St. Mary Mercy Hospital #2

Gary Saint Mary Mercy Hospital 1

OK…back on track! Here are some of my photos (you should know my style by now) to get the pace going again. We went to the old Saint Mary Mercy Hospital located in northern Gary. The newer part of the hospital has been renovated into the Gary Public Safety Facility. The police department and the city court are located in this building. This is my home for at least 8 hours a day. The part that we adventured in is blocked off from the inside and has not been entered since. Of course we found a way in. There are a lot of photos to show, so I will split them up into a couple of posts. The only info I could find is that this building was finished in 1957 and I think that it was closed in 1995? Not sure about that. I can’t really remember when it closed…sorry. Enjoy!

Tracks

I wanted to share this photo with you. My wife asked if I could take some “nice” pictures of her that was in a different place. There is one thing about my wife that is for sure…she knows me. She knows that I am always seeing things through dark lenses and some sort of distortion so I knew exactly what she meant by “nice”. I remembered some old train tracks that haven’t been used in a while not too far from our home. Here is one of the photos that came out of that shoot. It is not my usual style but my wife likes how they came out. Thanks for viewing.

WELCOME HOME

Gary Methodist Church-2nd & 3rd floor

Back at the Gary Methodist Church again and this time Khalila and I went to the second and third floor. There was a basketball court and some class rooms with lockers and stairs leading to the roof. There are a lot of photos here but this church is so inviting and every time that I go here, there a few people there taking photos. In some of these shots you can see the evidence of the fire that it survived

Seth Thomas

I have never met Seth but when I look at his pictures, I feel that I know him. Do you know what I mean? I have been working the streets of the "badlands" for over 17 years now and have worked all shifts. I am almost postivie that I have bumped into him or at the very least, seen him walking downtown. I have to give props to Seth, he is a inspiration and a influence to many. This makes him immortal. Please take some time to view him memorial site. Thank you and may your God go with you .
http://www.seth-thomas.org/

NAILED

American Dream-Relinquished

Not too far away from where I live, is a house foundation that was never finished. I must have passed this place a thousand times and never gave it a second look until one day I noticed it. It sits on a very sharp curve and the roads were icy that day so I was cautious. There it was just sitting there covered by overgrown thorn bushes and fallen trees. Khalia went with me to take some quick shots. Shortly after we exited the car, we were approached by the neighbor and his son. After we introduced ourselves and told them why we were there, the father told us that a man that built the foundation started it in 1966 and then could not finish his “dream house” because he died one year later. The neighbor told us that it was a very unique blueprint and that the bottom portion of the house was going to be the garage and laundry area and the living quarters was going to reach 2 to 3 stories above this. The foundation was flooded and muddy. I did not enhance any color on the photos and I was real happy with the results. Oh by the way, the puppet’s name is Joshua and I brought him along for the shoot. There will be more of Joshua to come later…..

Asylum

INTRO:
I like to adventure and explore abandoned buildings, taking photos in and around them. I saw pictures of the “large abandoned insane asylum” in northern Michigan and immediately wanted to be one of the photographers that went there. My wife and I packed up the gear and headed north. I was hoping to get inside and snap away. The whole way up there, we wondered how it would look and how it would feel to be there.
HISTORY:
The Northern Michigan Asylum (now the Traverse City State Hospital) was organized in 1881. It opened on November 30, 1885, with forty-three residents. Dr. J. D. Munson was the facility's superintendent for its first thirty-nine years. The original buildings served five hundred residents. By 1959 the facility had 1 million square feet of floor space and housed 2,956 residents. The institution's farms and its processing and manufacturing facilities covered over a thousand acres and made it nearly self-sufficient. Between 1885 and 1985 it served over fifty thousand residents. After 1960, with advances in treatment and community services, the need for in-patient facilities declined. In 1985 one hundred and fifty beds served the area's acute and intensive psychiatric needs.
MYTH:
I have read that the area is haunted and that if you wore anything that had a religious meaning, it was either damaged or would mysteriously get lost when you entered the premises.
CONCLUSION:
We didn’t get a chance to go inside any of the buildings but to just be there and look up at them, was amazing. The complex is huge and it even had its own fire department, bakery, textile and upholstery facility. There definitely was a “feeling” there that was hard to explain. We were really excited to walk around the complex and your mind races with thoughts of how it must have been years ago. When you looked at the buildings with the safety bars bolted from the outside, your mind wonders of how many faces were pressed up against the metal bars and the loud moans and screams that echoed through the trees on the large lawns. Well at least my mind wondered.
There is a large renovation project going on and some of the buildings are actually remodeled and made into condos. Inside one of the buildings is a restaurant that was quite busy….yes I said condos! Again these buildings are very large and beautiful.
I keep the photos in a traditional black and white except for the renovated parts. By the way, we didn’t wear any religious symbols so I couldn’t tell you………….. I will return……….

Broken Window Theory?