URBAN EXPLORATION

'Urban explorers' indulge a fascination for abandoned buildings

Ken Fager now calls himself an "urban explorer," but years ago he was just a study-abroad student who missed his train in Butzbach, Germany, and decided to spend the next few hours walking through an abandoned factory by the station. First, he walked around the edges of the partially demolished complex full of old farm equipment. Seeing no one around, he got the courage to run inside. That afternoon, he photographed everything he saw. It changed him. "The thrill of adventure and rush of adrenaline flipped a creative switch in me," said Fager, 30, who now lives in Charlotte, North Carolina, and operates the blog American Urbex: Exploring America's Gritty History, a site devoted to the history of abandoned locations. There's a growing cultural fascination with abandoned buildings. Online communities such as Reddit's AbandonedPorn and Urbanexploration forums draw tens of thousands of contributors to share photos, maps and secrets about underground and abandoned locations from defunct factories to neglected homes. Tim Edensor, a professor at Manchester Metropolitan University in the United Kingdom, wrote in a recent scholarly paper that researchers' interest in ruins has intensified over the past decade.

The long time explorer

"We seem to be in the midst of a contemporary 'Ruinenlust,' which carries strange echoes of earlier obsessions with ruination and decay," Edensor wrote. Whether through societal disruption, financial crises or just neglect, the world is full of buildings lost to time and the elements. But what fuels the fascination with walking through desolate hallways of peeling paint and photographing the discarded personal effects of strangers? For Fager, it is about fulfilling a sense of adventure.

Photographers find beauty in 'states of decay

"Urban exploration is physically challenging, intellectually stimulating and pushes my creativity," the IT freelancer said. Fager is fully aware that the exploration of abandoned buildings comes with risks, from unstable structural problems to trespassing concerns. He has called off explorations that he thought would compromise his personal safety. Reddit's urban exploration subcommunity advises explorers to "look but don't touch," "leave places as you found them" and "be safe," among other responsible behaviors. Even those who break in to derelict buildings "for generally benign purposes" can hurt efforts to preserve the properties if communities fear vandalism and dropping property values, said Timothy James Scarlett, associate professor and director of graduate studies in Industrial Heritage and Archaeology at Michigan Technological University. "The local cops don't know if the people breaking into a building are planning to 'discover' it or undertake illicit or dangerous activities there," Scarlett said. "That practice of breaking in and visiting places exacerbates the fear in local communities." Urban explorers can also cause conflicts when documenting derelict properties in communities where people still live.

The nostalgic novice

"In Detroit, this stuff drives people crazy because some people want to come from outside and take pictures that show Detroit as a vacuous empty wasteland when there are hundreds of thousands of people living in Detroit who are building their world. They find the photos reinforce stereotypes instead of being useful." Done ethically, however, urban exploration can be quite valuable to modern archaeologists and historians, Scarlett said. The long time explorer For the past few years, Fager has been exploring buildings that have been pushed to the fringes of society. To the novice eye these buildings look lost, abandoned and neglected. But to him, these places are like museums in a way, just not curated or encased in glass. "My favorite abandoned locations have a rich and documented history behind them, but these are few and far between. The majority of places I explore are more mundane, but that makes the pursuit of a prime abandoned location all the more enticing," he said.

His explorations have taken him to cities such as Chicago, Cleveland and Milwaukee. For him, each location is unique, but how he finds these buildings in the first place is surprisingly banal. He combs through public records, reads news articles and scours Google Maps to find locations that pique his interest. There is a satisfaction in seeing something that most will not dare to venture to. Ken Fager One of his favorites was the historic Schlitz Brewery in Milwaukee, built along the Milwaukee River in 1870 to house what would at one time become the largest producer of beer in the world. The brewery closed in 1982, and the seven-story building was demolished last fall to make way for a public square in a 46-acre business park. When Fager visited the building in October, half the structure was already torn down. "It felt like part of Milwaukee's soul had been ripped out," he said. "The Schlitz Brewery was one of those exceptionally rare jewels of urban exploration due to its size, history and architectural beauty. You don't get many opportunities to see a building like that up close."