Ghostly Ruins: America's Forgotten Architecture

by Harry Skrdla

We've all seen them but might have been too scared to enter: the house on the hill with its boarded-up windows; the darkened factory on the outskirts of town; the old amusement park with its rickety skeleton of a rollercoaster. These are the ruins of America, filled with the echoes of the voices and footfalls of our grandparents, or their parents, or our own youth. Where once these structures were teeming with lifecommuters, workers, vacationersnow they are disused and dilapidated.

Ghostly Ruins shows the life and death of thirty such structures, from transportation depots, factories, and jails to amusement parks, mansions, hotels, and entire towns. Author Harry Skrdla gives a guided tour of these marvelous structures at their peak of popularity juxtaposed with their current state of haunted decrepitude. Like a seasoned teller of ghost stories, Skrdla's words and images reveal what lies beyond the gates and beneath the floorboards. There are the infamous Eastern State Penitentiary and Bethlehem Steel factory in Pennsylvania, the Packard Motors Plant and Book-Cadillac Hotel in Detroit, and Philip Johnson's New York State Pavilion from the 1964/65 World's Fair. There is the entire town of Centralia, Pennsylvania, where a trash fire set inside an old mine in 1962 morphed into an underground inferno that incinerated the town from underneath; more than forty years later, the subterranean fire still rages. The town is empty now, just as the many other abandoned places in this chronicle. Ghostly Ruins is a record of the souls of yesteryear and a chronicle of America's haunted past.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1568986157
• ISBN13: 9781568986159
• Release Date: November 2006
• Publisher: Princeton Architectural Press
• Length: 224 Pages
• Weight: 1.83 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 7.6" x 10.0"
• Age Range: 13 years and up
• Grade Range: Grade 8 to Postsecondary

Customer Reviews

Fantastic

I picked up this book on a whim and can't stop looking at it. the photos are incredible and the text very informative. I have since visited several of the sites from the book.

Fantastic photo journey - highly recommended!

This is a fantastic book that takes you on a visual journey through haunting, abandoned structures and locations. There is an incredibly wide array of photos and subjects, and the quality of the photos, print, and paper are top notch. This book will remain in my "treasured" book shelf, and ranks possibly number one as my favorite "coffee table" style book.

Great coffee table book!

This book is full of interesting places which we all wish we could visit. The photograhy in this book is classic black and white. With the perfect amount of information not to make it boring. I love this book.

Disappearing fast

A very impressive photo documentary of buildings and places that have been left to uncertainty, the elements, or destroyed. The brief histories given for each place makes for some interesting reading. The photographs are magnificent, I wish I could step into them and see all the photographer saw at the time the places were photographed. It is sad to think some of these places will be left alone to fall apart or destroyed. This book really brings to mind how precious and unique these places are.

Spectral visions

A fantastic and haunting look at some once grand and beautiful buildings. An excellent commentary with history, that creates a mood thick with the cobwebs of time. The best I have seen that deals with the wealth of archietectural gems we have lost over the years. After reading, one is so much more aware of the crumbling buildings that surround us all over the nation, and maybe will be moved to save future ruins from total destruction.