The Astoria Presbyterian church was located on 33rd street, near 31st avenue. It was demolished in 2010.
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Category: Social
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The demolished Astoria Presbyterian Church
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St. Saviours: The Historic Church that the NYC Government refused to save.
10 years ago, the NYC government had an opportunity to save a historic church in Maspeth, Queens. Nearly every elected official involved either dropped the ball or did not care.
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LIC Elks Lodge – Developer Vandalism Edition
In LIC, a new preservation battle has escalated quickly.
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Hotbox Stripclub
A few members noticed this club and it sat on a ‘to-do’ list for months. An initial recon run found all the doors locked tight with double layer doors and no windows at all. This should not have pushed this location onto the back burner of the investigations list but it somehow did. Normally such a laps in protocol would never be tolerated but let’s face it, booze money and women are way more interesting than old abandoned buildings – and anyone who says otherwise is a lying sack of cat crap.
Eventually a report landed on my desk about this location – and from all the possible members, it came from a female. According to her there was indeed access . She entered only to find there was a beeping sound from some sort of alarm system. They aborted but were planning to go back. You’d think some of our hyperactive sexually overdriven 20something boys would have lead the pack into this place, but eh… maybe the memo didn’t get on their desks either.
LTV Squad: Now hiring ‘minister of memos’ – please don’t apply, we will find you. At home. While you’re sleeping.
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Abandoned strip clubs are very rare in NYC. Often a club will close, only to reopen a month later under a different name. This one was shut down for over a year, so it seemed clear no one would be reopening this location. With fresh intel on hand we went to take another look.
The access point was perfectly discrete and able to accommodate a team of 4. I personally lead the way inside and confirmed my own suspicion – the alarm was coming from a broken fire alarm panel. At this point it had been beeping for at least a week with no one showing up to turn it off. Clearly no one gave that much of a shit about this place, though the fact that power is still on means someone somewhere is paying the bills.
The club interior proved to be everything you’d imagine – bar with stripper poles on a stage behind it in the center of the building. Behind the stage were all those secret rooms your mom works in. There was a VIP lounge complete with it’s own stained couches and stripper pole.
>But there was something else going on here. In the back there’s a room with a ladder and paint buckets. The bar is coated in dust, but there’s stacks of tools and equipment sitting on it dust free. There’s a jobox locked tight, probably full of pricey power tools.
>Next to a dirty sink behind the bar I find a 2010 yellow pages. Huh. This confirms our suspicions about the power still being on – this place isn’t completely abandoned. That doesn’t really bother any of us, but the extreme heat in here does. The hot summer combined with no windows has made this entire building one big oven. Content with the crappy photos (walls painted black, not really the greatest for photography), we bail out and are pleased to be back on the midnight streets where the temperate is probably around 85… that’s got to be 20 less than inside the box…
Time for more booze. Another night, another mission.
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McCarren Pool 1980s Graffiti Exposed
When we first entered the former locker room areas of McCarren Pool, I was most pleased at this discovery. It is and was probably the most impressive graffiti discovery of 2010, period. While I know that is a huge, huge statement to make, you really must understand what we have here in these photos to truly appreciate the extent of the situation.
All of these photos were taken in 2010. All of the graffiti you see here (well, with one or two exceptions) was done inside the locker rooms of the pool during the 1980s. The date range of these tags runs from 1983 to approximately 1987. It is rather easy to conclude that during the years immediately after the pool was closed, the entire site was completely abandoned – doors left open, and vandals taking full advantage. At some point in the late 80s the buildings were sealed up with concrete and reinforced iron. From that point on, even while the exterior of the building became an illegal graffiti haven, no other graffiti artists gained access to the locker rooms.
This is most likely the last graffiti find of this variety in NYC to have survived until 2010. I can say this with a high regard of authority, having been in nearly every abandoned building within NYC over the last 20 years. The stock of abandoned buildings here was decimated during this time. Out of hundreds of such buildings the only intact walls of pure 1980s graffiti I ever found was the Graffiti Room in Greenpoint Terminal Market.
These photos represent a small portion of the dozens I took of this amazing graffiti find. Sadly, as of this last month, the locker rooms at McCarren Pool have been completely gutted. No trace remains of nearly all of this graffiti. These photos are the only proof it ever survived this long. I am of course, most pleased to be able to present them to you. Enjoy.
Stay tuned for tomorrows episode, where we go deep into the tunnels (!!!) and expose even more amazing finds.
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Ascension
History: Founded in the 1800s, this church building was built early in the 20th century. The first service held here was for the pastor, who died just as the building was completed. In the years that followed the church survived and then, as with all things, died a slow caustic death. Congregation slipped away, while the building fell into disrepair. Finally the last services were held, and the property sold…
Today: the buildings here have numbered days. The bulldozers will come. The sometimes historic rubbish left behind will be hauled off to the landfill. The pigeons will have to roost in some other rafters, and the feral cats of the neighborhood will have to hunt somewhere else. And these photos will provide a rare look, into what was, and soon will not be.
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Church On Sunday
I wish I knew more about this motherfucker. It is quite large. Located in the ghetto of NotNY, this abandoned church is simply amazing.
