Psychogeography: Passaic In Passing

According to a cringy paywalled Business Insider article from 2019 titled "The 50 most miserable cities in America, based on census data", Passaic, New Jersey was rated as the "fourth most miserable city in the USA". It should be rather obvious that low-effort sensationalist articles like the aforementioned are designed merely as rage bait garbage to drive Google Adsense impressions followed up by harvesting and selling your data as you angrily click through...

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Psychogeography - Learning to Get Lost

I like to consider it my best attempt at wasting time wisely, which roughly hints to the years that I've dedicated toward urban exploring and photographing abandoned buildings. However, it only ever more recently occurred to me that I've effectively completely ignored the cities and towns that these ruins exist within...

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Allentown Metal Works

On the Southside of Allentown Pennsylvania, nestled between Little Lehigh Creek and Fairview Cemetery, a massive complex of industrial buildings once rotted. Split down the middle by South 10th Street, these buildings were once part of the sprawling Mack Trucks factory campus. Today, nothing remains of the Mack Trucks factory, except astonishingly enough, for the buildings themselves! While Mack Trucks long ago moved out of their Allentown home, many of the physical buildings still stand, although the massive industrial warehouses have been subdivided and sold out to numerous other smaller businesses. On the west side of South 10th Street, just south of Little Lehigh Creek stands a cluster of industrial buildings that were known during their last incarnation as the Allentown Metal Works. This factory started out as the Traylor Engineering Manufacturing Company and was created to build various machines for the mining industry before being absorbed by the greater Macks Trucks factory complex and then becoming Allentown Metal Works. Back in 2009, President Barack Obama toured the factory and gave a speech there on the importance of factory jobs. In 2011 the factory closed and became a bit of a playground for degenerates like myself. This story however comes with a happy ending, as in 2024 the buildings were stripped down to their steel frames and restored back into warehouse space.

Murdered Main Street (Phillipsburg, NJ)

In far western Warren County New Jersey, a peculiar town exists just before the Delaware River, the dense settlement protruding as a sort of anomaly within an otherwise primarily rural county, largely defined by corn fields and pastural landscapes. Phillipsburg, it is a true New Jersey town and one of only fifteen actual towns within the entire state of NJ...

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Wayne Hills Mall

It's wild to think that at one point in time, suburban Wayne New Jersey was once home to three separate inclosed and indoor shopping malls. The largest of the three malls being Willowbrook Mall, which is currently a thriving shopping metropolis located within a flood plain in the southernmost section of Wayne Township. Just across the street from Willowbrook Mall used to sit the Wayne Towne Center, another inclosed shopping mall, up until it was de-malled in 2008 and today only exists as a strip mall. However, last but not least was the Wayne Hills Mall, yet another small inclosed shopping mall located in the more northern Wayne Hills section of Wayne Township. It's difficult to decipher if the Wayne Hills Mall was ever a thriving mall, especially since it always existed within the shadows of the Willowbrook Mall located just a few miles south. However, despite the Wayne Hills Mall small size, it did home a number of noteworthy stores from Walden Books to Sam Goody, a McDonalds and some smaller mom-and-pop stores. The Wayne Hills Mall eventually closed for good in 2015 and was subsequently demolished in 2019. Today a huge ShopRite grocery store sits in the original footprint of the mall. The original Burlington Coat Factory anchor store building to the mall still exists as of 2025 but it is closed and the Burlington Coat Factory moved across the street into a building that used to be a Toys R. Us and then sat vacant for many years.

Amboy Cinemas

Amboy Cinemas was one of those ruins that seemed to hide in plane sight. Located mere feet from three major highways in urban Middlesex County NJ, the condemned movieplex seemed to go unnoticed for years, despite being abandoned for well over a decade. I myself had driven past the vacant theater certainly hundreds of times before I ever really considered it as a potential explore. It wasn't until I saw a random YouTube video about the old theater pop-up online that my curiosity was even piqued. In hindsight I'm glad I took some time to look around inside. For what Amboy Cinemas lacked in charm it made up for in iconicness, as potentially the most driven past New Jersey ruin.

International Boiler Works

Situated at the beginning of a dead-end road on the outskirts of East Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, the hulking remains of the International Boiler Works rot. The Boiler Works is one of those iconic ruins that seems to have stood the test of time and is more notable perhaps in its state of abandonment than when it was an active factory, producing boilers. Over the decades since its closing, the factory has been host to numerous parties and consequently, it has suffered through numerous fires, its steel skeleton always impervious to the flames. Over the years the property has become a dumping ground for all things discardable, both human and material. Homeless call the vast empty warehouse home nearly as often as locals party it up inside the vast space. Years worth of graffiti ranging from teenage scribble to artistic pieces decorate the sheet metal walls. The smooth concrete floor, a perfect place to erect a fire pit, as evidenced by ashes encircled within brick rings. I can not say the International Boiler Works was a special place per-say, photogenic if only because of its state of anarchy, yet the boiler works was certainly a iconic place. I say "was" because time has finally stopped ticking for the trashed factory. As of Spring 2023 demolition has begun and while I don't think many will miss the buildings, it is for certain the lawless fun they hosted over so many decades will be longed.

Covered In Culm

On satellite view the abundant anthracite strip-mines of Northeastern Pennsylvania appear like a giant scar across the Earth. The major cities significant of the Northern, Middle, and Southern coalfields are easy to spot, however an elaborate network of long abandoned underground mine workings remain below the surface, invisible to the eye...

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