Elizabeth Licata: They explore abandoned buildings for adventure, knowledge and clicks (2024)

They know what they’re doing can get them in trouble.

Even when it does not involve breaking and entering, the exploration of vacant buildings is almost always illegal – and often dangerous.

But that doesn’t stop Western New York’s urban explorers – urbexers for short – from venturing inside empty, seemingly abandoned structures throughout the region and elsewhere. Why? Because the combination of history, mystery, fading beauty and serious decay is irresistible.

You’ll find them on Instagram with handles like “dauntless obscura,” “mr.p explores” and “brokendownbuffalo.” On Facebook, you can follow Abandoned Adventures, Abandoned and Beyond Buffalo and Abandoned 716. Not to mention the TikTokers and YouTubers like Joey/@Don Joey.

Joey says, “I have been urban exploring since I was very young, but I really got into it during the pandemic. I remember my Tata (grandpa) used to take me and my brother on adventures to explore this abandoned railway building in Fort Erie (Ont.). I was probably 6 or 7 at the time and I loved going there. A few years later, my mom and my uncle took me to explore the Central Terminal. Those two missions were likely where my love for exploring came from. I try to do at least one ‘mission’ per week, as we like to call them.”

Urban explorer footage taken inside St. Ann’s Church and Shrine, a magnificent Gothic Revival structure at 651 Broadway, recently caught the attention of local preservation groups on Facebook. Even though the exact location wasn’t named – almost a universal practice with urbexers – it was clearly the shuttered, though still beloved St. Ann’s, which was closed by the Diocese of Buffalo in 2012 and sold in 2022. Most of its valuable interior furnishings also have been sold.

Debate ensued about whether it was right to even share the YouTube video, which shows three intrepid young urbexers roaming the structure and even climbing to the top of its tower and ringing one of its bells. But all agreed that it was also fascinating to see the beauty that remained as well as appreciate the reality of this seemingly doomed, once-vibrant religious hub. The footage was punctuated by an appreciative series of “wows” and “oh my Gods” from behind the camera.

And “wows” are what they are after. Urbexers painstakingly document their expeditions and share the stills and videos via social media, where they are clearly vying for clicks and follows. They also scan the posts of like-minded explorers to suss out dilapidated sites they have not yet encountered. The photography is almost always impressive, but locations are only hinted at, if that.

In many of the images, soaring columns, ornate domes and other architectural features are offset by piles of broken glass, peeling paint and litter of all descriptions. These are meant to be spooky, sad and seductive – and they are.

It’s important to note that though urbex implies “urban,” that’s misleading. Rural locations are very popular, with abandoned institutional structures in remote locations at the top of the list.

Western New York shines here, because it possesses an urbex bucket list item: the former J.N. Adam Memorial Hospital in Perrysburg, vacant since 1995.

Nevermind that the complex is surrounded by chain-link fencing. Fences and boarding don’t stop determined explorers. There’s always a vulnerable gap somewhere.

J.N. Adam is also surrounded by 500 acres of forest, which has helped impede any redevelopment of the former tubercular hospital, designed by architect John H. Coxhead for then-Buffalo Mayor J.N. Adam and opened in 1912. Coxhead built a gracious red-brick sanatorium modeled after Southern plantations, with ornamental columns and wide verandas on every floor so that patients could sleep in the open air. There’s also a beautiful circular domed building, which has been photographed by hundreds of illicit visitors.

Local explorer “Abby Jones” who posts at Facebook/Abandoned and Beyond Buffalo – and has taken hauntingly beautiful images of the hospital – told me, “I heard that it will be demolished this year. I haven’t been since 2017 but the condition is absolutely dangerous. A friend told me that the ceiling debris was falling on them as they walked through this year.”

Another Western New York urbexer, Andrea Cogliano (Instagram@andymarie), shares the enthusiasm for institutional sites, but is more likely these days to take perfectly legal tours when offered. She’s signed up for photography walks through undeveloped portions of the Richardson Olmsted Campus, which remains her favorite, but years ago was able to explore the Allentown State Hospital in Pennsylvania, opened in 1912, vacant since 2010. This was the location for M. Night Shyamalan’s 2019 movie “Glass.” The campus was demolished in 2020-2021.

Cogliano, who works as an inventory manager, keeps track of pending demolitions: “We knew Westborough State Hospital in Massachusetts was going to come down. We drove 7½ hours to get there, stayed in a motel, explored and then turned around and came back.” Westborough opened in 1886 and was demolished in 2019.

This sense of urgency – to capture what will soon be lost – drives many urbexers. In a July 27, 2020, New York Times article by Christopher Mele, explorer Michael Berindi, who runs an urbex website, The Proper People, is quoted: “A common theme we try to touch on in our videos is the idea that the world we live in is becoming more and more disposable.”

In the same article, Drew Scavello of Facebook/Truth in Destruction, notes, “It’s a much more tangible way to connect to history than going to a museum and taking a preplanned tour.”

Connecting to history is a motivator for Joey the YouTuber, who has personal connections with some of the sites he explores.

“I find the history behind all of these buildings so fascinating,” he says. “When exploring, you can’t help but think about all of the people that have worked in the exact spot you are standing.”

Like every urbexer I contacted, Joey and his team make every effort to step lightly: ”We understand what we are doing isn’t allowed,” he says. “With that in mind, we remain respectful everywhere we go and we leave every location exactly as we found it.”

“Abby” of Abandoned and Beyond, says, “Long-term urban explorers on the East Coast, like myself, respect the properties and follow a strict code: take only photos, leave only footprints.”

Even a briefest of skims through the dozens of websites and social media feeds devoted to abandoned sites reveal the sheer quantity of these places throughout the Northeast – many more than I had ever imagined.

Western New Yorkers routinely struggle with transforming the obsolete into something useful and relevant. Urban explorers serve at least one related purpose – they show us the stark reality of what happens when that struggle is abandoned.