My last post was a power plant and I’m pretty sure this place is too, though I couldn’t find any history on it. This was a really cool, completely unplanned and unexpected explore. Last week I met someone named Bobby Hicks and he told me about this location. I was gonna visit Staten Island today, but but I stopped along the way to follow up on this lead. When I got there, I had to act inconspicuous to avoid the roaming security truck. After exploring several alley ways I finally found the place that matched what was described to me:

I was causally inspecting the building when a group of three kids – maybe 14 years old or so, appeared from nowhere and asked if I wanted to go inside. I told them I like to flick abandoned buildings and graffiti. They showed me the way in. I didn’t expect to find a legit spot, but it looked cool and now I had someone offering to show me the ropes. I guess it’s adventure time now!

After slinking through a few fences, I was in. The first floor was entirely dark and I didn’t take any pictures, but after climbing an extremely sketch staircase things started to lighten up. It was soon apparent that we had company. I offered to introduce myself, but by the time I got to the main floor they had disappeared. Shrugging it off, I started flicking, and split up from my helpful guides.

The main floor was impressive:

There was a pretty cool crane above the main floor… along with a lot of holes in the floor:

After thoroughly examining the first floor, I decided to head upwards. When I made my way towards the stairs I finally met up with the other voices we heard earlier. Turns out, they knew my escorts. After a friendly chat, I got started on the stairs. Oh, and they were the most sketch stairs I’ve ever encountered. Each step was a metal grate that was welded to some beams. But the rust was real, and many of the stairs had fallen apart or collapsed. Several of the corner landings were missing, and several of the steps were gone.

At some points, the hand-rails weren’t even present:

To make matters worse, only floor 1 and 2 had actual solid floors. Every floor after that was this annoying, rusty, sketch metal grating:

Often panels were missing, and the panels that were present creaked underfoot. I meticulously planned every foot placement to make sure I was always standing on a joist. The trippiest part was the fact that all 6 floors were made of this metal grating. You could see the first floor, just by looking down. Every step was vertigo inducing. After exploring the majority of the industrial maze, I made my way to the roof.

The giant chimney stack was even more impressive up close than it was from the ground:

On the other half of the roof, I found this giant board covered circle. I soon realized that this must be another smoke stack that collapsed and has since been boarded up. Creepy.

After enjoying my time on the roof, I started back downwards. On the way, I grabbed this sweet pic of Manhattan from inside.

I found a creepy “Toilet Graveyard” I had missed earlier. This room had a cage full of porcelain toilets and sinks that had been tossed inside. I wonder why they removed all the fixtures – only to throw them in this cage. Weird.

On my way out I stopped to peak in a side room when I saw some bright colors. It had some decent graffiti and also a few cars. I suppose someone was using this for their illegal chop-shop at some point in time.

Enjoy the full photo set!

March 20, 2016 at 2:34 am | Urban Ex