A couple of weekends ago, I met up with our small group, Urbexia, in Harrisburg, PA. It was an easy drive with little traffic, a Stephen King audio book to keep me occupied, and the 2 hour journey flew by. I met the crew at a diner, which turned out a pretty decent breakfast, and with full bellies, we began our exploring trip. It had been a long time since just us four members had been together on our own without any other guests, and it worked out well, we were all able to pile into one car, that one being Margie's, since all their stuff was already heaped in the back.
We were planning on exploring a long time abandoned school in the city, parking on a side street in the silent neighborhood, and then strolling around the grounds, but with no big cameras that would attract attention, just our iPhones.
It was blustery and cold, yet the sun was shining, creating incredible lighting for photos, which would have been great if we'd had our cameras with us, but we snapped away diligently with our phones regardless. I'm particularly fond of the one with Emily and Margie, skipping through the brambles. We held up phones to take photos through windows that rose above our heads, but the results yielded nothing exciting within. We roamed around the exterior, finding that the building was sealed up like a drum. Which was no loss really, the inside, already gutted, hadn't been photo worthy. We were in a dodgy neighborhood, and spotted an SUV parked on the road, with its hatch wide open but no movement from within the car. On the school grounds was a blinged out Jeep, with the shiniest chrome wheels I'd ever seen, and its owner polishing the exterior, while occasionally looking across the road. I had my own ideas about what could possibly be trying to transpire here, but being my usual nosy self, asked the polishing dude, as we passed him, why he was polishing his car in this odd location. He looked up for a few seconds and then responded, "Because it's peaceful." Alrighty then. I smiled at him and we walked away, behind the building, to see if there were any photo opportunities, and we weren't remotely surprised to discover, that when we returned a few minutes later, he'd gone.
We'd spotted some kind of shrine across the road, so ambled over to investigate, drawn to the Moorish architecture and colors, and half hoping it would be abandoned. But of course, it wasn't.
This was the Zembo Shrine Building, built in 1928, a masonic building, with the shriners raising money for children's charities and hospitals.
We peered through doors and inspected the grounds, taking time to snap a couple of group shots on the icy stone bench against the building. Richard and I decided to strike an Egyptian pose outside the huge tiled doorway, but then wondered why, since this was a Moorish architectural style, resulting in us laughing even more. Looking through the glass, the interior seemed to be untidy, and knowing the building had once been on the market, I wondered if the shriners were managing to raise enough money for their charities as well as the upkeep of this building.
Back in the car, we stopped for a quick snap of this Lustron house. I'd only read about these a few months ago, intrigued by their popularity. About 2000 of them were built after WWII for returning GI's. Made of prefab enameled steel panels, they were low cost, easy maintenance, and very durable. Even though they were well built, production delays, escalating costs and bad planning led to the bankruptcy of the Lustron Corporation in 1950. Many of the homes remain today, and are even sought after. It was grand to finally see one first hand. Wish we could've gone inside, but this particular home didn't look very well maintained.
I found an interesting article on them, here.
Our next stop was another school, again unused, of a neo-gothic design. With tall sky-reaching towers and incredibly intricate brickwork, it broke my heart to see this old Catholic school abandoned after just 100 years use.
Although its academic teaching standards were high, it failed to stay open, and from peering through the doors, it seemed its last function had been as a haunted house a couple of years ago. I did find a report from 2021 where the building would be used to provide recreation and further living skills for the local youth, along with other parts of it being converted into commercial space for offices and restaurants, but it seems those plans have fallen by the wayside, since 18 months later there's no sign whatsoever of any development, and the completion date had been projected for late 2023.
We drove on to our last exploration destination, an old lunatic asylum, which ceased operating as a mental hospital in 2006. Many of the buildings are empty but there are also a lot of them still in use.
We wandered about, taking phone shots of whatever piqued our interest, in my case, a stack of light bulbs, and a hilarious smoke detector sign. The wind had picked up and the temperature had dropped, but we pulled up our collars and walked about the grounds.
We only saw a few people, smoking outside a building, guessing they were staff, and a couple of joggers who trotted past us. The grounds were being maintained, pruning was evidently being done, freshly sawn boughs lay on the ground and orange tags were on some trees. Newer looking signs had been added to empty buildings, but we couldn't find any open doors, or see anything that even beckoned us inside, apart from one room, with interesting machinery and tools. We came across another couple, who like us, were looking through windows and snapping phone photos. As we got in the car for the last time, a security guard drove up behind us. We carried on forward, and he followed, waiting while we went down a dead-end road, turned around and came back, and then he followed us again until we drove off the site. We didn't mind. The day had got colder and windier, we were ready for some hot food and beers.
At Emily's recommendation, we stopped at Pizza Boy Brewing, where the multitude of craft beers was overwhelming, but of a most excellent quality. A huge calzone went down very nicely too. It was dark when we emerged, the temperature had dropped even more. Hugs and farewells, accompanied with promises to get our little group together again soon. We'd had a lot of laughs throughout the day, even though we hadn't really achieved our goals, and it had been fun to catch up. I was getting tired as I got into my car, yet my audio book, and the easy drive down the highway to home kept me awake.
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