Urbanites take risks to explore abandoned buildings

Even when it doesn’t involve breaking and entering, exploring vacant buildings is almost always illegal – and often dangerous.

But that doesn’t stop Western New York’s urban explorers — urbexers for short — from venturing into empty, seemingly abandoned structures throughout the region and beyond. For what? Because the combination of history, mystery, faded beauty and serious decadence is irresistible.

You’ll find them on Instagram with handles like “Dauntless Obscura”, “Mr.p Explores” and “Brokendownbuffalo”. On Facebook, you can follow Abandoned Adventures, Abandoned and Beyond Buffalo and Abandoned 716. Not forgetting TikTokers and YouTubers like Joey/@Don Joey.

Joey says: “I’ve been into urban exploring since I was very young, but I really got into it during the pandemic. I remember my Tata (grandfather) taking me and my brother on adventures to explore this abandoned railway building in Fort Erie, ON. I was probably 6 or 7 years old at the time and I loved going there. A few years later, my mother and uncle took me to explore the Central Terminal. These two missions are probably the origin of my love for exploration. I try to do at least one “mission” a week, as we like to call them.

Images of urban explorers taken inside St. Ann Church and Sanctuary, a magnificent Gothic Revival structure at 651 Broadway, recently caught the attention of local preservation groups on Facebook. Although the exact location was not named – an almost universal practice among urbexers – it was clearly the shuttered, though still beloved, St. Ann’s, which was closed by the Diocese of Buffalo in 2012 and sold in 2022. furniture was also sold.

Debate ensued over whether it was fair to share the YouTube video, which shows three intrepid young urbex roaming the structure and even climbing to the top of its tower and ringing one of its bells. But all agreed that it was also fascinating to see the beauty that remained as well as appreciate the reality of this seemingly doomed and once vibrant religious center. The footage was punctuated by a series of “wows” and “oh my gods” from behind the camera.

And the “wows” are what they are looking for. Urbexers carefully document their expeditions and share the photos and videos via social media, where they clearly compete for clicks and follows. They also scour posts from like-minded explorers to discover dilapidated sites they haven’t yet encountered. The photography is almost always impressive, but the locations are only hints, if anything.

In many images, soaring columns, ornate domes, and other architectural features are offset by piles of broken glass, peeling paint, and trash of all kinds. These are supposed to be scary, sad and seductive – and they are.

It is important to note that although urbex implies “urban”, this is misleading. Rural areas are very popular, with abandoned institutional structures in remote areas topping the list.

Western New York shines here, as it has an urbex priority list item: the former JN Adam Memorial Hospital in Perrysburg, vacant since 1995.

It doesn’t matter that the complex is surrounded by chain link fencing. Fences and boards don’t stop determined explorers. There is always a vulnerable gap somewhere.

JN Adam is also surrounded by 500 acres of forest, which helped prevent any redevelopment of the former Tuberculosis Hospital, designed by architect John H. Coxhead for JN Adam, then mayor of Buffalo, and opened in 1912. Coxhead built a graceful red brick sanatorium. modeled on Southern plantations, with ornamental columns and wide verandas on each floor so patients could sleep in the open air. There is also a magnificent circular domed building, which has been photographed by hundreds of illicit visitors.

Local explorer “Abby Jones” who posts on Facebook/Abandoned and Beyond Buffalo – and who has taken hauntingly beautiful images of the hospital – told me: “I heard it will be torn down This year. I haven’t been there since 2017 but the condition is absolutely dangerous. A friend told me that debris from the ceiling was falling on them as they walked through this year. »

Another Western New York urbexer, Andrea Cogliano (Instagram@andymarie), shares the enthusiasm for institutional sites, but is more likely these days to take perfectly legal tours when offered. She signed up for photo walks in undeveloped parts of the Richardson Olmsted campus, which remains her favorite, but she was able to explore years ago the Allentown State Hospital in Pennsylvania, opened in 1912, vacant since 2010. It was the location of M. Night. Shyamalan’s 2019 film “Glass.” The campus was demolished in 2020-2021.

Cogliano, who works as an inventory manager, follows the ongoing demolitions: “We knew the state hospital in Westborough, Massachusetts, was going to collapse. We drove 7.5 hours to get there, stayed in a motel, explored then turned around and came back. Westborough opened in 1886 and was demolished in 2019.

This sense of urgency – capturing what will soon be lost – drives many urbexers. In a July 27, 2020 New York Times article by Christopher Mele, explorer Michael Berindi, who runs an urbex website, The Proper People, is quoted: “A common theme we try to address in our videos is the idea that the world we live in is becoming more and more disposable.

In the same article, Drew Scavello of Facebook/Truth in Destruction notes, “It’s a much more tangible way to connect with history than going to a museum and taking a pre-planned tour.” »

Connecting to history is a motivation for Joey the YouTuber, who has personal connections to some of the sites he explores.

“I find the history behind all these buildings so fascinating,” he says. “When you explore, you can’t help but think of all the people who have worked in the exact place you are.”

Like all the urbexers I contacted, Joey and his team strive to tread lightly: “We understand that what we are doing is not allowed,” he says. “With that in mind, we remain respectful wherever we go and we leave each place exactly as we found it.”

“Abby” from Abandoned and Beyond says, “Longtime urban explorers on the East Coast, like me, respect the properties and follow a strict code: take only photos, leave only footprints. »

Even a cursory scan of the dozens of websites and social media feeds devoted to abandoned sites reveals the sheer quantity of these places throughout the Northeast – far more than I had ever imagined.

Western New Yorkers routinely struggle to turn the outdated into something useful and relevant. Urban explorers serve at least one related purpose: they show us the harsh reality of what happens when this struggle is abandoned.