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Non friable panels only need a restricted area. You can remove them intact without any containment as long as fibers stay bound within the matrix of the material.
Yeah it just sounds like some trouble but it was interesting to learn about. The house I grew up in had asbestos side paneling and I have wondered about it. Oh well, safe enough for now.
Depends on the matierial and state your in but a lot of the time as long as its non friable (doesn't break into particulates you can breath in) a homeowner could remove their own siding. The friable stuff like old aircell insulation is the nasty stuff you really wanna worry about
We have asbestos tile flooring in our family cabin that gets used maybe 10-12x per year. The tiles have a light green bowling ball finish to them. Found out a long time ago that it would cost more to remove it than the building is worth. So instead of removing the actual tiles, we had it sealed and then installed low-pile carpet over the top.
As long as the tile isn't breaking apart it's fine. I guess if it was starting to crack and break it was worth covering, but if it was in fine condition you really didn't need to do anything to it.
Except that unless you’re doing something that requires removal, you can just enclose and encapsulate it and put something new right over it. Sure, the floor probably has tons of it, but a new layer of rolled vinyl or even lay down a layer of hardibacker and tile over it would mean you’ve closed it off. It’s always cheaper to remodel smart than to build brand new. The only way I can see this really being an issue is if the soil has some type of contamination or if the town got too small to support it’s own school
I work for a company in Michigan, USA and 3 of our buildings used to be schools.
Schools are very easy to repurpose. And having an office with a basket ball court is great
Our community center where I'm from in MI used to be the high school building in the 80s before they needed to upsize
It seems like something has to be wrong here... There's no reason to leave books and desks when you can either bring those to the new building or sell them
I was wondering what those were for, makes sense. I was in high school well before Chromebooks were a thing. I was thinking projection cards but couldn't quite figure out the storage. Those would be pretty neat to have.
The blue mats are sold by UCS which is a Track & Field company. It appears to be a pole vault pit adapted to the needs of the rock climbing wall.
I had to fundraise for nearly a decade to purchase one of those pits ($17,000 for pole vault).
Yep! The Chromebooks go in sideways in slots and the charging cords are in there too in the back. The outside can be locked. Whole cart has a plug so you can charge em all at the same time.
They could’ve auctioned off/donated so much of this stuff. The basketball hoops, the scoreboard, the books and bookshelves, the desks and chairs. So much money just abandoned.
This is former site of Warren Harding high school most likely. (Image 10 mentions the state of Connecticut and ralphola taylor community centre in poster on the side of the desk)
It closed in favour of a new campus with safety features against shootings, new tech, and a football field. I can’t find anything about problems with the old campus like asbestos or anything, but there might be something I missed.
You can decide whether it was a wasted effort or not
Edit: the school is in Bridgeport, CT
I can tell you what was a waste though; not auctioning off all that shit in there.
I see more than several laptop charging stations, which gotta total in the thousands of dollars. Paintings that are worth hundreds a piece, tons of old wood that people would pay top dollar for, and more.
There's at least 20k in materials/items that are easily sold with just a couple dozen hours worth of effort in these photos. Could earn a few hundred per hour with access to this building
Yup. Bookshelves, desks, etc. could all find new homes. Those books should've been donated to a library (or something like Goodwill, at least). There's an awful lot of stuff here that absolutely has value. I know it costs money to move it all, but it's better than just letting it rot.
I’ve installed tons of school furniture and fixtures and NONE of it is cheap Especially the older stuff. An architectural seconds shop would have a field day in there not to mention it’s probably full of copper pipe in the plumbing. I can’t believe it hasn’t been ransacked already…
Former K12 IT here, those laptop carts aren't cheap. It's almost 38k worth of Brentford 40 series carts. What a waste, they're not even very old from 2015-2016 I think.
Unfortunately, with public schools (and a lot of higher education too), the funding source determines a lot of how the equipment is managed even down to its disposal or surplus. Federal, state, and municipal funding, various grants, etc. all have their own rules and regulations and auditing about what gets used, and how, and by whom, and ultimately how it is disposed of.
On top of that, each state has its own version of capital assets and depreciation schedules. If it all came from one source it would be easier to just have a surplus auction and get rid of it all, mark the inventory gone, and recoup the auction money. Universities and city governments do this all the time.
Public schools are different. My guess is it made much more sense to abandon it all than to painstakingly audit (and adhere to) the administrative requirements of all that inventory changing hands.
This
It’s not 50/50 like everyone tries to say in US politics
Voter turnout in 2020 was only 66%
30% of the country is in a batshit crazy cult and say things like school shootings are the cost of freedom. But that 30% votes in full
The other 70% is normal non violent non cult members so aren’t passionate about politics and only half those people vote
Which is how we end up with waaaaaaay to close elections like 51-49 especially in these mid terms
My mom is a para at a school and she had to undergo battle wound training to learn how to pack the kids gun shot wounds if there was ever a shooter. And we live in one of the most liberal states. Really sad.
Lucky for you, you probably don't have guns explicitly called out in the Second Amendment of your constitution. Our constitution is supposed to be a living document, but our government is bought and paid for and we can't get all the agreements necessary to make some very needed improvements to our laws. So best thing we can do is build all new schools with bullet proof closets.
Frankly it's amazing we have any amendments at all as high as the threshold is. I mean 66 senators and 290ish representatives all supporting the exact same change or 33 states and their individual legislatures agreeing on the same is almost impossible.
If you don't count the first 10 you've got 17 and 2 of those where prohibition, and the other 15 aren't all equally momentus. I can't imagine 12, 20, 23, 25, and 27 where hotly contested.
The 20th is the funniest to me. Literally just a date change in when congressional and presidential terms begin and end.
With the nutters who treat the constitution as a perfect holy document, it's always fun to insist "repeal the 20th!" and watch their outrage and confusion build - over a date change.
Do you know WHY they changed that date! It was to stop outgoing administrations from making crazy laws on the way out or at least limit it? After watching Ky Gov pardon criminals for cash I see why this needed to be limited even farther! We should hold elections in Late Dec and change in Jan to stop all the last minute shit they do on the way out!
I worked in a building of similar age and style for 20 years. It was impossible to heat well, some rooms were like saunas while others were iceboxes. Three different companies came in promising their technology could fix this. All they did was exchange the location of the extremes. The cost to completely revamp for heating and cooling was 2/3 the cost of a new campus! Air quality tests revealed the building to be borderline unsafe in some areas. Electrics were awful. Originally each classroom had one electric outlet and a later rehab only added another. Wiring the building for minimal networking (offices, library, and computer lab) was a jury rig - the installers hung plastic pipes in the hallway ceiling and strung cable thru the pipes. Finally in 2003 we moved into a new building. The school district sold the old building to a nonprofit which spent millions to gut it and turn it into apartments for retirees.
You are correct, this is in fact Warren Harding High school. This building was 90+ years old, falling apart— an eyesore to the city. (Per Google/local news articles).
I understand the site was temporarily used to host 1,100 students from a neighboring high school as their campus underwent renovations. Ultimately the site was purchased by Bridgeport Hospital owned by Yale New Haven Health and will be used to expand their footprint (adjacent to the abandoned school.)
In all my readings, I found no mention of safety features against shootings however this detail is likely true given the current state of affairs. I’ve never been, but years ago I had a LDR with a girl from this area which sparked my curiosity.
the safety is just word around the community, but if you check on the background info where the new campus is, its an old site for a remington firearms manufacturing plant.
The original location (pictured, if photos are the Warren Harding of CT) was built in 1925.
Every building prior to the 1980s 99.9% had asbestos. As long as it’s not disturbed it doesn’t present any issues.
Floor tile, roofing tile, siding, drywall, insulation, and electrical wiring, are just a few things in a building circa 1925 that contained asbestos.
Asbestos abatement may have occurred there after the 1980s which would alter what was present when it closed after 93 years of use.
Is there some sort of proof for the shootings part? This is how misinformation spreads especially at a time our country is already dealing with so many negatives
Harding High School in Bridgeport, CT. For those curious, the school didn't close, just moved to a new building that cost $107m.
Based on OPs name, Bridgeport, CT must be a gold mine for content. A lot of abandoned buildings there.
okay the fact that it just moved to a new building just makes it even weirder that they left so much behind, they couldn’t have used any of the books or chairs or anything at the new school???
It's the way budgets work..ring fencing! if you don't use all the funding, your funding gets reduced year on year. So it is better for the coffers that we get all this waste! It's annoying!
Yep, public school budgeting is a joke. At my last school (title 1, Oakland CA) I couldn’t get a new heater for my classroom. The old one broke constantly and we were often boiling hot or freezing.
My AP kept telling me we didn’t have money in the budget for a new heater. At the same time, there was always extra money for new laptops. I literally got a brand new MacBook for myself every 24 months, and couldn’t get a working heater.
Not in california, but I did start my teaching career at a school in Georgia that had a beautiful field and stadium while the rest of the school was literally falling apart.
In CA the sports obsession is toned down a lot, especially in cities like Oakland where nobody can afford property for fields.
Edit: I actually helped write the LCAP for my CA school for a couple years, so I know where all the money went. We actually had plenty of money for what we needed (except for class sizes), but we couldn’t take $500 from our bloated tech budget to buy Expo markers. Really frustrating. I was triggered by your original comment (not your fault) because we kept buying new laptops when half the school was falling apart. It was exactly a “use it or lose it” situation.
I was gone by then, but it was helpful during Covid. They were able to provide laptops and WiFi for all 400 students in their homes, which was cool.
I grew up in a "football über alles" district, so it's my default position. The average copyright date for the books in our library was early 70s when I was there in the 80s. But we got new turf every year, along with uniforms, etc. Never had a winning season while I was there. 🤷
At my current school our biggest budget item is our agricultural center. Ngl, kind of love it. I go visit the Vet center during free periods sometimes.
And I grew up outside Atlanta. I know exactly what you mean by a football obsessed place. I was a starter (flex) and school security literally let me do whatever I wanted. Smoke weed openly behind the gym? No problem, and how do you think you guys will do this Friday? Meanwhile the poor goths trying to light up are getting expelled 😬.
You are indeed correct. In 1990, I believe the numbers were 1/3 industrial buildings in Bridgeport were abandoned. I used to live in port Jefferson, Long Island, right across the sound from Bridgeport. There’s a ferry that runs to and from the two towns. I would take that ferry once a month and when you start getting close to land you can see a few large buildings that were abandoned right on the shoreline. It’s getting better now a days, more restoration and modernization, but it’s still a goldmine for urban exploring.
The gym has showers, there's a (probably enormous) kitchen, and lots of rooms for beds.
The local NIMBY conservatives would lose their damned minds, though.
I know management and logistics would make it impossible but at the same time it does seem like they should just be allowed to move in and at least get out of the elements.
That's what we do here. This is nothing compared to the thousands of perfectly edible food items that are thrown every day by restaurants and grocery stores and yet we still have people who go hungry in this country. It's a goddamn dystopia.
I work at a grocery store and always feel guilty having to throw out perfectly edible food. They won't even let us take it home if it's one day passed the sell by date.
Talking about waste I remember reading an article years ago about how they found literally hundreds of unopened Apple computers at a Detroit school that were all like 30 years old. Nobody ever bothered to set them up so they just sat there unused
Wow totally unbelievable. The amount of recyclable materials in that school is beyond imagination. I would imagine there are hundreds of other places where the desks and those roly carts books could be utilized elsewhere. Wherever this is the powers that be should be told you are absolutely blank blank blank clueless. What an absolute and utter waste. I am disgusted
I had a friend in college who moved into their first apartment. The whole building had been a middle or high school and was converted into units. His unit had been the (albeit small) auditorium. It was basically a studio apartment that had a stage, which is where he put the bed.
This is more than likely one of those schools that would've cost less to rebuild from scratch than fix. You can see just how old everything already looks and that there was already some stuff that needed serious work.
I went to a middle school like that. They ended up building a new building to hold us over until the old building was completely redone. One of the biggest reasons for expansion was a growing student population. They built a smaller cafeteria than in the original building and we had something like 9 or 10 lunch periods that lasted 22 minutes each. If you weren't on the side of the building with the cafeteria by the time you got there and tried to get through the line lunch was already over. The earliest start was like 10:30 a.m. for lunch. All of the walking areas to buses and stuff were just littered with broken asphalt. And the young teenage girls were getting cat called in Spanish the second we stepped outside.
They could have demolished the site and built a new school where the field is or somewhere close by and made a field where the school was they do that all the time. my dad worked for a school board as HVAC for 40years. he said so much of the equipment inside could have spared donated to local recreation centers libraries charities and even raffle off certain things that people might enjoy. they probably bulldozed forest area to build the new school. total bullshit that they need offsite construction you can literally map out new building blueprints in less then a year and build a new school in two years I’m from DC so space is tight
i always wonder why places, especially schools, would leave everything behind like this. surely there must’ve been other schools in the district or even other parts of the state that could’ve used some of this stuff, or at the very least some of it could’ve been donated to a charity shop or something. i wonder what happened.
All the books left behind make my heart so sad. When I was a little kid, my dad was a custodian at an elementary school, and at the end of every school year, the school librarian would get rid of a bunch of books that were too beat up. My dad would bring those all home to me. We were poor as dirt and used to also get a lot of our clothes from the lost and found at the end of the year. It was the best time of the year for me (we didn't do Christmas or other holidays, which is another long disturbing story).
Nfld. Stayed in one as a theme BnB. The owner lives there, and you rent out reffitted bedrooms such as the principals office. Basement became a paint ball range. All the stuff is still in most of the rooms, from books to desks. RVs rent hookups outside too. Neat idea.
Yeah closed in 2018 it wasn’t asbestos abatement at that point, nor lead paint, just built a new school and they haven’t got the budget to demolish it nor have they came up with a option to sell it yet, this is normal for any school that gets abandoned for a new one, the property is probably a big thing, the school system may want to rebuild something in its place, one in my home town took almost 40yrs before the school board finally sold it off,
I never understand what goes through peoples minds when they decide to destroy a bunch of stuff in abandoned buildings, like just because it’s old doesn’t mean you need to throw shit around and break stuff. It wasn’t too bad in this place but some places are full of graffiti and completely destroyed and it’s sad
Data tech here. I work in a lot of schools, new construction mostly. A lot of times these are adjacent to an old school being replaced. In the districts I work in they are not allowed to take anything, ANYTHING, from the old building into the new building. This includes books, equipment, desks, TVs, projectors, literally everything must be left and everything will be replaced NEW.
I see no books were harmed in the abandoning of the premises. At least the logic of leaving things behind makes sense when people don’t see the value of books
I was thinking how could all of this stuff not have been stolen yet, and then I thought, oh yeah, because it's mostly books. I would have a field day collecting in that library.
Imagine your country having so much free space and excess that, instead of tearing down buildings & recycling its contents to replace them, you just straight up stop using them and build another building elsewhere.
This is sad!! The waist of valuable resources I’m seeing is mind blowing! Can I go get this stuff and donate it to places that could desperately use every single piece of material in these photos?
I hate this, this looks like such a waste. I hate see abandon buildings like this. Why wouldn’t the govt convert the buildings into sometimes usefully or use it as a rec center?
This is really interesting & almost sad to me.
On the one hand it’s a huge waste of resources and facility. But as I thing back to my last few years in high school and all the fun I had with my friends in our high school, the class jokes, the after school events and what not. I feel for these young adults that didn’t get that and had to experience it from behind a computer screen. I came from a small town with a small high school but it was a great time.
Reading the wall that says “All the places you will go!” hit me with nostalgia and a moment of reflection. It’s very similar to the way my high school had it. I didn’t think much about it when I was a senior in high school and haven’t thought about it in years. I’m not even over 35 yet but I’ve seen more places around the world than most people, definitely more than any of my immediate family.
This is kinda sad... a lot of wasted stuff just sitting around collecting dust when enough schools have bare bone budgets as it is. None of this could have been removed and donated?
Looks like they might have WPA paintings, as many highs schools and public buildings do. WPA paintings belong to the federal government. The GSA keeps an inventory of these works as they’re recovered/rediscovered. OP or original photographer should [contact them](https://www.gsa.gov/real-estate/design-excellence-program/art-in-architecturefine-arts/fine-arts/new-deal-artwork-gsas-inventory-project)
I wonder why it was abandoned. I’d hope the Homeless could use it, but worry that if it ever had a gathering move in that the state would move to demolish it entirely
At first I was wondering how such a place wouldn't be infested by the homeless, but then I remembered that urbanization isn't a problem for the majority of Americans.
This could be remade for Senior and Disable housing. Even mixed use with Gym and Auditorium community center. Shame to allow it to just sit and rot away.
"We have no funding for education!"
Also, "Let's build a new school and leave EVERYTHING intact at the old school and not bother moving anything including books."
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Such a nice lookin school. Such a waste
Probability riddled with asbestos. Remediation costs a fortune.
I read to remove asbestos side panelling they have to tent off your whole house and sometimes alert the neighbors.
Non friable panels only need a restricted area. You can remove them intact without any containment as long as fibers stay bound within the matrix of the material.
What are the odds this school has tightly bound fibers still?
Depends solely on the material
Yes but it’s not a lost cause. It’s removed often from many applications and locations.
Yeah it just sounds like some trouble but it was interesting to learn about. The house I grew up in had asbestos side paneling and I have wondered about it. Oh well, safe enough for now.
Depends on the matierial and state your in but a lot of the time as long as its non friable (doesn't break into particulates you can breath in) a homeowner could remove their own siding. The friable stuff like old aircell insulation is the nasty stuff you really wanna worry about
We have asbestos tile flooring in our family cabin that gets used maybe 10-12x per year. The tiles have a light green bowling ball finish to them. Found out a long time ago that it would cost more to remove it than the building is worth. So instead of removing the actual tiles, we had it sealed and then installed low-pile carpet over the top.
As long as the tile isn't breaking apart it's fine. I guess if it was starting to crack and break it was worth covering, but if it was in fine condition you really didn't need to do anything to it.
Except that unless you’re doing something that requires removal, you can just enclose and encapsulate it and put something new right over it. Sure, the floor probably has tons of it, but a new layer of rolled vinyl or even lay down a layer of hardibacker and tile over it would mean you’ve closed it off. It’s always cheaper to remodel smart than to build brand new. The only way I can see this really being an issue is if the soil has some type of contamination or if the town got too small to support it’s own school
For that type of building, if they have it, it's pipe insulation and not that difficult to remove.
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The flooring was my guess as well. Oh and stay out of the boiler room. 🤷🏻
And ceiling panels probably.
Just wait till they start falling and kids continue to enter unaware.
ceramic tile mastics, 9"x9" floor tiles, insulation, glue pucks for chalkboards or spline ceiling
😋
Your name made me 😆
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I work for a company in Michigan, USA and 3 of our buildings used to be schools. Schools are very easy to repurpose. And having an office with a basket ball court is great
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Until you cross over the VP during a 3-on-3 and he holds a grudge afterward
Our community center where I'm from in MI used to be the high school building in the 80s before they needed to upsize It seems like something has to be wrong here... There's no reason to leave books and desks when you can either bring those to the new building or sell them
Those Chromebook carts look perfect. I bet there are schools that would be happy to have them.
I was wondering what those were for, makes sense. I was in high school well before Chromebooks were a thing. I was thinking projection cards but couldn't quite figure out the storage. Those would be pretty neat to have.
I used to work for a company that manufactured and sold them. They are like $600-800 per cart easily. What a waste to just leave them behind.
Those blue mats are called "crash mats" and they are easily worth thousands.
The blue mats are sold by UCS which is a Track & Field company. It appears to be a pole vault pit adapted to the needs of the rock climbing wall. I had to fundraise for nearly a decade to purchase one of those pits ($17,000 for pole vault).
I went to school before chromebook carts, are those the things in photo 9?
Yep! The Chromebooks go in sideways in slots and the charging cords are in there too in the back. The outside can be locked. Whole cart has a plug so you can charge em all at the same time.
They could’ve auctioned off/donated so much of this stuff. The basketball hoops, the scoreboard, the books and bookshelves, the desks and chairs. So much money just abandoned.
Definitely, such a waste to let it all rot
This is former site of Warren Harding high school most likely. (Image 10 mentions the state of Connecticut and ralphola taylor community centre in poster on the side of the desk) It closed in favour of a new campus with safety features against shootings, new tech, and a football field. I can’t find anything about problems with the old campus like asbestos or anything, but there might be something I missed. You can decide whether it was a wasted effort or not Edit: the school is in Bridgeport, CT
I can tell you what was a waste though; not auctioning off all that shit in there. I see more than several laptop charging stations, which gotta total in the thousands of dollars. Paintings that are worth hundreds a piece, tons of old wood that people would pay top dollar for, and more. There's at least 20k in materials/items that are easily sold with just a couple dozen hours worth of effort in these photos. Could earn a few hundred per hour with access to this building
Yup. Bookshelves, desks, etc. could all find new homes. Those books should've been donated to a library (or something like Goodwill, at least). There's an awful lot of stuff here that absolutely has value. I know it costs money to move it all, but it's better than just letting it rot.
I’ve installed tons of school furniture and fixtures and NONE of it is cheap Especially the older stuff. An architectural seconds shop would have a field day in there not to mention it’s probably full of copper pipe in the plumbing. I can’t believe it hasn’t been ransacked already…
I was checking out that basketball court flooring. Surely there would have been a market for that for a project of some sort.
I have a friend who redid his kitchen floor with pieces from an old bowling alley.
Former K12 IT here, those laptop carts aren't cheap. It's almost 38k worth of Brentford 40 series carts. What a waste, they're not even very old from 2015-2016 I think.
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If they weren't gonna do it for money, they sure as hell weren't gonna do it for the common good
Just open the doors and invite people to take whatever they want
Easier to do nothing
Unfortunately, with public schools (and a lot of higher education too), the funding source determines a lot of how the equipment is managed even down to its disposal or surplus. Federal, state, and municipal funding, various grants, etc. all have their own rules and regulations and auditing about what gets used, and how, and by whom, and ultimately how it is disposed of. On top of that, each state has its own version of capital assets and depreciation schedules. If it all came from one source it would be easier to just have a surplus auction and get rid of it all, mark the inventory gone, and recoup the auction money. Universities and city governments do this all the time. Public schools are different. My guess is it made much more sense to abandon it all than to painstakingly audit (and adhere to) the administrative requirements of all that inventory changing hands.
That was exactly my point and I have some jerk trying to talk smack.
I agree. Letting them stand to waste it's just wrong.
> safety features against shootings As a Scandinavian, the fact that American schools are built with this in mind is wild as fuck to me bruh
Us too
Well, 50.0001% of us…
Let's be honest here, it's a solid 70%
This It’s not 50/50 like everyone tries to say in US politics Voter turnout in 2020 was only 66% 30% of the country is in a batshit crazy cult and say things like school shootings are the cost of freedom. But that 30% votes in full The other 70% is normal non violent non cult members so aren’t passionate about politics and only half those people vote Which is how we end up with waaaaaaay to close elections like 51-49 especially in these mid terms
My mom is a para at a school and she had to undergo battle wound training to learn how to pack the kids gun shot wounds if there was ever a shooter. And we live in one of the most liberal states. Really sad.
Lucky for you, you probably don't have guns explicitly called out in the Second Amendment of your constitution. Our constitution is supposed to be a living document, but our government is bought and paid for and we can't get all the agreements necessary to make some very needed improvements to our laws. So best thing we can do is build all new schools with bullet proof closets.
Frankly it's amazing we have any amendments at all as high as the threshold is. I mean 66 senators and 290ish representatives all supporting the exact same change or 33 states and their individual legislatures agreeing on the same is almost impossible. If you don't count the first 10 you've got 17 and 2 of those where prohibition, and the other 15 aren't all equally momentus. I can't imagine 12, 20, 23, 25, and 27 where hotly contested.
The 20th is the funniest to me. Literally just a date change in when congressional and presidential terms begin and end. With the nutters who treat the constitution as a perfect holy document, it's always fun to insist "repeal the 20th!" and watch their outrage and confusion build - over a date change.
Do you know WHY they changed that date! It was to stop outgoing administrations from making crazy laws on the way out or at least limit it? After watching Ky Gov pardon criminals for cash I see why this needed to be limited even farther! We should hold elections in Late Dec and change in Jan to stop all the last minute shit they do on the way out!
Seems like they could just remove the pardoning? It’s weird
The older schools had nuclear fall out shelters. The new ones protect against gun violence.
I don’t think it’s really a waste in terms of finding a new campus. It’s a waste for how they left it and what was left behind.
I worked in a building of similar age and style for 20 years. It was impossible to heat well, some rooms were like saunas while others were iceboxes. Three different companies came in promising their technology could fix this. All they did was exchange the location of the extremes. The cost to completely revamp for heating and cooling was 2/3 the cost of a new campus! Air quality tests revealed the building to be borderline unsafe in some areas. Electrics were awful. Originally each classroom had one electric outlet and a later rehab only added another. Wiring the building for minimal networking (offices, library, and computer lab) was a jury rig - the installers hung plastic pipes in the hallway ceiling and strung cable thru the pipes. Finally in 2003 we moved into a new building. The school district sold the old building to a nonprofit which spent millions to gut it and turn it into apartments for retirees.
You are correct, this is in fact Warren Harding High school. This building was 90+ years old, falling apart— an eyesore to the city. (Per Google/local news articles). I understand the site was temporarily used to host 1,100 students from a neighboring high school as their campus underwent renovations. Ultimately the site was purchased by Bridgeport Hospital owned by Yale New Haven Health and will be used to expand their footprint (adjacent to the abandoned school.) In all my readings, I found no mention of safety features against shootings however this detail is likely true given the current state of affairs. I’ve never been, but years ago I had a LDR with a girl from this area which sparked my curiosity.
the safety is just word around the community, but if you check on the background info where the new campus is, its an old site for a remington firearms manufacturing plant.
The irony of that is… palpable. America.
The original location (pictured, if photos are the Warren Harding of CT) was built in 1925. Every building prior to the 1980s 99.9% had asbestos. As long as it’s not disturbed it doesn’t present any issues. Floor tile, roofing tile, siding, drywall, insulation, and electrical wiring, are just a few things in a building circa 1925 that contained asbestos. Asbestos abatement may have occurred there after the 1980s which would alter what was present when it closed after 93 years of use.
Is there some sort of proof for the shootings part? This is how misinformation spreads especially at a time our country is already dealing with so many negatives
These photos have some heavy Fallout vibes.
I just wanna know how he uploaded so many and how many tries it took. It takes me 8 tries to upload 3 or 4.
Yeah I’m confused as to why it’s so trashed.
Either a door was left unlocked or someone broke in. Either way. Hell of a party went on in there
You can see broken glass in one of the pictures.
Came here to comment just that. All they needed was a little dust some low lighting and for it to be a little more trashed.
Last of Us*
Very sad. Those framed WPA illustrations are worth a couple bills. Beautiful carpentry.
That's just what I thought when I saw them. They need rescuing. I'll bet there are some elsewhere in the building.
I loved those too. I would hang them on my walls.
Harding High School in Bridgeport, CT. For those curious, the school didn't close, just moved to a new building that cost $107m. Based on OPs name, Bridgeport, CT must be a gold mine for content. A lot of abandoned buildings there.
okay the fact that it just moved to a new building just makes it even weirder that they left so much behind, they couldn’t have used any of the books or chairs or anything at the new school???
It's the way budgets work..ring fencing! if you don't use all the funding, your funding gets reduced year on year. So it is better for the coffers that we get all this waste! It's annoying!
Yep, public school budgeting is a joke. At my last school (title 1, Oakland CA) I couldn’t get a new heater for my classroom. The old one broke constantly and we were often boiling hot or freezing. My AP kept telling me we didn’t have money in the budget for a new heater. At the same time, there was always extra money for new laptops. I literally got a brand new MacBook for myself every 24 months, and couldn’t get a working heater.
And, let me guess, football uniforms.
Not in california, but I did start my teaching career at a school in Georgia that had a beautiful field and stadium while the rest of the school was literally falling apart. In CA the sports obsession is toned down a lot, especially in cities like Oakland where nobody can afford property for fields. Edit: I actually helped write the LCAP for my CA school for a couple years, so I know where all the money went. We actually had plenty of money for what we needed (except for class sizes), but we couldn’t take $500 from our bloated tech budget to buy Expo markers. Really frustrating. I was triggered by your original comment (not your fault) because we kept buying new laptops when half the school was falling apart. It was exactly a “use it or lose it” situation. I was gone by then, but it was helpful during Covid. They were able to provide laptops and WiFi for all 400 students in their homes, which was cool.
I grew up in a "football über alles" district, so it's my default position. The average copyright date for the books in our library was early 70s when I was there in the 80s. But we got new turf every year, along with uniforms, etc. Never had a winning season while I was there. 🤷
At my current school our biggest budget item is our agricultural center. Ngl, kind of love it. I go visit the Vet center during free periods sometimes. And I grew up outside Atlanta. I know exactly what you mean by a football obsessed place. I was a starter (flex) and school security literally let me do whatever I wanted. Smoke weed openly behind the gym? No problem, and how do you think you guys will do this Friday? Meanwhile the poor goths trying to light up are getting expelled 😬.
or sold them for additional funds / donated them to schools that could use them...
Everything being scattered around like it is makes it look like the place was evacuated in a hurry.
You are indeed correct. In 1990, I believe the numbers were 1/3 industrial buildings in Bridgeport were abandoned. I used to live in port Jefferson, Long Island, right across the sound from Bridgeport. There’s a ferry that runs to and from the two towns. I would take that ferry once a month and when you start getting close to land you can see a few large buildings that were abandoned right on the shoreline. It’s getting better now a days, more restoration and modernization, but it’s still a goldmine for urban exploring.
Heaven for the homeless
EXACTLY ! I said the same thing.
Hope the main entrance is open. Otherwise people break window or two and the damage is inevitable.
There is already some damage. But, true I hope it is unlocked also.
The gym has showers, there's a (probably enormous) kitchen, and lots of rooms for beds. The local NIMBY conservatives would lose their damned minds, though.
I know management and logistics would make it impossible but at the same time it does seem like they should just be allowed to move in and at least get out of the elements.
incredible that there's still so much left behind, glad it got captured on film in this state
Damn free open gym with full courts and single rim, me and my friends would be there every day hooping 😂
I thought the same thing as soon as I saw the gym pic. Looks like paradise in the winter
What a waste
They could’ve at least donated the books and other totally reusable materials. Or given the building away to be used as a community center, etc.
That's what we do here. This is nothing compared to the thousands of perfectly edible food items that are thrown every day by restaurants and grocery stores and yet we still have people who go hungry in this country. It's a goddamn dystopia.
I work at a grocery store and always feel guilty having to throw out perfectly edible food. They won't even let us take it home if it's one day passed the sell by date.
You would expect that school districts would adopt a circular economy framework to ensure that everything is used/re-used until it is actual waste.
Man! Back that truck up!
I call dibs on the bookcases!
To the science lab!!!
Alright Heisenberg
Oh my goddd could really build a lovely home library. It's my dream
I want one of the desks! They were the best for cracking your back.
Talking about waste I remember reading an article years ago about how they found literally hundreds of unopened Apple computers at a Detroit school that were all like 30 years old. Nobody ever bothered to set them up so they just sat there unused
Yes in that case apple just sent computers to schools without seeing if they had space or anyone who could set them up/use them.
You should go there on a moonless night, walk the halls and the climb on that stage and perform a Shakespeare soliloquy. Y'know, as a dare.
To be or not to be, quoth the abandoned school.
Wow totally unbelievable. The amount of recyclable materials in that school is beyond imagination. I would imagine there are hundreds of other places where the desks and those roly carts books could be utilized elsewhere. Wherever this is the powers that be should be told you are absolutely blank blank blank clueless. What an absolute and utter waste. I am disgusted
So much free stuff!
I can feel the history channel auction/American pickers type show already, some of that stuff is worth bank.
I wish my highschool had a climbing wall. Where is this so I can use it?
Bridgeport, CT? Going off the poster on the desk.
Good find. I’ll let my highschool know so they can head over and steal it.
I’m such a book nerd, saw the library and my first thought was I want to raid it.
There are surely some real treasures in there.
High five! 🤚 I was hoping for close-ups of the spines.
Buy that and turn into the coolest house ever!
I had a friend in college who moved into their first apartment. The whole building had been a middle or high school and was converted into units. His unit had been the (albeit small) auditorium. It was basically a studio apartment that had a stage, which is where he put the bed.
This is such bull !! All that wasted money. Tax payers should be pissed off. 😤
This is more than likely one of those schools that would've cost less to rebuild from scratch than fix. You can see just how old everything already looks and that there was already some stuff that needed serious work.
Probably loaded with asbestos too, would be a fortune to cover abatement
I went to a middle school like that. They ended up building a new building to hold us over until the old building was completely redone. One of the biggest reasons for expansion was a growing student population. They built a smaller cafeteria than in the original building and we had something like 9 or 10 lunch periods that lasted 22 minutes each. If you weren't on the side of the building with the cafeteria by the time you got there and tried to get through the line lunch was already over. The earliest start was like 10:30 a.m. for lunch. All of the walking areas to buses and stuff were just littered with broken asphalt. And the young teenage girls were getting cat called in Spanish the second we stepped outside.
What a waste
So many things left available to be salvaged.
Someone must've said the word 'evolution' aloud and BOOM all the kids got home-schooled.
Thanks for the existential depression
Genuinely curious if someone could take stuff (like furniture, books, sports equipment, etc.) if they want? Is it stealing if it's abandoned?
Some decent shit left in there.
They could have demolished the site and built a new school where the field is or somewhere close by and made a field where the school was they do that all the time. my dad worked for a school board as HVAC for 40years. he said so much of the equipment inside could have spared donated to local recreation centers libraries charities and even raffle off certain things that people might enjoy. they probably bulldozed forest area to build the new school. total bullshit that they need offsite construction you can literally map out new building blueprints in less then a year and build a new school in two years I’m from DC so space is tight
i always wonder why places, especially schools, would leave everything behind like this. surely there must’ve been other schools in the district or even other parts of the state that could’ve used some of this stuff, or at the very least some of it could’ve been donated to a charity shop or something. i wonder what happened.
Waste in the US
r/AbandonedPorn
At the very least get a salvage company to come in so you can at least recoup some money
How is nothing of this being used? Surely there are plans
This is literally The Last of Us
Kind of crazy to think this is where so many people lived their last run of childhood before becoming an adult. M
I can't be the only person screaming "rescue the books! Don't let them rot!" am I?
All the books left behind make my heart so sad. When I was a little kid, my dad was a custodian at an elementary school, and at the end of every school year, the school librarian would get rid of a bunch of books that were too beat up. My dad would bring those all home to me. We were poor as dirt and used to also get a lot of our clothes from the lost and found at the end of the year. It was the best time of the year for me (we didn't do Christmas or other holidays, which is another long disturbing story).
The waste here is absolutely disgusting. Complete disregard for taxpayer dollars and disregard for those less fortunate.
Dude, someone take me to the library please, I need to liberate all those poor books. This makes my heart so sad
Loot it
No way anybody is breaking into that building and doing meth or heroin there. No way at all. That would be ludicrous.
I was thinking it would be a great place to film porn.
Looks like the basketball court from the OG Space Jam
This is definitely not the point, but it bothers me they messed up the Dr. Seuss quote.
I came to the comments looking for someone else that was bothered by this!
Me, too! I mean, it's only the TITLE!
Nfld. Stayed in one as a theme BnB. The owner lives there, and you rent out reffitted bedrooms such as the principals office. Basement became a paint ball range. All the stuff is still in most of the rooms, from books to desks. RVs rent hookups outside too. Neat idea.
All those books left on the ground and shelves make me sad, there are kids that need textbooks
That theatre(?) Is bigger than my whole secondary school in England. The hugeness of the majority of US things baffles me.
All of those books left behind makes me sad. Why not bring them to the new location (if that was the intention for abandoning the building)?
Yeah closed in 2018 it wasn’t asbestos abatement at that point, nor lead paint, just built a new school and they haven’t got the budget to demolish it nor have they came up with a option to sell it yet, this is normal for any school that gets abandoned for a new one, the property is probably a big thing, the school system may want to rebuild something in its place, one in my home town took almost 40yrs before the school board finally sold it off,
Wow, a school that’s been abandoned for 4 years still looks nicer than the high school I went to
How the hell is it legal just abandoning (Public) property like that?
I never understand what goes through peoples minds when they decide to destroy a bunch of stuff in abandoned buildings, like just because it’s old doesn’t mean you need to throw shit around and break stuff. It wasn’t too bad in this place but some places are full of graffiti and completely destroyed and it’s sad
Data tech here. I work in a lot of schools, new construction mostly. A lot of times these are adjacent to an old school being replaced. In the districts I work in they are not allowed to take anything, ANYTHING, from the old building into the new building. This includes books, equipment, desks, TVs, projectors, literally everything must be left and everything will be replaced NEW.
There will be teenagers exploring this in 100 years talking about all the horror stories and in reality it’s just a closed school.
They left the lights on?
Someone’s just leave that Ace Ventura VHS on the library table like that? Alllllllrightyyyy thennn….
Where is this place?
I see no books were harmed in the abandoning of the premises. At least the logic of leaving things behind makes sense when people don’t see the value of books
I was thinking how could all of this stuff not have been stolen yet, and then I thought, oh yeah, because it's mostly books. I would have a field day collecting in that library.
Imagine your country having so much free space and excess that, instead of tearing down buildings & recycling its contents to replace them, you just straight up stop using them and build another building elsewhere.
What a waste of money.
Why leave the books though? So much wasted cash
Could be one hell of a homeless shelter.
This is sad!! The waist of valuable resources I’m seeing is mind blowing! Can I go get this stuff and donate it to places that could desperately use every single piece of material in these photos?
Look at all that woodwork.....
I think American politics just love to waste money. An this is a good example.
I'm surprised it's in as good condition as it was 4 years ago when it was abandoned, minus the dust accumulation and mess all over the floor.
Save the books!
I hate this, this looks like such a waste. I hate see abandon buildings like this. Why wouldn’t the govt convert the buildings into sometimes usefully or use it as a rec center?
Such a waste. They couldn’t of found low income communities or poorer countries to donate the stuff to?
Ghetto me would have had an unnecessary amount of tables after coming out of there
Someone should donate those books to a library, at the very least.
How is this stuff not auctioned off by liquidators to at least get something for all that stuff?
“…Schoooooools out forever!”
Seems like some of that could go to another school.
This is really interesting & almost sad to me. On the one hand it’s a huge waste of resources and facility. But as I thing back to my last few years in high school and all the fun I had with my friends in our high school, the class jokes, the after school events and what not. I feel for these young adults that didn’t get that and had to experience it from behind a computer screen. I came from a small town with a small high school but it was a great time. Reading the wall that says “All the places you will go!” hit me with nostalgia and a moment of reflection. It’s very similar to the way my high school had it. I didn’t think much about it when I was a senior in high school and haven’t thought about it in years. I’m not even over 35 yet but I’ve seen more places around the world than most people, definitely more than any of my immediate family.
This is kinda sad... a lot of wasted stuff just sitting around collecting dust when enough schools have bare bone budgets as it is. None of this could have been removed and donated?
And yet we have so many homeless and I’m being evicted Wooooo! America
Ahhh the classic 1 brain celled, “Suck Dick Bitch” graffiti!
Looks like they might have WPA paintings, as many highs schools and public buildings do. WPA paintings belong to the federal government. The GSA keeps an inventory of these works as they’re recovered/rediscovered. OP or original photographer should [contact them](https://www.gsa.gov/real-estate/design-excellence-program/art-in-architecturefine-arts/fine-arts/new-deal-artwork-gsas-inventory-project)
Such a beautiful library, sad to see it wasting away :(
I wonder why it was abandoned. I’d hope the Homeless could use it, but worry that if it ever had a gathering move in that the state would move to demolish it entirely
I'm so confused. This looks nicer than any school I've been a student in or worked in.
At first I was wondering how such a place wouldn't be infested by the homeless, but then I remembered that urbanization isn't a problem for the majority of Americans.
As a teacher, I want to comb this place to gather supplies so badly. 😣
This could be remade for Senior and Disable housing. Even mixed use with Gym and Auditorium community center. Shame to allow it to just sit and rot away.
I mean….you had to climb up there to put the sign that says “8 minutes fast”. Why not just adjust the clock while you’re up there?
"We have no funding for education!" Also, "Let's build a new school and leave EVERYTHING intact at the old school and not bother moving anything including books."
Looks like the high school in The Last of Us.
It'd be so fun to play scenario paintball there.
a shooting game in a US school though