Cityscape

how the heck do things like this fall in to disrepair like this?... this building should be restored would it be expensive hell yeah but in the end you would have a sweet arse building that has some interesting history behind it albeit weird.

Man look at those weeds.

You would think someone would take some time and keep a building like this from such a state...
In my town, they demolished a historic prison (The Ohio Penitentary in Columbus, OH) to build a arena. The wouldn't even preserve the original building. Really sad, considering the beauty of that building.

Scott, they tore down a pre-Civil War Era stone prison to build condos in my town.

It happens because people just want a few bucks in their pockets and nothing more.

This is now considered a historic site, but i Doubt theyll ever preserve it besides having put the metal support beams..and there are some like building n scaffolding pieces in the enter of the entire building..

man...I really, really wish I was just filthy rich...I'd buy that and pay to have it fixed up...have my own little castle...buy a buncha the land around it too so I wouldn't be in the middle of the city...but yeah...such a beautiful building...

what a shame today i read that apartments were built here going for 2-6000 dollars a month and people are complaining already about weird things happening

What a nice contrast between modern day and ancient buildings.

I think this is beyond restoration. Now, the other hospitals and such on this site; somebody should work on them!

This is one of my favorites!
To me it shows life and death.
I like everything about this photo ... the feeling it gives, the colors and the story it's telling me.
I really, really like this one (wink).

they would need to knock it down cuz its impossible to make that again

There used to be a strange octagonal little tower structure, I'm thinking I hadn't been there since '87, '88, '89, maybe - do I have the wrong place or is this little bldg still there? I used to love to look at it from across the river, esp. when they lit it all up. What a beautiful bidg. i believe it was also called Welfare Island. That's what I always knew it as. Maybe I had that wrong too?

Ohhh nooo... more unaffordable, sterile, condos? what a terrible, terrible shame. Well, I suppose the only redemption there is if it keeps some semblance of this beautiful place intact as opposed to it just dissapearing. Sigh. The rich get richer.... and they want to live in the old "lunatic asylum", lol, I guess, somehow, it's fitting. (????) Jeeze, it just doesn't make any sense, lol.

You know what, I take that all back - I can't be ho-hum about it. The more I look at that page, honestly, the more it truly pisses me off. I do wish they let the old bldg. just go with it's dignity and it's (and my) memories. I am really getting so tired of this nouveau riche BS, they drove me out of my home city - NY - and this is really pathetic. I mean read that last paragraph on that page; how SMUG.

Why bother to visit this remote, cold, abandoned and forgotten places, when you could be comfortably staying in that horizon with higher buildings, water, electricity, heat, furniture, TV sets, movies, microwaves, popcorn and even maybe an internet connection that allowing you to drop by www.opacity.us?
I'll call it honor.

I love the contrast between "old" and "new" with the buildings in the back. Priceless.


Motts, you should come to RI to the Hope Mill. Although it's in pretty good condition on the outside, I can imagine the insides look somewhat worse. It's a beautiful mill and they're going to tear it down soon for condos. It's been up since the civil war and there are underground tunnels leading to the house across the street. So sad. =( I'll try to take some pictures of the outside for you!

Horrible that such beautiful architecture is left to crumble. People have such little respect for the past when there is supposedly more money to be made in the future...

I wish I had been old enough to appreciate the city's original brick hospital, St. Mary's, before the brick structure was torn down to put in a basketball court. I now live across the street from where that old building stood, and I have little to no information about it. I believe it was opened in 1861, served through the Civil War, and was state-of-the-art until additions were built behind and around it in the 50s and 60s. In the 70s, a new hospital - Blessing - was constructed just a few blocks west, also on the main road, and by the 80s they were the leading hospital in the area with a large bed count and many talented doctors and nurses there. In the early to mid 90s, Blessing bought out the then-emptied St. Mary's building, tore down one of the two original brick structures (the other, assumedly a small laundry or power facility with an awesome smokestack, is still standing and I can see it out of my bedroom window), and emptied out the St. Mary's building. The 50s building is now used mostly for outpatient treatment, a few offices, the hospital employee's apparel shop, and on the top floor there is the psychiatric ward (lovingly called 6th floor) so that they could keep their psychiatric patients in a separate building from their other paying patients in the Blessing building. I believe that most of the floors are now abandoned, and my husband has not-so-fond memories of going up alone to clean a couple of the floors. He said it was creepy being alone up there, and the colors and architecture was most obviously from the 50s or so.

this thing cannot stand much longer. it needs a preservation effort

IS THE NEW BETTER THAN THAN THE OLD? OR IS ALL A DELUTION.

Stupid that people can get away with listing a building on a historic register -and all "historic preservation" means is keep people out with an ugly fence and let the place die.