I had just recovered from a broken leg, and as happy as I was to be riding a bicycle again I was even happier to stumble across this burnt out shell of a building surrounded by junked taxis. It was around 46th and Dearborn, a dead zone of empty lots wedged between housing projects, railroad tracks, and semi-vacant warehouses. I got off my bike and, ignoring the nearby drug dealers, started to take photos of the block…
For some reason I felt it was absolutely necessary to get a shot of the diving boards while standing on the ice. Hoping that two weeks of sub-zero temperatures would be enough to freeze the pool water solid, I climbed down onto the ice at the shallow end of the pool and slowly scooted down to the other end, which the wall markings indicated was 12 feet deep…
At one time a showcase of Chicago’s manufacturing might, Brach’s shut down in 2004 and has been sitting empty ever since, serving the needs of nobody. With no security to speak of, the complex has become a magnet for scrap metal thieves, graffiti ‘writers’, those who fancy themselves to be ‘urban explorers’, and photobloggers looking to beef up their Urban Decay photo set on flickr (not that I have any right to be critical…)
During a Saturday morning bike ride I passed a long abandoned building on west Grand Avenue that had always grabbed my attention but never held it. Chicago is filled with many such places, abandoned structures of little interest, nothing more than boarded up empty shells. I don’t usually waste my time with buildings like this, but here I was and one of the doors was pried open, so what the hey…