The keys to the kingdom open odd underground doors such as those to rooms like this one: a Pump Room located under Manhattan. This room contains water pumping equipment which is used in case of underground flooding in a nearby tunnel. The water gets sucked out of gratings and pumped into the cities sewer system.
Original Writeup:
This building, formerly the home of Gotham container corp, is basically just another quick example of the shit going down in northwest Brooklyn. Any and all small one story industrial buildings are being smashed. Crushed and redeveloped, this location will no doubt soon contain a poorly constructed, overpriced and very ugly building of 'oh-so-hip apartments for rent or sale. You know, just in time for the housing market downturn spreading across this country.
And what of the small business that once occupied this building? They've been forced out or gone out of business, their jobs either gone or relocated. What was once a building contributing jobs to the area is now only going to be lining the pockets of of greedy developer.
Getting inside this place was super easy. The construction fence was wide open. Inside though, little was left over. The entire building was being ripped apart and readied for its date with the bulldozer.
Update, April 2013
It turns out '
Gotham container corp' seems to have moved their business over to New Jersey. Their old building was completely bulldozed and
replaced with a combination condo building and hotel (sort of like a combination pizza hut and taco bell, only slightly different. This intermixing of living accommodations even
received a writeup in the NY Times.
While whatever jobs associated with Gotham have moved across the river, new jobs at the hotel have come into play - so at least in that regard the new buildings are not just housing. I would imagine workers for either make more or less the same cash. A real win here would have been a building that delivered better paying gigs, but what can you do... I'll take jobs still in the economy over none.
Assuming this is a well designed, constructed and cared for building, the result here are positive, and my original curmudgeon assessment was spot on wrong. Hey, I can admit it.
Out and about in the burbs last autumn we happened upon an old military base where a large underground bunker was suspected to be located, so we went on a hike to find said bunker. When we got there it was smaller than expected, but the door handle, well, that grayish looking twiggy thing wasn't what I expected to find, that's for sure...
Sometimes you just have to engage in a little bit of freelance track inspection.
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J.G. was just an average guy. He made his living selling hats and made his death in a mausoleum at krulewitch cemetery. There his body lay in rest until the 76th anniversary of his death in 1997, when an unknown person or persons broke into his crypt and burned his coffin and remains to oblivion.
2 police officers spotted the smoke that night and their presence apparently scared off whoever committed this crude devilish act, but in many ways it was already decades too late.
Home to more than 30,000 bodies, Krulewitch is a place that was doomed from the onset. The majority of those interned here were either poor or of average means. Few were able to pay for continuance contracts for their plots to be maintained. As the space filled, cutting off the revenue from new burials, the cash to maintain the cemetery dropped. The congregation which owns this cemetery has shrank over the decades. Few attend their services which take place in a building far from the cemetery. Some probably don't even know the cemetery exists. With no space for new burials and no cash from continuance, the cemetery slowly fell into disrepair. Vines grew over the ground, trees sprouted. Decades of neglect created this jungle of the damned. Nature has taken back the land, with lush tress and vines covering just about everything.
It did not help that the area this cemetery is in also slid into decline. We were greeted upon arrival here to the not too distant sound of mid-day gunfire. Such a dangerous area surely has not helped in bringing visitors to this forgotten place.
The conditions here are just plain disturbing. Iron fences are rusted through and knocked over. Headstones, too, have been toppled. Beer cans grow like weeds in some corners, next to a stack of trash bags containing god only knows what. The thick trees and vast land area make it a dangerous place for police to patrol by foot when they dare to enter it at all. A place like this is ripe for crime. Ripe for evil. This place of rest has indeed become the devils playground, and no one has the millions of dollars it would take to restore it to remotely resemble what a cemetery should look like.
This fact doesn't seem to be lost on the dead though. Entire bodies have disappeared. Their mausoleums doors smashed in, the coffins ripped open. It is as if the even the dead are so appalled by this place of sin that they have up and left.
The River Nevs, as I like to call it, is actually a stretch of subway tunnel named after the abandoned station found along this route. Located below an active subway tunnel, this tunnel and station were built at great expense as a means to connect to a proposed subway line which was never built. The station is complete with the standard flair of tilework that is sometimes missing in other abandoned stations.
The station today is a netherworld along this pitch black tunnel. Water leaks in along the tunnel trackway rolling downhill to the station, sounding like a hundred demented voices chirping in the darkness. The constant runoff of water has necessitated the MTA to build a pump room located square in the middle of the trackway at one end of the station. If not for the pump room, this entire station would be submerged under water.
The platform itself has over the years become a storage area for various work projects. A rather odd collection of items can be found in these rooms dating back to the 1980s and perhaps beyond. Layers of dirt cover the floors and anything else left in this unique forgotten corner of the system.
Fuck Daylight. Sleep all day, tunnel all night.
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I'm not sure what to say about this place honestly. part of me enjoyed it due to it's large scale, multiple buildings, and interesting industrial grade stuff to photograph. The rest of me thought it was pretty trashed and not in a good way. Seemed like scrappers went through here as well as kids with paint - sadly though the kids with paint didn't even tag up very well... Oh well.
Not a bad place to spend the afternoon though. As I was told the place was once used to test jet engines for the military.
The workhorse of the harbor, these tugs don't seem to have seen much action since 1988... or at least that's what the last paperwork on them seems to suggest... What will become of them, who knows...
I wish I knew more about this motherfucker. It is quite large. Located in the ghetto of NotNY, this abandoned church is simply amazing.
