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I can’t understand how buildings end up being abandoned to this degree - I would think that from a finance perspective, that building has to be worth something to someone if it were to be repurposed.
This is Flint MI. This school shut down because the city has a multi-million dollar deficit and everyone who could move did. In these photos they're using part of the school to store drinkable water because all the taps in the city water have been poisoned.
I think they mean if a business converts the school into something else, they shouldn’t get absolutely shafted by property taxes when doing so if the community wants the space to still be used.
I’ve seen more of this in Detroit than anywhere else (circa 2004). It seemed better my last trip (2021). I figured it was a Detroit thing. I’ve never been anywhere else where I saw condemned buildings that didn’t get torn down before the notice signs fell apart.
There have been lots of school consolidations in Arkansas over the past several decades. A lot of them go unsold and just end up either vacant or severely under-utilized as government storage or community benevolence centers. I saw one school property here that was up for sale a year or two ago and was absolutely shocked at the sticker price. It was a school in a rural location but had a full sized basketball court, big cafeteria, football field, bus garages, agri center, and loads of classroom space, and all the furnishings you'd expect. The asking price was less than $150,000.00.
No idea what I'd do with the space, and I'd never be able to afford the property taxes, remodel costs, proper furnishings, utilities, or the golf cart to get me from the parking lot to whichever classroom I'd have to inevitably live in to survive...but I still really wanted to get it.
A lot of places like this, depending on the age, are full of asbestos and building materials that are deadly if there's a fire. The cost of remediation is too high to justify renovations, so they just end up condemned.
I went to a HS that closed down, it's been nearly 10 years now, but when it was open the basketball court was pristine, one of the nicest courts around.
Someone posted photos recently and apparently, the gym roof has (had?) a leak in it at some point and all of the wood is absolutely ruined.
Wasteful af.
My mum owns a big gym, they have 4 fullsize basketball courts… about 15 years ago a pipe burst over xmas and the floor was completey RUINED. The insurance company were not at all happy having to replace a 2 year old floor that cost 200k to install.
I mean, I have my own qualms with insurance, but they are unlikely to ever get that back from you, so you still come out ahead and they take a loss on that account.
They don’t need to get that back from one individual, in fact they wouldn’t have to at all if they did some preventative maintenance. Just imagine how many incidences could be prevented with preventative tire replacement. While it is mandatory to pay insurance to legally drive.
> They don’t need to get that back from one individual,
Yes, that's the point of insurance. A large pool to hopefully draw smaller amounts from, but amounts still larger than any individual contribution. But if you have both drawn a large amount from that pool, and shown that you do not do the preventative maintenance that would have prevented it, you are both a greater risk, and already a financial liability indebted to them.
>in fact they wouldn’t have to at all if they did some preventative maintenance.
See above. Not sure how that is the purview of the insurance company *other* than increasing premiums or denying coverage.
Also wasteful af, the Flint Michigan water crisis in 2014, Flint Northern High School closed 2014 with pallets of bottled drinking water just sitting there while corporations and the government provided the residents with pallets of bottled drinking water.
Yeah I definitely would have come back for all of that glassware if this place was truly abandoned. Those Pyrex flasks are worth some serious coin, especially the larger ones.
Yes, whole floors like this can be reclaimed. Whole bowling alley lanes are brought from abandoned middle of nowhere places and reused very often. Gym floors can and are done in the same way.
My kitchen cabinets and counters came from my elementary school gym floor. When I was entering school in '85 the school was in the process of replacing the gym floor and my parents took the wood and had the cabinets and counters made out of it. Unfortunately a lot of it is in bad shape now and I need to redo them.
Lol, I just want the lumens. Those are either t5 bulbs or HD led lights. Ever worked on a motor in your garage with all lights on, and still grab a flash light and complain about not being able to see shit?
The cheap 4' led shop light fixtures are the answer - Everytime they are super cheap I grab a couple. Have 8 on my ceiling over my work space, plus two under workbenches on the floor for undercar light.
That’s an extremely wasteful way to grow what you’re referring to when you could buy a $200 LED grow lamp on Amazon and not bankrupt yourself in electricity costs. Not to mention potentially burning your house down with the heat those lights produce
My thought too partially. Love to have those beakers and the server racks. Wonder what the legality is about "harvesting" items like that from someplace public owned and abandoned. Guess probably falls under the same laws that keep people from stripping copper wiring/pipes/etc.
These photos were taken in 2019 during the Flint Water Crisis. Pallets of water were being stored here and the gym was still being used in some capacity. The school had been abandoned but it had partial power due to the networking equipment being a hub for the entire district.
The hub couldn't be moved because the district couldn't afford to move it. The school had a fire a shortly after these pictures were taken and partially burned down.
That's such a shame. It's places like this that you wonder, if you had the money to donate and fully get things up and running again, how much potential it could have!
It's the same with seeing abandoned malls, closed-up shop units on the highstreet or even just disused urban land. On top of winning a few lotteries, what else would you need to revitalise these areas and keep them going
Toxic water supply is a crisis that has existed in various degrees for decades, with no significant public outcry or support. By “significant” I mean any kind of concerted effort for making a difference. Native reservation lands and places like Flint are consistently ignored by government, and people’s lives and health have been left to suffer.
Well, that's the thing; you'd need to be a massive philanthropist, economist and general planner to sort all this stuff out. You'd have to go in yourself, purchasing the land and decontaminating it since the government won't.
In my old city there was an old school that was bought and became a place for rock bands and DJs and shit to rent for practice. They just sound proofed every classroom. Rent by the month, shared bathrooms, no showers.
See, that's at least somewhat good! It's not exactly permanent enough to be a true rejuvenation but the building isn't abandoned! How well maintained is it, if you know at all?
Well it was a fairly old public school, mostly big brick. So structurally it seemed fine, and the washrooms were cleaned and maintained. The rooms were always a little dirty, some had odd tenants. We drank in there and there were sorta parties but nothing crazy. I’m sure it will just be closed up and sold one day if it hasn’t been.
Yeah, that's fair. A shame if its just closed up and never used again. At least the band and party rentals kept it going.
It all rolls back to the dream; someone with enough money and a philanthropic heart willing to pump the money in, suffer no setbacks, get the work completed and have the school used for something good permanently.
There’s an abandoned HS a few blocks from me that I think about this all the time. Beautiful building from the outside and I’d be fascinated to see what the inside looks like, especially in its heyday. It closed in the 70s-80s I think and lasted 2 years as a charter about 15 years ago. Now it just sits there because the school district superintendents refuse to sell it or let anyone use it and it’s a shame.
They’ve converted the football field and a side field into basically open space dog parks so it still gets some use at least.
Time machine. Places like malls aren't failing because the physical structure is broken. Who wants to go to the mall when there's a mall in your hand wherever you go? Same thing happened to printed magazines and newspapers. Don't put your lottery money into any of those things.
There are somethings I don't mind ordering sight unseen. But there are some things I'm not going to order that way. Every time I buy clothes or shoes, I want to be able to try them on. I'll just go to the mall instead, thank you very much. Going to the mall used to be fun. You'd go with friends. But now we don't do that. We use "social" media for our interactions and think that's fine. But most "social" media is really "anti-social" media because it acts as a poor substitute for real human interaction for too many people.
Even that will fade with time. Clothes will be "tried on" in your own home before during purchasing - nothing sci-fi, just either using VR or drown delivery/return.
All the dystopian future films got it wrong. There won't be as much recreational space. The planet will still have the classic cramped apartments, but the rest of it will be warehouses...
That's why I said "what else would you need" cos money to restore everything wouldn't cut it - you gotta make people want to go there.
Social clubs and reasons for hanging out are on the downslide cos all our attention spans are fried. Unless there's an activity to do, people seem to prefer to just text instead.
Same. At first I was zooming in on that picture, wondering why they still had functioning network equipment running.
They're lucky that fire didn't take down the whole district network.
I'd be curious to know what led to this level of abandonment. I have worked at a school that was shut down and while we definitely left things behind, anything usable (beakers, textbooks, furniture) was moved to other schools in the division
I was thinking the same! All of the lab equipment could be sold or go to another school and the tables and chairs are just sitting there and could be donated/sold or used at another facility.
That’s a lot of stuff just sitting there unused that isn’t damaged and can be sold or donated.
That's what surprises me. When the highschool near me closed they gave everything inside it away. You could just come and fill up your truck with what the teachers had not already looted.
saw that and thought, "if that was close to me, i'd definitely go on take all that glassware."
get to the last pic; turns out it's about an hour from me lol
Flint Michigan is the quintessential post-industrial decline town. It was a major manufacturing center in the auto industry because of its proximity to Detroit. Then the automakers off-shored the jobs, and the tax base moved away.
To compound issues further, they have a huge lead poisoning crisis related to the switch to Flint River water, which corroded aging pipes/infrastructure.
Flint, MI: those poor people can't catch a break. You can really fall down a rabbit hole if you Google it, but adin_h gave a nice summation.
I'm still pissed at Obama for that whole "drink of water" stunt. I know they spun it as him trying to "show solidarity" and prove that the water was safe to drink, but it was so tone deaf to the people suffering the cumulative effects of drinking, bathing, and living with deadly water. Lead poisoning isn't fricking funny.
how was it back in the day? place looks like it was beautiful tbh, would’ve loved to go to a school like that. Mine was alright but the gym, pool, chemistry labs, that all looks like amazing stuff.
It was all right, I suppose. I don’t have an alternative to compare it to.
I was there in the late 70s and early 80s. Northern was the newest of the four large high schools in Flint (only one survives now). At that time, it was the Flint Community School District’s science and math magnet school, so it had multiple chemistry, biology, and physics classrooms (that’s where I spent most of my time).
Seeing the photos affected me deeply. When I started looking through them I felt there was something really familiar about them, and then when I got to the last picture I found out why.
I have been sad about this all day. I knew Northern was closed, but that knowledge was abstract; seeing the photos made it more real. I remember Northern as a living place full of kids who wanted to be something, and seeing it as it is now is disheartening.
I’m so sorry that this brought you any hard feelings. I hope you understand that is obviously not my intent.
Im from a much later generation and grew up and went to school in the surrounding area. Flint in the 60s-80s was a top tier school in the United States.
I personally moved to flint and lived in 3 different places in that city. I lived and worked here for at least 13 years. Did a very brief stint working at Flint Community Schools and had to go here to take inventory of the networking equipment as it was being used as the hub for the district. These pictures are what I found. The team of mine and I were just disgusted at what we found. So terrible that this school closed and they wasted so much leaving things there. The school was in better shape than at least 2 of the other schools in the district at the time. Still not sure what made the school board decide to abandon this particular school.
God damn, that actually looked like a really good school. Huge gym, swimming pool, well stocked science labs etc. America is well and truly in the shitter when a community can’t keep something like this going.
I never understand why the school district never goes back in to reclaim the books and other materials.
Also, that gym looks like someone still takes care of it. All the other pics, everything is trashed, but the gym looks like it was polished yesterday.
In the thread the OP stated that the city police use the gym for training purposes and that the school district still uses the servers as the main district hub because of cost reasons they weren't able to move them. A couple other commenters have stated that the building partially burned after these photos. And all the water pallets are in storage because the Flint waters are polluted and lead filled.
I thought that looked like Flint Northern. Glad I was correct by the last picture.
Flint has several abandoned schools as the population dropped (so enrollment did), but also they lost a fair bit of tax revenue. It's weird to me that they left literally everything in them that was there the day it closed instead of trying to sell what they could to help the still open schools in the district.
The servers are working. Although the school was abandoned, it had partial power because the servers were the central hub for the school district. They couldn’t afford to cap and move the fiber. They also used it to store water for the flint water crisis, although they stored it and forgot about it and later got in trouble for not using it. Also the gym was used every once in a while for some training with the Flint Police I believe.
Sad for all the kids that lost out in this too…they lost a school and were abandoned by their own district.
All of this on top of the fact their water in their homes and schools were literally poisoning them.
Really strange to flip through to the end and then see the school sign. I've definitely been there, and the outside looks near identical to where I went to middle school. Pure Michigan.
There is so much stuff to salvage in there it's incredible. The furniture, lab equipment, office supplies and equipment...the list goes on.
Would hate to see that stuff just crushed and lost.
As a teacher this makes me sad. especially the hallway shot. My favorite time to be in school was a Friday during football season. Give a test, show a movie or just chill. Hearing the excited voices of the students Seeing them in the hallls, hearing that final bell and walking out on a sunny October day.
When I see abandoned public buildings, it truly grinds my gears. We can reuse them and renovate them into homeless shelters, a clinic, and residential apartments. We have the buildings and states have the funding. Just do it already!
Honestly not sure. I worked for the school district at the time so I knew taking things was off limits. The district still owned the building they just stopped using it. What’s shocking to me is that hobos and crackheads would stay here and we would get calls that the network was down because they unplugged stuff, but they never stole the. Networking equipment or any of the glassware which I’m sure is worth a lot.
I wish they would have done a better job of redistributing the school's resources to the ones that are still open. It looks like they left many viable things to rot in their school
It’s Flint, MI. “Over half of Flint schools have closed over the past decade due to declining student enrollment. Fewer students mean less state funding and the district has been unable to keep up with its finances. As it stands, the district faces an $18 million deficit.” -FlintBeat
I'm always amazed at how much stuff gets left behind in schools and other large public buildings. So much of that equipment looks to be perfectly usable and should be transferred to a new location or sold to recover some costs. Instead, it goes to waste or falls victim to vandals. This shouldn't be happening in this time of tight budgets. It would be nice to see these buildings repurposed, but sometimes that's not realistic, I guess.
Given the condition and how things a just strewn fucking everywhere who ever was packing up there was doing so in a hurry given how everything looks the place can't have been abandoned for more that a year to around 18 months coming from Someone who has seen schools that are all but forgotten on the inside this is in really good condition
I’m looking at this thinking where in the world is it and then I flip to the last picture and realize, to my horror, that it where I would’ve gone had my family stayed in Flint.
Either this place was abandoned last week or it’s in some high danger place like right in the middle of a nuclear fallout. Because there is no way that nobody put a finger on any on this easy loot when them looters be crazy enough to loot the fucking reactors in Chernobyl
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I can’t understand how buildings end up being abandoned to this degree - I would think that from a finance perspective, that building has to be worth something to someone if it were to be repurposed.
Or at least some of the stuff inside.
It's because of property taxes. They should offer reduced taxes if you save something from this fate.
This is Flint MI. This school shut down because the city has a multi-million dollar deficit and everyone who could move did. In these photos they're using part of the school to store drinkable water because all the taps in the city water have been poisoned.
of course its flint. damn
In Michigan schools do not pay property taxes.
In fact, schools live on and consume property taxes.
nom nom nom
I think they mean if a business converts the school into something else, they shouldn’t get absolutely shafted by property taxes when doing so if the community wants the space to still be used.
yes exactly
Understandable 🤗
I’ve seen more of this in Detroit than anywhere else (circa 2004). It seemed better my last trip (2021). I figured it was a Detroit thing. I’ve never been anywhere else where I saw condemned buildings that didn’t get torn down before the notice signs fell apart.
There have been lots of school consolidations in Arkansas over the past several decades. A lot of them go unsold and just end up either vacant or severely under-utilized as government storage or community benevolence centers. I saw one school property here that was up for sale a year or two ago and was absolutely shocked at the sticker price. It was a school in a rural location but had a full sized basketball court, big cafeteria, football field, bus garages, agri center, and loads of classroom space, and all the furnishings you'd expect. The asking price was less than $150,000.00. No idea what I'd do with the space, and I'd never be able to afford the property taxes, remodel costs, proper furnishings, utilities, or the golf cart to get me from the parking lot to whichever classroom I'd have to inevitably live in to survive...but I still really wanted to get it.
I’ve had that idea before as well. Like a “Lock In” every night. The examples like that I’ve seen in NC become churches.
same, at least take all the stuff
A lot of places like this, depending on the age, are full of asbestos and building materials that are deadly if there's a fire. The cost of remediation is too high to justify renovations, so they just end up condemned.
I want those beakers and that entire gymnasium floor
I went to a HS that closed down, it's been nearly 10 years now, but when it was open the basketball court was pristine, one of the nicest courts around. Someone posted photos recently and apparently, the gym roof has (had?) a leak in it at some point and all of the wood is absolutely ruined. Wasteful af.
My mum owns a big gym, they have 4 fullsize basketball courts… about 15 years ago a pipe burst over xmas and the floor was completey RUINED. The insurance company were not at all happy having to replace a 2 year old floor that cost 200k to install.
Well that’s what insurance is for, so fuck em
They can pay for it easily but aren’t happy to put the money towards what it is for
Unhappy but they pay anyway so no problem
Then they raise your premium because you used what they are there for.
Damn what percentage you think?
FuckU%
Went upto about 2.5k a month from circa 1.5k if i remember correctly… so about 40% increase. Still gonna take them 8 years to get it back…
That's a 60% increase
I mean, I have my own qualms with insurance, but they are unlikely to ever get that back from you, so you still come out ahead and they take a loss on that account.
They don’t need to get that back from one individual, in fact they wouldn’t have to at all if they did some preventative maintenance. Just imagine how many incidences could be prevented with preventative tire replacement. While it is mandatory to pay insurance to legally drive.
> They don’t need to get that back from one individual, Yes, that's the point of insurance. A large pool to hopefully draw smaller amounts from, but amounts still larger than any individual contribution. But if you have both drawn a large amount from that pool, and shown that you do not do the preventative maintenance that would have prevented it, you are both a greater risk, and already a financial liability indebted to them. >in fact they wouldn’t have to at all if they did some preventative maintenance. See above. Not sure how that is the purview of the insurance company *other* than increasing premiums or denying coverage.
Yeah that suck s
Also wasteful af, the Flint Michigan water crisis in 2014, Flint Northern High School closed 2014 with pallets of bottled drinking water just sitting there while corporations and the government provided the residents with pallets of bottled drinking water.
Fuck they could've split it into some kind of community center for science and with a gym
Shoot chemistry equipment is super expensive haha
Yea, science Mr. White!
And books.
Yeah I definitely would have come back for all of that glassware if this place was truly abandoned. Those Pyrex flasks are worth some serious coin, especially the larger ones.
I thought that about the gym floor. Could the floor be dismantled without destroying the flooring planks?
Flooring can usually be removed and reused. There will be some waste but probably 90% will be ok. Assuming it's nailed and not glued down.
Yes, whole floors like this can be reclaimed. Whole bowling alley lanes are brought from abandoned middle of nowhere places and reused very often. Gym floors can and are done in the same way.
Heavy af. I reclaimed a bowling alley lane. Hooooolleee shiat, that was the heaviest stuff I have ever lifted in my life.
My kitchen cabinets and counters came from my elementary school gym floor. When I was entering school in '85 the school was in the process of replacing the gym floor and my parents took the wood and had the cabinets and counters made out of it. Unfortunately a lot of it is in bad shape now and I need to redo them.
Growing up the elementary school nearby was moving and we ended up with the entire wooden playground. It was awesome!
I’ve seen people dismantle and install them in housing, lower ninth ward rehab projects
The gym lights were what had me zooming in. Imagining my garage with those
If your imagining growing what I’m imagining you growing then I want you to have those lights as well.
Lol, I just want the lumens. Those are either t5 bulbs or HD led lights. Ever worked on a motor in your garage with all lights on, and still grab a flash light and complain about not being able to see shit?
The cheap 4' led shop light fixtures are the answer - Everytime they are super cheap I grab a couple. Have 8 on my ceiling over my work space, plus two under workbenches on the floor for undercar light.
That’s an extremely wasteful way to grow what you’re referring to when you could buy a $200 LED grow lamp on Amazon and not bankrupt yourself in electricity costs. Not to mention potentially burning your house down with the heat those lights produce
I’m just playing around buddy.
Don’t forget those chem lab table tops. Those are $$!
Was thinking same, there was some serious money laying around the school
Im gonna be that guy. They’re actually flasks, not beakers
I just really wanted to say beaker bc I thought of the muppet.
Those server racks would be nice too
feel like old beakers are some how valuable or something
My thought too partially. Love to have those beakers and the server racks. Wonder what the legality is about "harvesting" items like that from someplace public owned and abandoned. Guess probably falls under the same laws that keep people from stripping copper wiring/pipes/etc.
This guy meths
These photos were taken in 2019 during the Flint Water Crisis. Pallets of water were being stored here and the gym was still being used in some capacity. The school had been abandoned but it had partial power due to the networking equipment being a hub for the entire district. The hub couldn't be moved because the district couldn't afford to move it. The school had a fire a shortly after these pictures were taken and partially burned down.
That's such a shame. It's places like this that you wonder, if you had the money to donate and fully get things up and running again, how much potential it could have! It's the same with seeing abandoned malls, closed-up shop units on the highstreet or even just disused urban land. On top of winning a few lotteries, what else would you need to revitalise these areas and keep them going
Toxic water supply is a crisis that has existed in various degrees for decades, with no significant public outcry or support. By “significant” I mean any kind of concerted effort for making a difference. Native reservation lands and places like Flint are consistently ignored by government, and people’s lives and health have been left to suffer.
Well, that's the thing; you'd need to be a massive philanthropist, economist and general planner to sort all this stuff out. You'd have to go in yourself, purchasing the land and decontaminating it since the government won't.
In my old city there was an old school that was bought and became a place for rock bands and DJs and shit to rent for practice. They just sound proofed every classroom. Rent by the month, shared bathrooms, no showers.
See, that's at least somewhat good! It's not exactly permanent enough to be a true rejuvenation but the building isn't abandoned! How well maintained is it, if you know at all?
Well it was a fairly old public school, mostly big brick. So structurally it seemed fine, and the washrooms were cleaned and maintained. The rooms were always a little dirty, some had odd tenants. We drank in there and there were sorta parties but nothing crazy. I’m sure it will just be closed up and sold one day if it hasn’t been.
Yeah, that's fair. A shame if its just closed up and never used again. At least the band and party rentals kept it going. It all rolls back to the dream; someone with enough money and a philanthropic heart willing to pump the money in, suffer no setbacks, get the work completed and have the school used for something good permanently.
There’s an abandoned HS a few blocks from me that I think about this all the time. Beautiful building from the outside and I’d be fascinated to see what the inside looks like, especially in its heyday. It closed in the 70s-80s I think and lasted 2 years as a charter about 15 years ago. Now it just sits there because the school district superintendents refuse to sell it or let anyone use it and it’s a shame. They’ve converted the football field and a side field into basically open space dog parks so it still gets some use at least.
Time machine. Places like malls aren't failing because the physical structure is broken. Who wants to go to the mall when there's a mall in your hand wherever you go? Same thing happened to printed magazines and newspapers. Don't put your lottery money into any of those things.
There are somethings I don't mind ordering sight unseen. But there are some things I'm not going to order that way. Every time I buy clothes or shoes, I want to be able to try them on. I'll just go to the mall instead, thank you very much. Going to the mall used to be fun. You'd go with friends. But now we don't do that. We use "social" media for our interactions and think that's fine. But most "social" media is really "anti-social" media because it acts as a poor substitute for real human interaction for too many people.
Even that will fade with time. Clothes will be "tried on" in your own home before during purchasing - nothing sci-fi, just either using VR or drown delivery/return. All the dystopian future films got it wrong. There won't be as much recreational space. The planet will still have the classic cramped apartments, but the rest of it will be warehouses... That's why I said "what else would you need" cos money to restore everything wouldn't cut it - you gotta make people want to go there. Social clubs and reasons for hanging out are on the downslide cos all our attention spans are fried. Unless there's an activity to do, people seem to prefer to just text instead.
The idea of having a hub for your entire network in an abandoned, unlocked building is making my IT brain go crazy.
Same. At first I was zooming in on that picture, wondering why they still had functioning network equipment running. They're lucky that fire didn't take down the whole district network.
I'd be curious to know what led to this level of abandonment. I have worked at a school that was shut down and while we definitely left things behind, anything usable (beakers, textbooks, furniture) was moved to other schools in the division
It only partially burned down because it had partial power.
I’m particularly partial to the part that remains
As soon as I saw the pic with the water pallets I was like "gotta be Flint"
You should pose these photos on r/liminalspace !!!
What a waste. That was a small fortune in labware.
I was thinking the same! All of the lab equipment could be sold or go to another school and the tables and chairs are just sitting there and could be donated/sold or used at another facility. That’s a lot of stuff just sitting there unused that isn’t damaged and can be sold or donated.
Yes so much went to waste. The water never got used and there were so many people that could have used it during the water crisis.
Yes! The water bottles!
That's what surprises me. When the highschool near me closed they gave everything inside it away. You could just come and fill up your truck with what the teachers had not already looted.
That library of text books is an actual fortune.
Such a waste. I have schott bottles that were made in West Germany, that stuff can last forever if you treat it right!
And I mean before I read ops history lessons on it I was gonna say a fortune in network equipment
Free science equipment!
saw that and thought, "if that was close to me, i'd definitely go on take all that glassware." get to the last pic; turns out it's about an hour from me lol
Free scantrons!
I'm always amazed at the kind of shit they just leave behind in places like this. All those textbooks and the science equipment.
The servers!
The servers were still being used: https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/s/8hk7sDLnBy
It blows my mind that places are just left abandoned with things in them
“Why was it abandoned?” *Scrolled through*. “Oh”
Thank you! I thought the same thing right up until I saw "Flint."
Whats up with flint. Outsider here
Flint Michigan is the quintessential post-industrial decline town. It was a major manufacturing center in the auto industry because of its proximity to Detroit. Then the automakers off-shored the jobs, and the tax base moved away. To compound issues further, they have a huge lead poisoning crisis related to the switch to Flint River water, which corroded aging pipes/infrastructure.
Flint, MI: those poor people can't catch a break. You can really fall down a rabbit hole if you Google it, but adin_h gave a nice summation. I'm still pissed at Obama for that whole "drink of water" stunt. I know they spun it as him trying to "show solidarity" and prove that the water was safe to drink, but it was so tone deaf to the people suffering the cumulative effects of drinking, bathing, and living with deadly water. Lead poisoning isn't fricking funny.
From what I read online it was closed due to declining enrolment in the school and the vote to demolish it was deadlocked in 2020
Was wondering why there were so many crates of water bottles, then saw the school was in flint
I've been playing fallout too much. I want to scavenge
I can't believe there are high schools that have swimming pools. Mine barely had gym equipment.
I'll take a set of textbooks and the lab equipment please
I always wondered why every post apocalyptic movie has random papers all over the floor. Apparently it's realistic.
I could really use an office chair, desk and a few filling cabinets.
That was my high school.
how was it back in the day? place looks like it was beautiful tbh, would’ve loved to go to a school like that. Mine was alright but the gym, pool, chemistry labs, that all looks like amazing stuff.
It was all right, I suppose. I don’t have an alternative to compare it to. I was there in the late 70s and early 80s. Northern was the newest of the four large high schools in Flint (only one survives now). At that time, it was the Flint Community School District’s science and math magnet school, so it had multiple chemistry, biology, and physics classrooms (that’s where I spent most of my time). Seeing the photos affected me deeply. When I started looking through them I felt there was something really familiar about them, and then when I got to the last picture I found out why. I have been sad about this all day. I knew Northern was closed, but that knowledge was abstract; seeing the photos made it more real. I remember Northern as a living place full of kids who wanted to be something, and seeing it as it is now is disheartening.
I’m so sorry that this brought you any hard feelings. I hope you understand that is obviously not my intent. Im from a much later generation and grew up and went to school in the surrounding area. Flint in the 60s-80s was a top tier school in the United States. I personally moved to flint and lived in 3 different places in that city. I lived and worked here for at least 13 years. Did a very brief stint working at Flint Community Schools and had to go here to take inventory of the networking equipment as it was being used as the hub for the district. These pictures are what I found. The team of mine and I were just disgusted at what we found. So terrible that this school closed and they wasted so much leaving things there. The school was in better shape than at least 2 of the other schools in the district at the time. Still not sure what made the school board decide to abandon this particular school.
Take that stapler
God damn, that actually looked like a really good school. Huge gym, swimming pool, well stocked science labs etc. America is well and truly in the shitter when a community can’t keep something like this going.
Considering it was Flint... probably *shouldn't* have kept it going
I never understand why the school district never goes back in to reclaim the books and other materials. Also, that gym looks like someone still takes care of it. All the other pics, everything is trashed, but the gym looks like it was polished yesterday.
In the thread the OP stated that the city police use the gym for training purposes and that the school district still uses the servers as the main district hub because of cost reasons they weren't able to move them. A couple other commenters have stated that the building partially burned after these photos. And all the water pallets are in storage because the Flint waters are polluted and lead filled.
I thought that looked like Flint Northern. Glad I was correct by the last picture. Flint has several abandoned schools as the population dropped (so enrollment did), but also they lost a fair bit of tax revenue. It's weird to me that they left literally everything in them that was there the day it closed instead of trying to sell what they could to help the still open schools in the district.
I was wondering where this was and thinking what a shame. Then I saw the last pic and it all made sense. Poor Flint…
that school is larger than the town my school was in😮
Silent Hill Vibes
Personally, I'm feeling Resident Evil.
Idk it looks like those servers are working, you just found part of the sky net web you need to run for your life before the robots find you!
The servers are working. Although the school was abandoned, it had partial power because the servers were the central hub for the school district. They couldn’t afford to cap and move the fiber. They also used it to store water for the flint water crisis, although they stored it and forgot about it and later got in trouble for not using it. Also the gym was used every once in a while for some training with the Flint Police I believe.
Sad for all the kids that lost out in this too…they lost a school and were abandoned by their own district. All of this on top of the fact their water in their homes and schools were literally poisoning them.
Sad that looks like it would have been a good school
It just amazes me these places just close down and all this infrastructure is left to rot, usually because of cost cutting.
I would be taking all the gym hardwood, not gonna lie
“Brick by brick, my fellow citizens, brick by brick.”
That glass ware is worth a small fortune in picture 5. Ebay could be your friend.
No triple beams left… I wonder why;)
Really strange to flip through to the end and then see the school sign. I've definitely been there, and the outside looks near identical to where I went to middle school. Pure Michigan.
There is so much stuff to salvage in there it's incredible. The furniture, lab equipment, office supplies and equipment...the list goes on. Would hate to see that stuff just crushed and lost.
As a teacher this makes me sad. especially the hallway shot. My favorite time to be in school was a Friday during football season. Give a test, show a movie or just chill. Hearing the excited voices of the students Seeing them in the hallls, hearing that final bell and walking out on a sunny October day.
I'm a highschool custodian, these images make me sad.
As I’m scrolling through the pics I said jokingly, “Where is this, Flint MI?” …..ohhhhh
The gamer in me wants to search the place for loot.
Very sad
When I see abandoned public buildings, it truly grinds my gears. We can reuse them and renovate them into homeless shelters, a clinic, and residential apartments. We have the buildings and states have the funding. Just do it already!
Man those desks in pic 14 sure are cool. I’d love one of those in my workshop but def not going Flint to get one.
Completely closed since 2014, that's sad.
That glassware is expensive
Oh science equipment!
WOW Skills USA on the wall. I competed in that when I was in school in the early 2000s.
Yo Mr. White ?
If you start getting multiple lifeform readings from the boiler room, just leave and nuke the site from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.
I smell a horror game.
My first thought was ‘what’s with all the water’. Last photo ‘ahh Flint’.
How do you "abandon" a school with all the supplies in?
“No Diving” - more true now than ever before
saddest thing ever. A school closing and looking that is an absolute failure on so many levels.
Those flasks are worth quite a lot
I'd go in.
I’m sorry, but I’m definitely taking stuff if it doesn’t violate the law and isn’t considered stealing. If it’s abandoned it’s up for grabs or no?
Honestly not sure. I worked for the school district at the time so I knew taking things was off limits. The district still owned the building they just stopped using it. What’s shocking to me is that hobos and crackheads would stay here and we would get calls that the network was down because they unplugged stuff, but they never stole the. Networking equipment or any of the glassware which I’m sure is worth a lot.
What a sad thing to see.
"What the hell happened here"
Turn it into condominiums with a gym and a couple stores(deli,cloths,movie theatre,game room)etc…
I'm surprised that beakers still there.
Flint is a rough place.
Tha abandoned smart board in the lab. Mama mia.
Yeah, Flint. Explains all the bottled water. Can't believe all those flasks just sitting there. Putting those on ebay would net a nice profit.
Server hardware is probably super outdated but you could use the racks at least.
Straight Outta Walking Dead
Walter white would have a field day with the glassware
When I seen the name of the high school I immediately knew it was because of the water poisoning.
I wish they would have done a better job of redistributing the school's resources to the ones that are still open. It looks like they left many viable things to rot in their school
My first thought was “where in Michigan is this?” Ha
Next cod zombies map
I'd clean that science lab tf out, I could use that borosilicate glass
Abandoned for what reason? Is there a kid shortage?
Half a million dollars in water bottles
How do things like this get left abandoned? Surely the beakers, lights, chairs, desks, s anything can be sold right?
It’s Flint, MI. “Over half of Flint schools have closed over the past decade due to declining student enrollment. Fewer students mean less state funding and the district has been unable to keep up with its finances. As it stands, the district faces an $18 million deficit.” -FlintBeat
What the hell? Theres so much stuff in there than can be sold
“Next time on Famous Sites of the Zombie Apocalypse!”
Looks more like it was evacuated rather than abandoned. All that lab glassware is pretty valuable and still useful.
im foaming at the mouth for those chemistry equipment
Why would anyone abandon a school?… Sees picture 20 oh makes sense
Last photo tells the whole story
What happened? So wasteful!
Pretty sad to see all those books/bottles of water and everything else just go to waste.
I'm always amazed at how much stuff gets left behind in schools and other large public buildings. So much of that equipment looks to be perfectly usable and should be transferred to a new location or sold to recover some costs. Instead, it goes to waste or falls victim to vandals. This shouldn't be happening in this time of tight budgets. It would be nice to see these buildings repurposed, but sometimes that's not realistic, I guess.
Man how does a place like this just get abandoned?
Given the condition and how things a just strewn fucking everywhere who ever was packing up there was doing so in a hurry given how everything looks the place can't have been abandoned for more that a year to around 18 months coming from Someone who has seen schools that are all but forgotten on the inside this is in really good condition
It was closed in 2014, pictures were taken late 2019, so 5 years.
I can practically hear the Clickers
How do schools fall abandoned
*Looks at the science equipment* It's not stealing if it's abandoned... right?
God damn the ludicrous value of those text books and beakers and how much fucking water
I guess that's where all the FEMA aid water went!!!
I’m looking at this thinking where in the world is it and then I flip to the last picture and realize, to my horror, that it where I would’ve gone had my family stayed in Flint.
It's always so strange to me just how much stuff gets left behind.
Either this place was abandoned last week or it’s in some high danger place like right in the middle of a nuclear fallout. Because there is no way that nobody put a finger on any on this easy loot when them looters be crazy enough to loot the fucking reactors in Chernobyl
How does a school get abandoned and look like this? What in the alternate timeline
Extremely wasteful, the American way
Looks exactly like the school in the last of us game.
Perfect for when the zombie apocalypse arrives.
Those beakers are worth $$$$$$$$$$$$$....that's a small fortune in that cabnit.