Over the last year, I've made three separate visits to Gary, Indiana with people I've met through the
Urbex Everything Discord server. Over the course of those three expeditions I explored twenty one different locations, setting a personal record of 14 locations in 27 hours during the second trip.
Now some of those spots I've posted here already in individual threads such as
these locations, but many of them I have not. For many of the more blown-out locations I only got a few really good shots because of how trashed they were, so instead of posting over a dozen threads I'll be posting them in multilocation compilation threads. For starters, here's the commercial locations.
First up is one that I'm certain most of you have seen before, the Gary Bank. It's a rather well known location. We had to bail quickly after arriving due to a cop driving down the street and parking, but I was able to get the few shots I wanted.
Next up we have a multistory department store. This building had a lot of different uses- it was built in the 1920's as an Elk's Lodge for the fraternal order before being converted into a department store during WWII. Eventually the Lake County Welfare Department moved into the basement at some point during the Postwar Period and proceeded to take over the rest of the building when the department store closed in the 70's. In 1995 they moved to a larger location and this building has been abandoned ever since.
Here's what may have been Gary's first dairy pasteurization plant, founded in 1908. I'm certain that this building belonged to the company, but I'm not so sure whether it was the pasteurization plant itself or just an office. Given the smokestack and window decorations that indicate it housed some mayoral campaign or another, I'm leaning towards this being the renovated pasteurization plant before it fell out of use.
Next up we have an old furniture shop and warehouse. This place was piled to the ceiling with rotting furniture. The stairs were also missing, so to reach the second floor we had to scale the handrails that were still attached to the walls.
And lastly, we have a small CWA Printer's Union office. This small office was for a union that serves newspaper, publication, and printer tradesmen. This one, like most buildings in Gary, was pretty trashed but they still had am 18th century linotype machine and some campaign stickers left.
That's it for now. I'll definitely post more soon enough, because Gary is the one city I'm consistently spoiled for choice in no matter how the day is going and I love it for that.