stopped in my tracks because some noise I heard sounded like a person, or .. something, was in the building moving around or talking. Most of the time it’s just noises associated with an old building; creaky hinges, wind blowing giant metal pieces against each other, etc. I’ve embedded the recording from this building below. Turn up the speakers or put on some headphones, then hit play and scroll through the photos below.
Be sure to check out the full set on Flickr.
