by Stefani Kim
By Stefani Kim Brooklyn cartoonist and urban explorer Julia Wertz finds abandoned spaces fascinating, but not for the reasons you might expect. Although the lore of paranormal activity within abandoned buildings continues to pervade popular reality shows like “Ghost Hunters,” you’ll never catch Wertz prowling deserted hallways for sounds of the undead. “It’s not […]
Categories: Abandoned Buildings, Urban Exploration
by Gwynne Hogan
The tale of one Queens land heiress, her abandoned empire, and those neighbors trying to pick up the pieces.
Categories: Abandoned Buildings • Tags: abandoned, Hollis, Jamaica, Queens, Rita Stark
by Ben Brody
By Ben Brody Behind a green construction fence near the Williamsburg waterfront, crews are demolishing and gutting 28 buildings from the Domino Sugar Refinery complex, readying it for a $1.5 billion mixed-use development that the city approved in late April. It’s a familiar occurrence in space-starved and development-hungry New York: Contractors demolish old buildings to […]
Categories: Abandoned Buildings, Brooklyn, Reclaimed Spaces • Tags: demolition, Development, Domino Sugar Refinery, National Demolition Association, Two Trees, Williamsburg
by Ryan Kailath
By Ryan Kailath A recent walk along the three-block length of East First Street revealed 12 vacant storefronts. Ten were boarded up or behind rolling grates, with forlorn signs advertising square footage, a broker’s phone number and stipulations like “No restaurants allowed.” One space was under construction. The 12th storefront, at the very end of the block […]
Categories: Reclaimed Spaces
By Patrick Gillespie Beat-up brick marked the façade on one side of the building, old dirty windows the other. Papers and furniture sat inside, collecting dust. The exterior had rusty smudges. Until this year, no one had worked at 1000 Dean Street or 899 Bergen Street for more than thirty years. Five hundred people arrived […]
Categories: Uncategorized
Moldy Houses in post-Sandy from qingqingchen on Vimeo. By Qingqing Chen On a chilly Saturday afternoon in April, Deidre McGrath and her husband, Scott, went door to door checking housing conditions on Midland Avenue, on Staten Island. As they approached a vacant house, they noticed a strong, musty smell. “It’s mold,” said Scott McGrath, […]
Categories: Abandoned Buildings
Coney Resident Plots Garden Rescue for Vacant Lot By Kaara Baptiste Last year, Minico Roberts, a longtime Coney Islander, started thinking about creating a new community garden in her neighborhood. She was inspired by her experience as a culinary educator at farmers markets in the Bronx and East New York. “I was working out of […]
Categories: Brooklyn, Reclaimed Spaces
By Kelly Dickerson It’s bizarre to think that one building can take in millions of dollars in revenue with just one tenant. The building at 1 Times Sq. is home to a Walgreens that occupies the first three floors, but from the fourth floor to the 25th floor, giant flashing advertisements stretch up the side of the building. […]
Categories: Abandoned Buildings, Times Square
by Leila Roos
By Leila Roos Q&A with Frank Morales This interview has been edited for clarity. Housing activist Frank Morales is an advocate of “the direct action approach,” which is “securing a place to live by seizing, renovating and defending it.” Morales, 65, began squatting in the South Bronx during the urban decay of the late ’70s, […]
Categories: Uncategorized
by Parker Brown
By Parker Brown Growing up in the 1980s, Ian Reid was a skateboarder and graffiti artist. He used to tag many of the abandoned tunnels lying under Manhattan. But now that the lifelong Brooklynite is in his mid-30s and has two kids, he’s given up skateboarding and graffiti; instead, he pursues a more noble art: […]
Categories: Urban Exploration