Hi! The pictures posted on your site are gorgeous! They seem to capture the essence of everyday urban landscape. The aerial shots are postcard perfect! Keep up the good work and good luck!

Hey Amigo,

Everything about this site looks cool.

But with dial up typing is glupi (stupid in Polish). Talk soon? Ciao - Chuck

The pictures are wonderful. They make this Denver native appreciate autumn in Chicago.

Hey Philip the site looks good

No wonder people love Chicago - so few other cities in the USA have such a vibrant, exciting downtown and yet have the wonderful neighborhoods depicted in your photos. And now for Gary, Indiana - on a large scale what may happen to smaller communities when Walmart takes over the world?

You did make a lot of changes!

Looks good Phil! Love the pictures of Gary! I want to move there now!

I just signed in - Hi Phil- but I am unable to see the forum !
Do I have to wait for an e-mail confirmation ?

Hey Phil,

The pictures of Gary look like something out of The Twilight Zone.

Good job! Nice pictures.

What type of camera do you use

Gary sure looks interesting

Wow! Cool pics. Chicago looks awesome.

Looks good Phil, your camera make warm weather look even better than it is.
If you want to see part of Gary that's not abandoned, check out the steel mills.

Showing your site to Californians.

Impressive. Chicago is a beautiful city.

Maybe you could consider putting fewer pics in each page, so as not to lose the viewers with slow connections - or with little patience

The whole site is very interesting, and there is a number of pictures that I really liked a lot. I want to live in a busy area, but visually, I find quiet areas more impressive. So your ?mypicsIII? and ?IV? are those liked the most. They convey a single distinct mood

I had never heard of Gary Indiana (now I know why!) but it was really great fun. As a kid I used to have a wild fascination with places like car dumping grounds (you know, open areas where old/burnt/rusty/crashed car wreckages are abandoned). Everyone thought that it was funny of me ?

At the beginning (the first link) I was constantly thinking 'that's nice, I wonder where that is?. In mypicsII it all made more sense because of the captions and the areal views there are stunning.

When is this site going to be finished? Any more pictures coming?

hey phil,
i love your pictures...and now you know that i have visited your website.
i can't wait to see it when it is finished...so hurry up!!!

How is your winter? Hahaha...........From sunny Florida!

Stunning pictures and gorgeous city.

It makes me want to get in the car and go to Chicago TODAY ! Love the neighborhoods. Thanks ! Karin

More pics soon? Nice so far.

These are Great Pictures. My whole family was from Gary from 1915 to 1980. Gary was a great city in it's day. It will never come back.

wow I need to visit Chicago. Beautiful

It looks like a neutron bomb went off in Gary. What happened there?

Where the h e l l are all the people? Is this what happens when the zombies come?

It odd to see the contrast between the quality of these buildings - both in terms of materials (brick) and esthetics (ornamentation) - and the utter lack of humanity. And yet, many of the brand new commercial structures in well-off suburbs of say, New Jersey have less interest and dignity in spite of the swirl of activity around them.

Gary Indiana - This totally reminds me of the photos of abandoned cities in russia... just a little less advanced in decay... Spooky!!

it's incredible that an entire town could be abandoned. in nyc or sf the artist communities would at least pick up the space for lofts or creative use. how far is a walmart from the area -- or more simply: it's cheaper to pay someone a $1/day and ship socks across the globe than to pay a living wage.

Your photo essay of Gary is astounding. How is this possible!?!? I spend a lot of time studying cities, but hadn't known about this situation. Can you write me (mrstephengross@hotmail.com) and tell me a bit about what's going on there?

Thanks,
--Steve

Stephen Gross
Minneapolis, MN
http://grossreport.blogspot.com

This really makes me sad to see. Being a Hoosier, I look at these pictures with the utmost of shock. I knew Gary wasn't a great place to live, but for it to be this desolate and dilapidated...it's astounding.

Now tell the truth. You took those pictures on a Sunday when all the good people were at church.

you been dugg ... and well worthy. The photo-essay on Gary is stunning.

However, the photos without more detailed commentary really don't tell the bigger story. If you are inclined to explain more about that, please do & post it so we all can read.

I'd like to know what day(s)/time of day you took those shots. I'm using google maps & google earth to examine Gary more closely now. If you were able to show on such maps, even generally, where you were taking those pix ... ?

One question I's like to see written about: is this essay really representative of the entire city? I mean, you didn't just focus on shots to demonstrate the desolation, did you? Either by limiting your locations or framing them to ensure the least amount of activity was visible?

Thanks for tour!

Wow, thanks for the interest. Anyway, they were taken on a Friday and Saturday afternoons. All the pics were of downtown or a radius of downtown Gary.

There is really nothing there. No place to buy a coffee, no place to buy a soda, no place to eat, no anything that I saw unless you leave downtown. Except for a new minor league stadium with a Bennigans(I believe) in it. Strange contrast. Drive in, park, eat and leave the area Now.

I was fascinated by downtown Gary. A friend and I probably spent about 6 or 7 hours total checking it out.

No, the whole city is not like the pictures I took. The old sections surrounding downtown and downtown itself appeared to be very much abandoned and like the photos I have displayed. In downtown I saw traffic signals that were either off or didn' work and other things that anyone from a Western nation would take as an asssumption. Once outside of those areas the scene turned to newer housing, 60's 70's type housing, and while inhabited it was just very poor, rundown and did have abandonment issues.

Socially I am extremely liberal, one can't get more socially liberal than me but economically I can be conservative. Touring Gary made me realize that no matter how motivated one may be to work themselves out, how is it possible? There is no access to basic services like groceries and jobs. Without any apportunities how can one work there way out of poverty? Was an eye opener for me.

I don't own a car so it was fun to drive that weekend. After Saturday afternoon and heading back to Chicago I got off at the nearest exit in the South Side of Chicago. The contrast was stunning and I passed through some very poor areas of Chicago. While Chicago has empty factories they are fenced off and in no way it seems possible to get in the areas. The neighborhoods in comparison were very much intact and flowerfied (if there is such a word). The parks were mowed and generally things were landscaped and maintained. Chicago has plowed through, for better or worse - time will tell and is a moral judgement also, its abandoned and much of its very poor sections.

It is a sad commentary on the United States in a way. While I understand and do believe the fittest survive, can be applied to cities too, sometimes action needs to be taken to stop a free for all of a city. Amazing the contrast between two cities that are only a few miles apart. One has resources and the other doesn't. While competition is good sometimes a place a needs a helping hand and even the most ardent conservative that would visit Gary would be compelled to help.

The downfall of Gary was extremly poor race relations and an industry leaving - steal.


Now with this interest I am seeing I am motivated to start working on this website again.

no trash?!

Yeah no trash, no graffiti or anything like that. Just empty.

A startling contrast from the vision derived from (

Considering the state of Indiana has lost over 90,000 manufacturing jobs to outsourcing, this depicts what happens when people are unemployed or forced to move elsewhere. This will be a very common picture as long as the outsourcing keeps up. Not just Gary but the majority of the Midwest.

Gary's fortunes have risen and fallen with those of the steel industry. In the 1960s, like many other American urban centers, Gary entered a downward spiral of decline. Gary's decline was brought on by layoffs at the steel plants because of policy that allowed cheap imported steel. This had the effect of increasing crime and dependence on drugs. US Steel continues to be a major steel producer, but with only a fraction of its former level of employment. While Gary has failed to re-establish its manufacturing base since its population peak, two casinos opened along the Gary lakeshore in the 1990s. Today, Gary faces numerous difficulties, including unemployment, major economic problems, and a high rate of crime, though the city has made some progress in addressing these issues since the 1990s.

This is what happens when socialist utopians organize labor unions for the good of the people....if you don't believe me, watch what happens in CA in the next 5-10 years....

Yeah, um, I grew up in Gary and live in Crown Point. I'm not claiming it's a thriving city, but your photo essay presents an rather dishonest picture of the city. The Glen Park area south of the Borman has businesses thoughout Broadway, just south of the UNIVERSITY. The new baseball stadium and the Genesis center across from the old hotel host professional sports teams. The new train station sort of made the old train station obsolete. The airport has some traffic, and has a longer runway than any runway at Midway and a larger footprint than LaGuardia. Yeah, the city is a poster child for urban blight, but we're still better than East St. Louis.

Is Gary, IN a result of outsourcing or the result of too many people being reliant on too few sectors of the economy? Could Gary have diversified into high tech?

Thank you for your wonderful website. The pics are terrific. I love your city and hope to move there someday in the not-too-distant future. Your website makes me want to move to Chicago ever more!

Hi, I am checking out your site at Chuck's behest. Glad to see SOMEONE likes Chicago.

Kidding. Nice site. Wonderful sentiment.

Nice work..
I traveled to to Gary some 15 years ago. I had never experiences such a sad city as Gary (S. Philly comes in a close second, though). Even 15 years ago it was exactly as you documented....although I did stay at that roach infested Holiday Inn, which was next to a new civic center, all surrounded by closed, abandoned shops and drug addled street people. Looks like even they could not survive those streets.