Abandoned Eastern Ohio

Eastern Ohio holds a vast collection of forlorn structures that continue to fade away. Some sites were gifted an additional shot at life, while others are disintegrating at the hand of nature or will see the wrecking ball's force. The once-mighty industrial belt of Eastern Ohio is a silent landscape of rusting hulks. Ruins touch the imagination at fundamental levels and hold a sense of the past and the present. See the Ohio State Reformatory where spirits of the past must surely reside; the quiet, abandoned, but historic, company village of Iron Soup that once joined with a formidable steel mill; the large rail gate yard with its skyscraper-like communications tower surrendering to natural elements; the glorious Victory Theater, fortunate to have a new lease of existence; and a church, school, and rectory that once served as a spiritual center for a community and now confronts imminent demolition. This collection of abandonments reveals how we surrender our history for traces of dissolving stories.