These were taken from the roof of an abandoned building which just so happened to be Gary's tallest.

 

A real shame.

Great stuff, I am fascinated by Gary. Can't wait to see the rest of your photos.

This is a complete industrial wasteland it looks like, and it STILL looks better than Toronto. :D

 

Thanks for the pics, Gary's looking sharp.

drive past this while going to chicago. what a depressing city, it really has become ugly for the most part

Depressing.  I've gone around Gary and found some nice spots though.  I wish Gary and nearby Hammond could swap downtowns.  Hammond (a healthy and stable industrial city) gets all the nice architecture from Gary, and Gary gets all the sh*t urban renewaled stuff from Hammond.  Then we can make Gary Int'l Airport, Chicago's 3rd, and it becomes a major freight hub and jobs center for warehousing, freight, FBO and MRO jobs.  There.  I fixed the problem...saved downtown architecture and gave the populous jobs.

http://i721.photobucket.com/albums/ww215/detroitzack/Gary%20IN/194.jpg

 

That's the old Gary Union Station (roughly center of picture). Just past it is the Amtrak line from Cleveland, and I've ridden through there many time. Of course, highway builders seemed to go out of their way to build interstate highways like concrete moats in between a city's train station and its downtown. At least in Gary the South Shore electric railway from South Bend, IN to Chicago was between the highway and downtown -- or what's left of it.

 

Truly one of the worst old-suburb disaster zones in the Midwest, discussed in the same breath with East St. Louis, East Cleveland, or Highland Park.

^ I guess at the time it didn't matter though.  By the 1950's when the toll road was under construction, the station was already shuttered, leaving the steel mill as the only place to go.  As cool as the building is, from an aesthetic/quality standpoint, the building is constructed of inferior materials.....cast in place concrete instead of limestone and brick.  That's helped from a durability standpoint, but also the reason the building has faded to a rusty brown color.  The building is actually a stunning example of the type of faux historical construction of precast and pour concrete we lament today....only they were a bit more tasteful at it back then.

hey great thread -- what an unexpected view! too bad you can see a lot of surgical removal of buildings downtown for lovely empty lots :(

hey great thread -- what an unexpected view! too bad you can see a lot of surgical removal of buildings downtown for lovely empty lots :(

 

Hey those lots add character! :lol:

http://i721.photobucket.com/albums/ww215/detroitzack/Gary%20IN/194.jpg

 

That's the old Gary Union Station (roughly center of picture). Just past it is the Amtrak line from Cleveland, and I've ridden through there many time. Of course, highway builders seemed to go out of their way to build interstate highways like concrete moats in between a city's train station and its downtown. At least in Gary the South Shore electric railway from South Bend, IN to Chicago was between the highway and downtown -- or what's left of it.

 

Truly one of the worst old-suburb disaster zones in the Midwest, discussed in the same breath with East St. Louis, East Cleveland, or Highland Park.

 

 

In fact, the canopied structures in the foreground, just beyond the dome, are the South Shore's Gary Metro station. It's served on weekdays by 19 westbound trips to Chicago from 4:44am until 9:19pm, and 20 eastbound trips from Chicago arriving between 7:07am and 1:42am. Travel time is about 1 hour and one-way fare is less than $6.

I am a little surprised at how bad Gary appears to be.  It looks like they have a pretty nice baseball stadium, around the same quality as Akron's maybe.

Gary was destroyed by white flight, to the point that even the business community abandoned the downtown, leaving empty high rises like the one you are taking the pix from.  One expects retail to leave for sububria, but the banks, lawyers, and other white collar work left as well.

 

The replacement buildings for downtown are in the edge city in the vicintiy of the I-65/US-30 interchange.

 

If I recall right it took political intervention from the city  to keep the one hospital left in town from joining the exodus. 

 

 

 

 

This is proof that Gary is in worse urban shape than Flint or Youngstown. I would hesitate to even call this a "downtown."

Yeah, Gary is much worse off than Y-Town. Y-Town has a fairly intact downtown, university, and a few decent neighborhoods. Gary is just a complete wreck (except for that new-ish baseball stadium I guess).

This is proof that Gary is in worse urban shape than Flint or Youngstown. I would hesitate to even call this a "downtown."

 

Not even close. Youngstown is one of the fastest growing job markets in Ohio.

 

And if you're thinking just of downtown, then take a gander:

 

http://www.urbanohio.com/forum2/index.php/topic,24160.0.html

http://www.urbanohio.com/forum2/index.php/topic,23011.0.html

Im looking forward to Part II.  Nothing like virtual slumming from the safty of a PC.

Gutsy move sneaking up to the roof of the old hotel.  I bet you could see the Chicago skyline from there on a clear day.

ZDM, needs to hit up Chicago.  We have plenty of buildings to photograph.

A strange city that most Hoosiers would not claim as one of their own, not just because it's the only large African-American majority, but because of its geography and climate (inland seaside), its very heavy industry, and its inorganic early history, its media market, its proximity to Chicago. I don't see this in isolation; from Buffalo west to Chicago and beyond, there are patches of collapsed heavy industry and their depopulated, decrepit residential neighbors. Sometimes whole cities suffer (Detroit), others fight the good fight (Cleveland), and others manage to put on a good face (Pittsburgh). Gary just happens to be not in Illinois, though it probably would look much the same if it were, since Illinois already has East Saint Louis. 

Truly one of the worst old-suburb disaster zones in the Midwest, discussed in the same breath with East St. Louis, East Cleveland, or Highland Park.

 

KJP, where is this Highland Park of which you speak?

Highland Park, Michigan......an urban "island city" entirely within Detroit.  It's absolutely obliterated

 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/detroitderek/2303887109/#

 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/71288712@N00/465905029/#

 

HP has cleaned up quite a bit though.  There used to be a lot of burned out hulk apartment buildings that made good "ruin porn" for photographers.

ZDM, needs to hit up Chicago. We have plenty of buildings to photograph.

 

Chicago? Where's that?

I was going to find another Chicago in another state to make a smart-ass comment, but I could not find one. Is there another Chicago?

^ I do like to pretend Chicago is in Michigan....where it should be.

^Second that one. Grand Haven should have been Chicago. I do the same thing with Ohio. Sandusky should have been Cincinnati, Columbus, or Cleveland (or better yet, all three of them combined so Ohio would have a Chicago-level city).

It's fun to ask the cities familiarity test to michiganders.  Can you name city streets in Chicago?  30 get named.  Okay now Detroit?  Woodward, Michigan, Trumbull, Gratiot, uhhhhhhhhhh, uhhhhhhhhhh, i75, i96...... ?

 

Had grand haven become a huge rail hub it could've been Chicago.  I can agree no sunsets on the lake is kind of lame

 

 

 

 

 

 

I've always found it interesting that the "control cities" on I-90/the "Toll Road" are Chicago and Ohio in the second and fourth pictures.  Why not South Bend?  (Speaking of South Bend, the "control cities" are the same there as we see in Gary IIRC.)

These were taken from the roof of an abandoned building which just so happened to be Gary's tallest.

 

Wow, Zachariah, that's brave of you!  Did you know that there were no criminals lurking in that abandoned building?

I've always found it interesting that the "control cities" on I-90/the "Toll Road" are Chicago and Ohio in the second and fourth pictures.  Why not South Bend?  (Speaking of South Bend, the "control cities" are the same there as we see in Gary IIRC.)

 

The control cities are strange.  First of all heading south on I-94 It says Memphis and Indiana.  I think historically there used to be Detroit listed as a control city but it was removed.  The rest of the signs just say "Loop, Western Suburbs, Wisconsin, and St Louis."  You really don't see any mention of Milwaukee until further down the Kennedy.  I always wondered if Chicago was trying to be insulting or something.  This freeway to all of Indiana...whatever is there! (No offense rob, I love your state).

 

If I were to rework them:

SB 90/94 divergence.  Detroit | Toledo | SKYWAY ,  Detroit | Memphis  | RYAN EXPY

SB 90/94 Reunion.  Detroit, Toledo

SB 94/57 Divergence.  Detroit | Michigan City  | BISHOP FORD EXPY, Champaign | Memphis

 

NB 55/90/94  St Louis | LSD | STEVENSON, Chicago Loop | Milwaukee  |  KENNEDY EXPY

NB 290/90/94  Western Suburbs  |  Chicago Loop  | EISENHOWER EXPY  | CONGRESS SPUR, Milwaukee  |  KENNEDY EXPY

 

Commas represent separate signs