Cities in America with lots of abandoned/unnocupied buildings?

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XxX_22marc_XxX@reddit

Camden is way worse than Kensington abandoned buildings wise

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craik98@reddit

I’ve heard of this town in the northeast corner of Oklahoma called Picher. It’s a literal ghost town.

It used to be a lead and zinc mining town but was abandoned in 2009 due to large piles of lead contaminated waste and a large tornado that struck the town a year prior and killed 8.

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janiexox@reddit

If you want to see the opposite check out Jersey City New Jersey. Literally went from abandoned warehouses and empty Lots to High-Rises in the span of 15 years.

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My city, Milwaukee, also has a lot of abandoned buildings, not as much as flint or detroit, and less than when I was a kid. I remember entire blocks being abandoned when I was little that are now bustling with new housing and stores.

This region is called the rust belt because many of the cities in this region relied on industries that started to decline in the 70's and 80's. Many factories closed and people left. Lots of small industrial towns on the great lakes have a lot of abandoned buildings as well.

Some other cities in wisconsin I can reccomend are Racine, Superior, Green Bay(maybe?), West Allis.

Another interesting area in my city is a neighborhood called granville. It was rural only a few decades ago, became incorporated into the city, the farms dont farm anymore but people still live in the farmhouses, but the population never really filled in. So theres some streets that are just farmhouses with empty fallowed farm fields behind them, but its still in a city with nearly 600,000 people.

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Open_Philosophy_7221@reddit

East Saint Louis

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TheLastRulerofMerv@reddit

Not American, but I once drove through this town in Nevada called Ely. It was like a small city where at least half of the buildings seemed to have boarded up. There were also abandoned homes. It wasn't a ghost town, but it seemed like it was on its way there. I spoke to a gas station clerk about it and apparently there used to be a mine close by, and when the mine closed the town just shriveled up.

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Flossmoor71@reddit

Ely is also very remote and is the largest town for about 2 and a half hours in any direction.

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TheLastRulerofMerv@reddit

Yeah, I loved it. That whole Highway 93. I drove it all the way back up into Canada, it was way better than I-15.

That same highway actually becomes the Icefields Parkway between Banff and Jasper, it ends up in Jasper. So you can basically take the same highway from Jasper to Las Vegas and it's so scenic. Very cool.

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Sadimal@reddit

Baltimore, MD has a huge abandoned building/house problem.

There are about 15,000 abandoned houses. It's to the point where the city is selling abandoned property for $1 as long as the new owner renovates and lives in the house for five years.

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happyburger25@reddit

Howard Street was the main shopping street, but a lot of it is all boarded up now. Looked like a great place in the 50s

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happyburger25@reddit

Baltimore City has a TON of urban blight

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kirkmanV@reddit

West Virginia. I’ve been going there for summer since I was little cause my dad’s friends live there. They have been left behind for decades by the nation. Every other town is empty, or it is rural poverty of folks forgotten by their own leaders

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galupa@reddit

Gary, Indiana.

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BakedBrie26@reddit

Came here for this. Drove through a few years ago... was ROUGH.

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Red_Beard_Rising@reddit

Been that way for 50 years I'm pretty sure. I've only passed through on the expressways. Living my entire 45 years in the Chicago metro area, Gary has always been considered one of the worst larger cities in the US. I have heard it referred to as The Armpit of the Midwest.

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BakedBrie26@reddit

Yeah my parents worked there for a bit when I was younger. So I would drive through, but I think the visual impact hit me a lot harder now that I have a deeper more sophisticated understanding of the realities of that community.

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atlasisgold@reddit

It’s possibly the worst place in the developed world.

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SpillinThaTea@reddit

Oh gosh a lot lol. Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Philly, Memphis, Cincinnati, Chicago, Cleveland, Buffalo, New Orleans. Gary, Indiana probably has the most, it’s south of Chicago.

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TheRealDudeMitch@reddit

East of Chicago, actually. Not trying to be pedantic, just helpful if OP looks for it on a map app

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betsyrosstothestage@reddit

Southeast. I am being pedantic.

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_oaeb_@reddit

This guy pedantics.

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moonbunnychan@reddit

There's this stretch of Baltimore I see from Amtrak heading north that I swear is nothing but abandoned buildings

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DarkChance20@reddit

Niagara Falls, NY. Newburgh, NY.

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7yearlurkernowposter@reddit

o\/

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TopperMadeline@reddit

While it’s not a city, the state of North Dakota as a whole has a lot of abandoned buildings. There’s a website and Instagram account that’s dedicated to taking pictures of them.

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FeltIOwedItToHim@reddit

Cleveland has a large number of big homes, even mansions, that are abandoned and falling down. Any major city in the Rust Belt is going to have some, even Chicago.

Detroit is the prime example, however. In the 1950s Detroit was the single richest city in the entire world on a per capita basis, with a population of almost 2 million. It was covered with large homes and its downtown was famous for its beautiful architecture. After the collapse of the auto industry and decades of white flight to the suburbs, the population was barely 600,000, mostly poor people who could not afford to leave.

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janbrunt@reddit

Kansas City!

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WaltKerman@reddit

Shreveport Louisiana outskirts.

At one point there was an oil boom but it is slowly dying. The population has been shrinking.

•   1969-1980s: Shreveport’s metro area had a steady increase, starting around 317,000 in 1969 and reaching approximately 360,000 by 1980. This period benefited from industrial expansion, particularly in the oil sector.
•   1990s: Population began to stabilize, hovering around the mid-370,000s in the metro area by the early 1990s, with minor fluctuations.
•   2000-2010: Shreveport’s city population saw modest growth, peaking in 2012 at around 202,366 before beginning a gradual decline  .
•   2010-2023: Over the last decade, Shreveport’s population has declined more significantly. By 2023, the city’s population was estimated at around 177,959, down from 187,593 in 2020, reflecting economic challenges, such as the impact of the oil industry’s downturn and the closure of major employers  .

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Comfortable-Study-69@reddit

Honestly, out of the cities in North Louisiana, Shreveport is probably one of the better ones. It’s at least got the air force base, is close enough to Texas to get a lot of casino tourists, still has the oil industry, and is on I-20. Alexandria is a segregated dump, Bossier is run by a mob, Monroe has been on a decline since the 80s, and many of the other cities are experiencing general rural decline exacerbated by Louisiana corruption and a better job market in Texas. Really Ruston is the only one that’s not falling apart and that’s largely because of the college there.

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sanka@reddit

Was just there recently. Thats a fucking ghost town.

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somuchsublime@reddit

Isn’t this where True Blood takes place?

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usmcmech@reddit

It was filmed in Shreveport.

The city was briefly a hot spot for film production. However it’s almost all moved down to New Orleans.

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ALoungerAtTheClubs@reddit

Fangtasia is in Shreveport, so the fictional town of Bon Temps must be within a reasonable drive of there.

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somuchsublime@reddit

Aaaah, I forgot fangtasia is a couple towns over

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WaltKerman@reddit

No, True Blood is south Louisiana

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somuchsublime@reddit

I just looked it up and it says Renard Parish is in northern Louisiana. And if I recall Alcide was the Packmaster of the Shreveport werewolves. Im watching the show right now lol and I guess that’s why it stuck out to me.

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WaltKerman@reddit

You may be right. The town Bon Temps is fictional though. Northern Louisiana isn't as swampy which is why I assumed South I guess.

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somuchsublime@reddit

Aaaah gotcha, that makes sense they would make it swampier for the show

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Hatweed@reddit

Youngstown, Ohio. Lost over half their population following the collapse if the steel industry.

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Puddyrama@reddit (OP)

That's a great recommendation, the south side of the city has exactly what I'm looking for. Insane to see 5 houses in a row demolished in a span of 4 years.

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pita4912@reddit

Youngstown started to address their shrinking size back in the 00s. They called it the 2010 plan. They blocked off entire blocks to return to “green space.” Bulldozed entire blocks. The East side and South side were more affected than north and west sides.

One summer we had like 150 abandoned houses arsoned. People in town were joking that the mayor was just trying to keep the 2010 plan on schedule.

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monsterhurrican504@reddit

It's a very dreary place.

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sanka@reddit

I was there about a year ago. Driving into town not one, but TWO houses were being resided, but they were literal log houses.

I had to work in the downtown area and there was literally not a person around. No one walking, no one driving. Not a single other person than me. It seemed like I was in an appcalypse movie.

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SamDiep@reddit

East St Louis.

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liberletric@reddit

Baltimore :/

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Sailor_NEWENGLAND@reddit

Bridgeport CT

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sanka@reddit

Man I hated going there when I lived in New Haven. That place is dead all day until people come out to shoot each other at night.

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Sailor_NEWENGLAND@reddit

It’s a shithole..other than a few areas

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Klutzy-Spend-6947@reddit

Dayton, Ohio

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Redbubble89@reddit

Gary Indiana

Not so much city and can't see much from street view but I would read up or watch something on Centralia, Pennsylvania.

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stangAce20@reddit

Detroit

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Ordovick@reddit

West Virginia is a gold mine for what you're asking for unfortunately.

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sleeper-T@reddit

McDowell County in particular.

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cheersbeersneers@reddit

New Orleans. Lots of places have been abandoned since Katrina. Check out central city, New Orleans east, the lower 9th ward. Lindy Boggs and Charity are two huge abandoned hospitals, Gordon Plaza is a large neighborhood that’s been entirely vacated and abandoned after the city bought the residents out because the neighborhood was built on a superfund hazardous waste site.

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Puddyrama@reddit (OP)

Whoa, I knew about Charity Hospital and the Parish Prison but I didn't know about those other areas. Thank you!

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cheersbeersneers@reddit

There’s an entire abandoned six flags amusement park in NOE. They’ve been trying to redevelop it for years. Market street power plant and the municipal auditorium in Armstrong Park are a couple of other cool ones. The Poland Ave Naval Base is probably the biggest- I’ve been on sweeps of it with NOPD before and I can’t accurately describe it. Three massive buildings, 6 floors each, 500,000sqft, 30 acres. The insides of the buildings are so beyond trashed it’s hard to imagine. We have to have a SWAT team to go through it safely.

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SkiingAway@reddit

It's also so weird in a sense that the former naval base is this area of anarchy/decay and full of homeless/squatters/incredibly sketchy activity and meanwhile there's a bunch of pleasant places and a functional neighborhood right outside the gates.

(I've been to Bacchanal before, cool spot - and right on the other side of the street from the base gate).

I hear it sounds like they're finally getting started on redevelopment, though?

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cheersbeersneers@reddit

Yeah that’s what they told us in 2022 when they did the sweep of it back then. I am really hopeful they redevelop it, I wish they’d do some affordable housing and apartments but who knows how long it’ll sit before they actually start work.

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monsterhurrican504@reddit

It's so wild that I worked at that Naval base for several months before it was abandoned. There was something about it, the really low ceilings made it very claustrophobic. I'll never forget loading my government computer into my car and moving it to the beautiful lakefront tech park.

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mytextgoeshere@reddit

Went to New Orleans a few years ago, and there was a pretty large skyscraper with what appeared to be missing windows. I thought that couldn’t be the case, it was so close to the downtown, why would a building have missing windows. But I looked it up and it was an empty building.

I thought the city was so cool, though, one of the more interesting ones I’ve visited in the US.

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monsterhurrican504@reddit

Yup, that building is such a troublesome thing. It's filled with asbestos, owned by a known scum bag, pieces of have been known to fall on people.

I've always been sad that there are no photos of the inside, when it was constructed it was apparently really nice.

Oh, also, it's not there anymore but there was this.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1031_Canal

It was a really stellar moment for the city to cover the body of a migrant worker killed in the accident with a tarp.

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Tacoshortage@reddit

New Orleans East - pre-Katrina and now are very different places

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tlonreddit@reddit

Detroit, Michigan, Camden, New Jersey, and Gary, Indiana, are the three that come to mind.

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jaylotw@reddit

Hot Springs, Arkansas

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Sea-Kitchen3779@reddit

Buffalo.

Train stations, mental asylums, grain elevators, steel mills, etc.

They're almost like tourist attractions.

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libananahammock@reddit

Camden, NJ

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specialKchallenge@reddit

Rust Belt cities are the obvious answer, but if you want to check out a different vibe, look up Pritchard, Alabama. Most desolate place I've ever been to in the US, truly the dirty south. Crushing poverty, rampant crime, full of abandoned homes and businesses crumbling into the ground. I'm in the Phillipines right now, and Pritchard feels worse than most areas I've been to here.

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jml510@reddit

We have plenty of abandoned buildings in Oakland, whether it's East, West, North, or even downtown. Some of our abandoned buildings used to host businesses, and most of them are now covered in graffiti. It's depressing whenever I ride by them, as I can't help but ponder the missed potential for each of them.

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Scrappy_The_Crow@reddit

St. Joseph, Missouri. It was where the Pony Express started at, and had been a significant town around 1900 (look at the Wikipedia population data), but is 30% smaller now and there there are a number of derelict/older buildings that are interesting to look at. I only know of it because I'd been there for conferences at the Air National Guard base.

See:

39.774841 -94.856659
39.764183 -94.856632 (make sure to look at the building on the NE corner, especially the faces in the masonry)
39.720330 -94.869421 (go back in street view; it's unfortunate it is almost entirely demolished)

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