Adults had mental hospitals, children had state schools, but an asylum is an asylum. Belchertown served from 1922 until a judge made a surprise visit…
history under ground
Community
Belchertown State School
Birtle Indian Residential School
Birtle, MB
Birtle’s Indian Residential School that can be seen today was built in 1930 and managed by the Presbyterian church. It was one of many such structures built as part of Canada’s aggressive assimilation policy, wherein […]
Brewster Projects
Detroit, MI
Promises of good jobs brought tens of thousands of Black families to Detroit between 1910 and 1940, but redlining blocked them from living anywhere near the industrial districts where they worked. Brewster-Douglass was supposed to be the answer, but by the 1980s it had become a new kind of ghetto.
City Methodist Church
Gary, IN
Gary’s sad story is written on the payrolls of US Steel. When the mill modernized there were massive layoffs, as a result this grand gothic church’s congregation fell from 1,700 to 100. It closed in 1975.
Colmor New Mexico
Colmor, New Mexico was founded in 1887 and abandoned in the 1960s. It missed the railroad. It missed the highway. It’s a dirt road kind of town.
Fergus Falls State Hospital
Fergus Falls, MN
Why write, who cares? The door asked… I guess I just didn’t have an answer. I’ll keep doing my thing, I thought, and you keep doing yours. Now, how best to capture the fingernail scratches around this padded room’s peep hole?
Gilman, Colorado:
Zinc Mountain Ghost Town
Under the star trails at our rooftop camp it was hard to believe that I was still living in a time when ghost towns–real ghost towns–were still engraved onto the sides of mountains. Below its cracked city streets courses the treasure that built the town and the poison that killed it. Cup your ears against the walls, be very still, and listen to the memory of a place called home.
Guadalupe Mesa Village
Cañyon Tapia, NM
Built in the 10th century and abandoned by the 14th, this is the oldest ghost town I have ever explored. It stands atop a desolate mesa in New Mexico in the shadow of an extinct volcano.
Hazelwood Sanatorium
Louisville, KY
Kentucky’s first tuberculosis hospital burns twice, then takes on the burden of a closing Waverly Hills Sanatorium.
Holy Family Orphanage
Marquette, MI
Two things happened around Marquette, Michigan when the mining started: Native Americans were pushed off their land and miners got killed at work. Both of these factors filled this circa-1914 orphanage.
Holy Name Catholic Church
Kansas City, MO
During the Kansas City riots following Martin Luther King’s assassination this circa-1911 gothic revival was the site of a nearly tragic stampede.