This was probably a dining room in the Bennett School in Millbrook, NY, which had been an abandoned, decaying spectacle on Rt 343  for decades.  When I finally got inside the old building in 2013, it was literally falling apart. Some floors had given way, including a piece of the ground floor that had fallen into the cellar. I weighed 250 pounds and didn't dare explore the upper floors. Below is the old school seen through the window of a classroom building. They finally demolished the place in 2022.

This is the auditorium at the Julia de Burgos Magnet Middle School - originally Edison High - in Philadelphia. As I was framing this picture, a young man emerged from the opening under the stage. He noticed me, so I nodded and waved hello. He paused for a second without acknowledging me, turned around and stooped back under the stage. A few seconds later, he reemerged, this time carrying a duffle bag,. Then he left as though I had evicted him. In August of 2011, a fire destroyed the front of the old school, though not the auditorium. That came down a year or so later when the rest of the building was demolished to make way for
a Dollar Store, a Little Caesar's  Pizza franchise and a Burger King. 

Above is the control room overlooking the generator hall in Philadelphia's old Richmond power station, once a popular urban explorer site. You simply strolled onto the property through a peeled-back opening in the chain-link fence and into the decommissioned plant where explorers had marked the interior with arrows and labels to help others navigate the place. It was a guerilla tourist destination. Shortly after my first visit, the owner began a serious effort to keep trespassers out. Still, I managed to get inside three more times. I ripped my clothes wiggling under a fence then climbing a wall and through a window. After the owner foreclosed on those options, I tried and failed twice to get in. After that last attempt in 2013, I gave up. Below is ...  Well, I don't really know what it is - or was. The big generators had been removed from the building.

This is from a rainy, melancholy Sunday morning in the partially abandoned Trenton State Hospital. For a time, it was a wide open place. The guy in the guard shack didn't even look as you drove in. Once on the property, you simply walked in through an unlocked back door. Considering there were rooms full of patient records, the state should have been more careful. Not long after my last visit in February of 2012, they did eliminate the back-door walk-in option. Back when the hospital first opened in 1848, it was officially named the New Jersey State Lunatic Asylum.

Both the photograph above and the one below are from Philadelphia's Beury Bldg. on N. Broad St. at Germantown Ave. It was named for the bank president who built it in 1926. He must have thought an office building so far up N. Broad St. from Center City would lead the way for more commercial development. Instead, white flight brought poorer people to the area where for decades the 14-story building towered far over its neighbors. When I first went there in March of 2010, the Beury was wide open. You simply walked through the open receiving door. You didn't even have to turn a doorknob. The mildly rusty front stairwell was okay until about the third or fourth floor. From there up, the rust worsened. At the upper levels, the stairs were gone altogether, totally rusted away. An interior concrete stairwell was the only way up. After the owner blocked street-level entry, I managed to squeeze into a window well and through the narrow opening where glass had been. That was my last visit in June of 2014. I was 72 at the time and ached a bit afterward. I decided the Beury was not worth the claustrophobic hassle. According to the Philadelphia press, it's being converted into a hotel - the Hotel Beury. If Philadelphia's current urban revival continues, it will have been a smart move. If not, the Beury Hotel like the Beury office building will probably remain a bridge too far - at least in commercial real-estate terms.