Welcome to Abandoned America

UPDATE, July 4, 2023: I should note that at the time I posted this, I was unaware of the website Abandoned America, which I highly recommend. The title of this blog post is not meant to indicate any connection, official or otherwise, to the website.

By way of Pocket, I came across this story about how dollar stores in rural and poor urban communities have become replacements for Walmart and other big name stores–and magnets for crime: How Dollar Stores Became Magnets for Crime and Killing. It is, as expected, a depressing read. The photos of the various stores, often surrounded by empty lots, spoke of neighborhoods filled with decay, abandoned by most and held hostage to these kinds of stores, that occupy areas long abandoned by other retailers.

But instead of providing a needed service, they serve as hubs to crime–robberies, shootings, drug deals and more. They fail to provide security to their low-paid staff and to the surrounding neighborhood.

The story talks first about North St. Louis, noting that the city shrank from a population of over 850,000 in the 1950s to just over 300,000 today, a staggering decline that has left large tracts of the city occupied by shuttered buildings or vacant lots. I was intrigued and went to Google Maps to see what it looked like.

At first, as I scrolled the satellite view of the map over the city, it looked pretty typical–commercial districts, residential areas with rows of houses. I zoomed in more and spotted the first vacant lot–I had initially mistaken it for a grass field. As I continued to scroll, I was stunned at how prevalent these lots were. I switched to street view to “tour” the area and found a blighted landscape filled with shuttered businesses, empty houses and bricked up buildings whose functions had been erased by years of neglect.

It made me realize a couple of things. America is one of the largest countries in the world geographically–only Russia, Canada, China and India are bigger. And while the U.S. is populous–around 330 million–that number is concentrated around urban hubs in a few states like California, New York and Texas. Vast tracts of the country are largely empty, usually because the land is desert or otherwise ill-suited to large populations. But then you have places like St. Louis, where people have simply fled to the suburbs or elsewhere, creating these pocket ghost towns, where there are blocks of dilapidated houses, foundations with decades’ worth of weeds pushing through cracks in the concrete, and then suddenly a neighborhood that has some new housing, a gas station, a few amenities–an oasis before you head back into the desert of abandoned structures.

The U.S. isn’t the only country that has had cities abandoned, of course, but looking at the scenes in St. Louis, this somehow feels uniquely American, that a major city could just get left behind and forgotten, left to fall apart and disintegrate.

The scenes of desolation are despairing to see in broad daylight. I can only imagine the terror of moving down the streets of these places at night, surrounded on both sides by darkened buildings whose windows are either boarded up or broken.

Here are a few images I captured from street view, with the street view date included for reference.

This is both the smallest and scariest private club I have ever seen, sitting on the corner of an otherwise vacant lot, in an area with little else nearby. From the lack of windows to the black brick and barred red door, it’s like something from a horror movie. Street view goes back to 2011 where it was painted blue as the Jefferson Mini- Mart. From appearances, the mini-mart was already abandoned at the time. In its current incarnation it is actually open as the Orange Door. It has a 4.8 rating (scale of 5) on Google Maps, proving that looks can be deceiving. (May 2017)
Street view for this large abandoned church goes back to 2007–and it was already empty then. The main differences now are the main doors have been sealed, the sidewalks are more choked with weeds, and a few more windows are busted. (July 2017)
The 3D overview of the area the church resides in. Some of the vacant lots have been empty so long they have completely returned to a natural state. A number of the other buildings seen are also abandoned.
Ernie’s Market is now closed. The building seen to the right is currently occupied, as are several others in the immediate area, creating a strange juxtaposition of life amid ruin. (March 2015)

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