9 ms·

Exploring the Abandoned Macy's Midwest Headquarters

144 points by philip1209 14y ago

lanstein 14y ago
Of everything, this goes uninvestigated?? "A microphone for the PA system. Some of them still work, and we assume that they still play in the main (functioning) mall."
- philip1209 14y ago
  We don't tend to go during the day, and this would require a second person in the mall. It will be investigated soon, though!
- dylanhassinger 14y ago
  Our facility manager wouldn't like that ;-)
agent86 14y ago
I've always found this stuff to be interesting on a variety of levels. What happens when maintenance stops? What state did they leave things? In the cases where you have before and after shots - or multiple visits spread out over a long time - it can be even more interesting to see how things turn out. If anyone else wants to see more of this kind of thing, I've spent a lot of time looking at places on the Detroit Urbex site. http://detroiturbex.com/ http://detroiturbex.com/ I'm sure there are some other good explorations out there, and I hope this thread turns up a couple other hidden gems that don't pop right up on a Google search.
- philip1209 14y ago
  There is a full-time maintenance man for the Macy's building, but as I understand it he mainly services the occupied parts.
smackfu 14y ago
What does "Macy's mall" mean here? Is it a mall or is it just a big Macy's?
- pgrote 14y ago
  It was connected to a mall called St. Louis Centre. The Macy's itself was the flagship store and headquarters of Famous Barr, a St. Louis based retailer bought by Macy's.
gee_totes 14y ago
I'm surprised they left the mannequins behind; those things are worth money.
- mikeho1999 14y ago
  Actually... looking at the pictures, I'm surprised about how much was left behind in general. For example, the kitchen had industrial baking and mixing equipment, etc., which I'm sure is all worth a decent amount of dough (pun very very much intended =). Anyway, all of this reminds me about a documentary I saw called Urban Explorers (you can probably find it on netflix)... pretty interesting stuff out there. Thanks for the post!
  - jlarocco 14y ago
    I was wondering the same thing. The only thing I can think of is it would cost more to pay somebody to go through it all and put it up for sale than they could make back. I have a hard time believing it, though.
    - waterlesscloud 14y ago
      I suspect the money they'd get from selling it is insignificant compared to the money they have tied up in the whole building. So they're probably holding off until they have some sort of actual plan for the place, then they'll bring in some company that specializes in turning over that kind of stuff.
peterhajas 14y ago
Very cool. I noticed (especially on the linked-in-another-comment detroiturbex) that there are tons of abandoned offices, buildings, libraries and schools in America. Who owns these? How difficult would it be to purchase one, and how expensive? It would be cool to live in one of these (with power and running water, of course) and have freight elevators, PA systems and escalators in your home.
- breckinloggins 14y ago
  > Who owns these? It varies. Sometimes they are still owned by the original tenants but often they are owned by a real estate investor that did triple net leases to large clients. In some cases, the buildings are owned by the city or some other government entity. The best way to find out is to take a trip to the local courthouse. > How difficult would it be to purchase one? Assuming the owner wants to sell, probably a bit difficult. But no more difficult than any other large commercial real estate purchase. The buildings usually don't have some special status just because they are "abandoned". Things that WILL make acquisition more difficult, however, is if the building is an historical landmark, condemned, has asbestos or other environmental problems, is scheduled for demolition by the city, has lots of lien holders and a complicated title, etc. But all of this is just another way of saying that large real estate transactions can be challenging. There's a reason there are large law firms exclusively devoted to this stuff. > how expensive? It depends on why it was abandoned. If the existing tenant just went out of business or otherwise moved out due to their own problems or reasons, then the building will probably be priced similarly to other properties in the area (in other words, it's not a given that 'abandoned' somehow entails a price break). If there are severe location problems (like many places in Detroit, for example) then there may be breaks based on that. Lastly, if there are severe environmental, structural, or other problems with the property itself, you might be able to purchase it for a song, but that doesn't mean you won't have to spend megabucks to fix it so you can get a certificate of occupancy. Watch out! Another way to think of all this is that the word 'abandoned' is a romantic term with connotations of artistic urban decay. However, sometimes it's just a vacant building. There's nothing special about it just because no one is currently in there. > It would be cool to live in one of these (with power and running water, of course) and have freight elevators, PA systems and escalators in your home. Probably not as cool as you're envisioning. Every one of these things has to be maintained and/or replaced. That's probably going to be just slightly more expensive than calling a residential plumber. Your heating, water, and sanitation bills are likely to be atrocious simply because it's a large building in (probably) an area zoned for commerce. What good is all that space if you have to keep all of it dark except for a few hundred square feet? Then, of course, you have to worry about squatters and other people who won't realize or won't care that there's someone living in there. I don't know about you, but I'd prefer my home to be a sanctuary and not have to constantly worry whether I'm going to run into a trespasser who may or may not be friendly. But hey, despite all this if you can find a really cool abandoned building and live in it, be sure to blog about it and take pictures so we can all live vicariously through you!
100k 14y ago
Minneapolis has a similar building, formerly a Sears warehouse and retail store, now known as the Midtown Exchange. It houses retail, a hospital, a DMV office, apartments and condos. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midtown_Exchange http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midtown_Exchange I believe it was the largest building by square footage in the state until the Mall of America opened.
- waterlesscloud 14y ago
  Atlanta had a giant Sears building too. Warehouse, retail store, offices. Then it was City Hall East for a while, housing govt offices and the city homicide detectives. Now it looks like they're turning into some sort of giant food market. That place is huge, gonna be a lot of food I guess. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ponce_City_Market http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ponce_City_Market
bane 14y ago
Most of the abandoned structures I've seen photos of are standalone, the fact that this is still part of a functioning building is very interesting. It makes me wonder how many other interesting abandoned "structures" fill up floors of Manhattan skyscrapers for example.
- Samuel_Michon 14y ago
  Then you'll love Nick Carr's blog. He's a location scout in New York. Some examples of interesting sites in Manhattan: Mostly empty post office on 8th Ave & W 33rd St.: http://www.scoutingny.com/?p=2691 http://www.scoutingny.com/?p=2691 Abandoned law offices in lower Manhattan: http://www.scoutingny.com/?p=2164 http://www.scoutingny.com/?p=2164 Biplane on top of a Manhattan skyscraper: http://www.scoutingny.com/?p=4202 http://www.scoutingny.com/?p=4202
  - bane 14y ago
    This is an absurdly amazing blog! Thanks so much for this! To better brighten my day, I didn't know about the pending conversion of the Post Office building to help wash away the mistake of the terrible new Penn Station. The old one was as beautiful as Grand Central in it's time, I feel like we really lost something when it was demolished for and replaced with the present day abomination. It's like they finally realized what a loss it was and are trying to remedy it AND preserve another nearby beautiful building. This http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Penn_Station1.jpg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Penn_Station1.jpg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Penn_Station2.jpg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Penn_Station2.jpg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:NYP_LOC4.jpg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:NYP_LOC4.jpg was replaced by this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Penn_Station_concourse.jpg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Penn_Station_concourse.jpg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:New_Jersey_Transit_terminal_at_Pennsylvania_Station_NY.jpg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:New_Jersey_Transit_termina... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Britney_Spears_MSG.jpg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Britney_Spears_MSG.jpg If anything feels like a retrograde in civilization, Penn Station is it. It won't completely replace what was lost, but I have high hopes it's a move in the right direction.
nsoun 14y ago
Hello Amnesia.
windexh8er 14y ago
Urban exploration should be defined as the draw to a romanticized past of the, generally, modern forgotten. A few months ago I fell down the rabbit hole of looking into this within the Minneapolis area and ran across: http://www.actionsquad.org/index.html http://www.actionsquad.org/index.html Warning: I got so caught up in exploring what's been explored I spent over 4 hours of a Friday night engulfed in the secrets hidden in plain sight of somewhere I've lived for 10 years. While not maintained as of recent the archives are a blast and I made me long for a small, yet trustworthy group of people willing to put some time and effort into continuing the legacy. Then again, sometimes the dream is far more entertainment than the reality...
- mercuryrising 14y ago
  Awesome, I'm in Minneapolis too. That site is really cool, but I really wish they would rework the image navigation.
  - windexh8er 14y ago
    I think it's been left for dead. Or maybe they just have stopped publicizing the endeavors.
- beambot 14y ago
  I noticed a few photos of folks chillin' in storm drainage tunnels. Seriously, be careful. Check the weather forecasts before exploring these. We used to do that as a kid... until a neighbor boy died during a flash flood.
  - waterlesscloud 14y ago
    When I was a teenager, there were a number of abandoned multistory office buildings in suburban Atlanta where I lived. Maybe 7-8 within 10 miles of my house, and a couple of cool abandoned restaurants too. There had been a commercial real estate boom, followed by the inevitable bust. Anyway, we got in to all of them at one time or another, sometimes via ridiculously elaborate plans. What finally put an end to it for most of us was returning to one of our favorite buildings and finding someone had set up a wire tied to the inner doorknob that went off somewhere in to the dark hvac room. Our imaginations about what might be at the other end of that wire convinced us that maybe we weren't as invincible as we thought. You never know who else is going in those places. There was also this weird abandoned castle out in the woods. It was like a funhouse castle, wooden walls, but with fake stone on the outside. Turrets, fake drawbridge, the whole thing. No clue whatsoever how it got there. Must have been some old amusement park? But no one ever found any info on it. Anyway, it involved parking on the side of this long stretch of country road, then walking a couple hundred yards through some woods. One night as we pulled over to park, this fat redneck dude comes out of the dark woods over to our car. Our windows are down and I'm in the passenger seat. He points a MAC-10 right at my chest and tells us we need to be leaving. For one time in my life I have literally nothing to say. We drive off at a crazy rate of speed and never go back. Being the south, there's a lot of things that could have been going on there that night, but the place was a few miles from where a crazy mercenary type had his commando training compound, so our theory was his people were using the place that night. This guy, who also made suppressors for the MAC-10. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitchell_Werbell_III http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitchell_Werbell_III So yeah, things happen in abandoned places.
justjimmy 14y ago
For those interested in exploration of this kind, recommend checking out http://www.uer.ca/ http://www.uer.ca/ Nice big database of spots. There are certain guidelines and unwritten rules, so try not to spoil it for everyone else. Personally, the 2 on the top of my need-to-checkout-list for UE is Pripyat and the catacombs beneath Paris. I've never felt more alone (as if I'm the only person left) when exploring long abandoned locations at night.
hyperberry 14y ago
Wow- Lemme say first I didn't think there were many St. Louisans on HN. Thanks for sharing a bit about our growing startup community. I've been in that building plenty of times- most recently for startup events- and the lobby + 13th floors definitely have a languished feel to them (12th floor has been better refurbished and has a lot more activity). I had absolutely no idea, though, the rest of building was so empty. Quite a bit different from my childhood: that was the flagship downtown Famous-Barr department store . . . where they decorated the window displays every Christmas . . . getting nostalgic here. *Ever been in the WU tunnels (not just the big one between Duncker & January halls)? Pretty expansive system right under students feet that most have no idea about :)
- homosaur 14y ago
  what else are we going to do when snowed in all day aside from chat on HN?
- ben1040 14y ago
  Ever been in the WU tunnels (not just the big one between Duncker & January halls)? Pretty expansive system right under students feet that most have no idea about :) I've not been in the tunnels, but in my undergrad I spent a lot of time up on the roof of the library (I was the KWUR engineer and our transmitter rack and antenna lived on the roof). Pretty awesome view from up there.
- philip1209 14y ago
  I haven't been in the WU tunnels - they started arresting people for that. Plenty of rooftops, though. They use all Best locks here, including on padlocks, so they are practically unpickable.
- tricky 14y ago
  The WU tunnels are great. Have you been in any of the caves under st louis? The one under Lemp Brewery is kind of amazing - http://trickykegstands.com/cherokeeCaveTour.html http://trickykegstands.com/cherokeeCaveTour.html
andyjohnson0 14y ago
"Because there is a functioning Macy's mall on the first few floors, they still play mall music. However, they never disconnected the upper floors from the PA system, so music still plays through these floors 24 hours a day." J G Ballard would have loved this place.
dylanhassinger 14y ago
Hey St. Louis'ers - The T-REx is also home to our local startup meetup group. Once a month we have a kickass St. Louis entrepreneur come out and share their story. Usually we have 40-60 folks turn out, hope you can join us sometime! http://startlouis.com http://startlouis.com
rmason 14y ago
In Detroit we call it ruin porn and unfortunately it forms outsiders image of the entire city which is tragically wrong. You can spend entire weeks on the web exploring, there's even Europeans who have visited and created sites with thousands of images. Here's a few: http://detroiturbex.com/content/index.html http://detroiturbex.com/content/index.html http://www.forgottendetroit.com/ http://www.forgottendetroit.com/ If anyone is interested the DetroitTurbex group runs tours.
- wglb 14y ago
  But to be fair, a drive down Grand Avenue can be rather heartbreaking.
enraged_camel 14y ago
Because there is a functioning Macy's mall on the first few floors, they still play mall music. However, they never disconnected the upper floors from the PA system, so music still plays through these floors 24 hours a day. Wow. Eerie as hell. The main thing on my mind as I was going through the pictures and their descriptions was, "this is what everything is going to look like after World War 3. Except with more dust, ash and perhaps dead bodies."
- erock 14y ago
  it reminds me of dawn of the dead. just a little bit creepy
Uchikoma 14y ago
Feels like Bioshock.
ry0ohki 14y ago
The "Abandoned Apartment Building" in one of the first pictures looks very modern and new, are things that bad in St. Louis?
- drhowarddrfine 14y ago
  The Roberts brothers, who own that building, went bankrupt only recently due to their operations elsewhere.
snake_plissken 14y ago
OMFG I want those mannequins!
siculars 14y ago
The hollowing out of America. See... all of Detroit.

144 points by philip1209 14y ago

Of everything, this goes uninvestigated?? "A microphone for the PA system. Some of them still work, and we assume that they still play in the main (functioning) mall."

philip1209 14y ago
We don't tend to go during the day, and this would require a second person in the mall. It will be investigated soon, though!
dylanhassinger 14y ago
Our facility manager wouldn't like that ;-)

agent86 14y ago

I've always found this stuff to be interesting on a variety of levels. What happens when maintenance stops? What state did they leave things? In the cases where you have before and after shots - or multiple visits spread out over a long time - it can be even more interesting to see how things turn out. If anyone else wants to see more of this kind of thing, I've spent a lot of time looking at places on the Detroit Urbex site. http://detroiturbex.com/ http://detroiturbex.com/ I'm sure there are some other good explorations out there, and I hope this thread turns up a couple other hidden gems that don't pop right up on a Google search.

philip1209 14y ago
There is a full-time maintenance man for the Macy's building, but as I understand it he mainly services the occupied parts.

smackfu 14y ago

What does "Macy's mall" mean here? Is it a mall or is it just a big Macy's?

pgrote 14y ago
It was connected to a mall called St. Louis Centre. The Macy's itself was the flagship store and headquarters of Famous Barr, a St. Louis based retailer bought by Macy's.

gee_totes 14y ago

I'm surprised they left the mannequins behind; those things are worth money.

mikeho1999 14y ago
Actually... looking at the pictures, I'm surprised about how much was left behind in general. For example, the kitchen had industrial baking and mixing equipment, etc., which I'm sure is all worth a decent amount of dough (pun very very much intended =). Anyway, all of this reminds me about a documentary I saw called Urban Explorers (you can probably find it on netflix)... pretty interesting stuff out there. Thanks for the post!
- jlarocco 14y ago
  I was wondering the same thing. The only thing I can think of is it would cost more to pay somebody to go through it all and put it up for sale than they could make back. I have a hard time believing it, though.
  - waterlesscloud 14y ago
    I suspect the money they'd get from selling it is insignificant compared to the money they have tied up in the whole building. So they're probably holding off until they have some sort of actual plan for the place, then they'll bring in some company that specializes in turning over that kind of stuff.

peterhajas 14y ago

Very cool. I noticed (especially on the linked-in-another-comment detroiturbex) that there are tons of abandoned offices, buildings, libraries and schools in America. Who owns these? How difficult would it be to purchase one, and how expensive? It would be cool to live in one of these (with power and running water, of course) and have freight elevators, PA systems and escalators in your home.

breckinloggins 14y ago
> Who owns these? It varies. Sometimes they are still owned by the original tenants but often they are owned by a real estate investor that did triple net leases to large clients. In some cases, the buildings are owned by the city or some other government entity. The best way to find out is to take a trip to the local courthouse. > How difficult would it be to purchase one? Assuming the owner wants to sell, probably a bit difficult. But no more difficult than any other large commercial real estate purchase. The buildings usually don't have some special status just because they are "abandoned". Things that WILL make acquisition more difficult, however, is if the building is an historical landmark, condemned, has asbestos or other environmental problems, is scheduled for demolition by the city, has lots of lien holders and a complicated title, etc. But all of this is just another way of saying that large real estate transactions can be challenging. There's a reason there are large law firms exclusively devoted to this stuff. > how expensive? It depends on why it was abandoned. If the existing tenant just went out of business or otherwise moved out due to their own problems or reasons, then the building will probably be priced similarly to other properties in the area (in other words, it's not a given that 'abandoned' somehow entails a price break). If there are severe location problems (like many places in Detroit, for example) then there may be breaks based on that. Lastly, if there are severe environmental, structural, or other problems with the property itself, you might be able to purchase it for a song, but that doesn't mean you won't have to spend megabucks to fix it so you can get a certificate of occupancy. Watch out! Another way to think of all this is that the word 'abandoned' is a romantic term with connotations of artistic urban decay. However, sometimes it's just a vacant building. There's nothing special about it just because no one is currently in there. > It would be cool to live in one of these (with power and running water, of course) and have freight elevators, PA systems and escalators in your home. Probably not as cool as you're envisioning. Every one of these things has to be maintained and/or replaced. That's probably going to be just slightly more expensive than calling a residential plumber. Your heating, water, and sanitation bills are likely to be atrocious simply because it's a large building in (probably) an area zoned for commerce. What good is all that space if you have to keep all of it dark except for a few hundred square feet? Then, of course, you have to worry about squatters and other people who won't realize or won't care that there's someone living in there. I don't know about you, but I'd prefer my home to be a sanctuary and not have to constantly worry whether I'm going to run into a trespasser who may or may not be friendly. But hey, despite all this if you can find a really cool abandoned building and live in it, be sure to blog about it and take pictures so we can all live vicariously through you!

100k 14y ago

Minneapolis has a similar building, formerly a Sears warehouse and retail store, now known as the Midtown Exchange. It houses retail, a hospital, a DMV office, apartments and condos. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midtown_Exchange http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midtown_Exchange I believe it was the largest building by square footage in the state until the Mall of America opened.

waterlesscloud 14y ago
Atlanta had a giant Sears building too. Warehouse, retail store, offices. Then it was City Hall East for a while, housing govt offices and the city homicide detectives. Now it looks like they're turning into some sort of giant food market. That place is huge, gonna be a lot of food I guess. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ponce_City_Market http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ponce_City_Market

bane 14y ago

Most of the abandoned structures I've seen photos of are standalone, the fact that this is still part of a functioning building is very interesting. It makes me wonder how many other interesting abandoned "structures" fill up floors of Manhattan skyscrapers for example.

Samuel_Michon 14y ago
Then you'll love Nick Carr's blog. He's a location scout in New York. Some examples of interesting sites in Manhattan: Mostly empty post office on 8th Ave & W 33rd St.: http://www.scoutingny.com/?p=2691 http://www.scoutingny.com/?p=2691 Abandoned law offices in lower Manhattan: http://www.scoutingny.com/?p=2164 http://www.scoutingny.com/?p=2164 Biplane on top of a Manhattan skyscraper: http://www.scoutingny.com/?p=4202 http://www.scoutingny.com/?p=4202
- bane 14y ago
  This is an absurdly amazing blog! Thanks so much for this! To better brighten my day, I didn't know about the pending conversion of the Post Office building to help wash away the mistake of the terrible new Penn Station. The old one was as beautiful as Grand Central in it's time, I feel like we really lost something when it was demolished for and replaced with the present day abomination. It's like they finally realized what a loss it was and are trying to remedy it AND preserve another nearby beautiful building. This http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Penn_Station1.jpg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Penn_Station1.jpg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Penn_Station2.jpg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Penn_Station2.jpg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:NYP_LOC4.jpg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:NYP_LOC4.jpg was replaced by this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Penn_Station_concourse.jpg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Penn_Station_concourse.jpg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:New_Jersey_Transit_terminal_at_Pennsylvania_Station_NY.jpg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:New_Jersey_Transit_termina... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Britney_Spears_MSG.jpg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Britney_Spears_MSG.jpg If anything feels like a retrograde in civilization, Penn Station is it. It won't completely replace what was lost, but I have high hopes it's a move in the right direction.

nsoun 14y ago

Hello Amnesia.

windexh8er 14y ago

Urban exploration should be defined as the draw to a romanticized past of the, generally, modern forgotten. A few months ago I fell down the rabbit hole of looking into this within the Minneapolis area and ran across: http://www.actionsquad.org/index.html http://www.actionsquad.org/index.html Warning: I got so caught up in exploring what's been explored I spent over 4 hours of a Friday night engulfed in the secrets hidden in plain sight of somewhere I've lived for 10 years. While not maintained as of recent the archives are a blast and I made me long for a small, yet trustworthy group of people willing to put some time and effort into continuing the legacy. Then again, sometimes the dream is far more entertainment than the reality...

mercuryrising 14y ago
Awesome, I'm in Minneapolis too. That site is really cool, but I really wish they would rework the image navigation.
- windexh8er 14y ago
  I think it's been left for dead. Or maybe they just have stopped publicizing the endeavors.
beambot 14y ago
I noticed a few photos of folks chillin' in storm drainage tunnels. Seriously, be careful. Check the weather forecasts before exploring these. We used to do that as a kid... until a neighbor boy died during a flash flood.
- waterlesscloud 14y ago
  When I was a teenager, there were a number of abandoned multistory office buildings in suburban Atlanta where I lived. Maybe 7-8 within 10 miles of my house, and a couple of cool abandoned restaurants too. There had been a commercial real estate boom, followed by the inevitable bust. Anyway, we got in to all of them at one time or another, sometimes via ridiculously elaborate plans. What finally put an end to it for most of us was returning to one of our favorite buildings and finding someone had set up a wire tied to the inner doorknob that went off somewhere in to the dark hvac room. Our imaginations about what might be at the other end of that wire convinced us that maybe we weren't as invincible as we thought. You never know who else is going in those places. There was also this weird abandoned castle out in the woods. It was like a funhouse castle, wooden walls, but with fake stone on the outside. Turrets, fake drawbridge, the whole thing. No clue whatsoever how it got there. Must have been some old amusement park? But no one ever found any info on it. Anyway, it involved parking on the side of this long stretch of country road, then walking a couple hundred yards through some woods. One night as we pulled over to park, this fat redneck dude comes out of the dark woods over to our car. Our windows are down and I'm in the passenger seat. He points a MAC-10 right at my chest and tells us we need to be leaving. For one time in my life I have literally nothing to say. We drive off at a crazy rate of speed and never go back. Being the south, there's a lot of things that could have been going on there that night, but the place was a few miles from where a crazy mercenary type had his commando training compound, so our theory was his people were using the place that night. This guy, who also made suppressors for the MAC-10. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitchell_Werbell_III http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitchell_Werbell_III So yeah, things happen in abandoned places.

justjimmy 14y ago

For those interested in exploration of this kind, recommend checking out http://www.uer.ca/ http://www.uer.ca/ Nice big database of spots. There are certain guidelines and unwritten rules, so try not to spoil it for everyone else. Personally, the 2 on the top of my need-to-checkout-list for UE is Pripyat and the catacombs beneath Paris. I've never felt more alone (as if I'm the only person left) when exploring long abandoned locations at night.

hyperberry 14y ago

Wow- Lemme say first I didn't think there were many St. Louisans on HN. Thanks for sharing a bit about our growing startup community. I've been in that building plenty of times- most recently for startup events- and the lobby + 13th floors definitely have a languished feel to them (12th floor has been better refurbished and has a lot more activity). I had absolutely no idea, though, the rest of building was so empty. Quite a bit different from my childhood: that was the flagship downtown Famous-Barr department store . . . where they decorated the window displays every Christmas . . . getting nostalgic here. *Ever been in the WU tunnels (not just the big one between Duncker & January halls)? Pretty expansive system right under students feet that most have no idea about :)

homosaur 14y ago
what else are we going to do when snowed in all day aside from chat on HN?
ben1040 14y ago
Ever been in the WU tunnels (not just the big one between Duncker & January halls)? Pretty expansive system right under students feet that most have no idea about :) I've not been in the tunnels, but in my undergrad I spent a lot of time up on the roof of the library (I was the KWUR engineer and our transmitter rack and antenna lived on the roof). Pretty awesome view from up there.
philip1209 14y ago
I haven't been in the WU tunnels - they started arresting people for that. Plenty of rooftops, though. They use all Best locks here, including on padlocks, so they are practically unpickable.
tricky 14y ago
The WU tunnels are great. Have you been in any of the caves under st louis? The one under Lemp Brewery is kind of amazing - http://trickykegstands.com/cherokeeCaveTour.html http://trickykegstands.com/cherokeeCaveTour.html

andyjohnson0 14y ago

"Because there is a functioning Macy's mall on the first few floors, they still play mall music. However, they never disconnected the upper floors from the PA system, so music still plays through these floors 24 hours a day." J G Ballard would have loved this place.

dylanhassinger 14y ago

Hey St. Louis'ers - The T-REx is also home to our local startup meetup group. Once a month we have a kickass St. Louis entrepreneur come out and share their story. Usually we have 40-60 folks turn out, hope you can join us sometime! http://startlouis.com http://startlouis.com

rmason 14y ago

In Detroit we call it ruin porn and unfortunately it forms outsiders image of the entire city which is tragically wrong. You can spend entire weeks on the web exploring, there's even Europeans who have visited and created sites with thousands of images. Here's a few: http://detroiturbex.com/content/index.html http://detroiturbex.com/content/index.html http://www.forgottendetroit.com/ http://www.forgottendetroit.com/ If anyone is interested the DetroitTurbex group runs tours.

wglb 14y ago
But to be fair, a drive down Grand Avenue can be rather heartbreaking.

enraged_camel 14y ago

Because there is a functioning Macy's mall on the first few floors, they still play mall music. However, they never disconnected the upper floors from the PA system, so music still plays through these floors 24 hours a day. Wow. Eerie as hell. The main thing on my mind as I was going through the pictures and their descriptions was, "this is what everything is going to look like after World War 3. Except with more dust, ash and perhaps dead bodies."

erock 14y ago
it reminds me of dawn of the dead. just a little bit creepy

Uchikoma 14y ago

Feels like Bioshock.

ry0ohki 14y ago

The "Abandoned Apartment Building" in one of the first pictures looks very modern and new, are things that bad in St. Louis?

drhowarddrfine 14y ago
The Roberts brothers, who own that building, went bankrupt only recently due to their operations elsewhere.

snake_plissken 14y ago

OMFG I want those mannequins!

siculars 14y ago

The hollowing out of America. See... all of Detroit.