Completely abandoned city streets
 

The thread title says it all. A place to show and discuss completely (or very nearly so) abandoned city streets. Here is one in East Cleveland (Chapman Avenue)

https://www.google.com/maps/@41.5357...7i16384!8i8192

Also East Cleveland (Elderwood Avenue): https://www.google.com/maps/@41.5369...7i16384!8i8192

Pittsburgh has a number of these. This area of Homewood has some completely vacant city blocks, for example. The city tends to be pretty aggressive in knocking down abandoned houses, but you can still find pockets where large numbers are being left to rot.

Some of the best examples though are in neighborhoods where urban blight and steep slopes intersected. The roads cut along steep slopes never filled in completely, and the city eventually decided that stormwater drainage concerns meant they didn't want these streets being rebuilt at all. So you have examples out there like Diaz Way, which extends for a fifth of a mile with no houses, only to come upon a single remaining house at the very end.

In the Miami area, this part of Homestead was part of Homestead Air Force base and used to be a normal suburban neighborhood filled with houses, baseball fields, parks....etc (I used to live there in the late 80s). Hurricane Andrew obliterated it all and it is still an abandoned area 30 years later:
https://www.google.com/maps/@25.5040...7i13312!8i6656
https://www.google.com/maps/@25.5137.../data=!3m1!1e3

In the Chapman Avenue link used to be trees in 2014. Why did they cut all the trees?

https://www.google.com/maps/@42.2921...7i16384!8i8192
This is in Detroit's Delray neighborhood, to be fair the whole neighborhood is abandoned now.

apocalyptic. Very sad, albeit also fascinating, to see so much abandonment and decay.

Oh, another weird Pittsburgh example, the former neighborhood of Schweitzer Lock, which was lost mostly due to land banking by a major developer. It's relatively prime area - close to Downtown and across from the booming Strip District. One developer has systematically bought up nearly everything and put in mostly unused parking lots.

The neighborhood has three remaining rowhouses. I think two are occupied. There's also this block with a former church and a small three-unit apartment. Right next to it is a diner, and a scrapyard owned by relatives of Andy Warhol. That's almost everything.

Ironically, just a few bocks to the west, there's a former Heinz Factory which is now host to hundreds of loft-style apartments.

Oakwood, Staten Island

The neighborhood was bought out after Sandy.

Detroit's Robinwood Street, is truly apocalyptic:
https://www.google.com/maps/@42.4297...7i16384!8i8192

Even weirder, neighboring streets are mostly intact and have impressive homes, clearly built for the upper class:
https://www.google.com/maps/@42.4274...7i16384!8i8192

I'm pretty sure this is a gayborhood, still. Had that reputation in the postwar decades into the 1990's, and the whites mostly fled, but it's still a gayborhood for African Americans. Across Woodward Ave. are the wealthiest neighborhoods in Detroit.

east st louis https://goo.gl/maps/4HhZ1Gf27dD8SeRTA

Glencoe Pl in Cincinnati was an entirely abandoned rowhouse neighborhood that was standing until pretty recently.

Pre-Demo
Pre-Demo 2

Post-Demo

Chicago https://goo.gl/maps/erMMifUssqdKwtKw5
Indianapolis https://goo.gl/maps/teFAudFAjFdjLmJh6

To be fair, that part of Chicago is being demolished so that NS can expand their rail yard, though they haven't convinced everyone to leave yet.

how did the trees grow so quickly? Google streetview shows the buildings there as recently as 2012, but by 2014 there are fairly mature trees where the buildings once stood.

Looks like the trees were always behind the buildings. There aren't trees where the buildings themselves once stood. You can just see them better now that the buildings are gone.

https://www.google.com/maps/@39.1231...7i13312!8i6656

I wasn't picking on Chicago or Indy in particular. I went on a google search in cities in a region that has had population loss or stagnation. TBH I was first searching for areas in SD. There are a lot of areas in San Diego that are blighted with litter, graffiti, homeless and crime but I haven't seen anything on par with other cities that have decided to demolish properties and be abandoned with urban praires.



What does NS mean?

Norfolk Southern, one of the nation's major railroad players.

The West Coast never had abandoned zones. Not even Oakland, or Watts. The housing markets were always tighter, and Mexican immigration usually filled vacancies.

Alnd urban prairies are almost always poor black neighborhoods. San Diego doesn't have black neighborhoods, of any type, in 2022. I believe there were a few majority or plurality black census tracts east of downtown in previous decades, but no longer.

Chicago certainly has abandoned areas, tbut he one you happened to pick happens to be where Norfolk Southern wants to expand their rail yard and has been buying up homes and demolishing them to do so. I keep meaning to watch this documentary about it: http://theareafilm.com/

But you can go a few blocks away and find non-NS-induced abandonment: https://www.google.com/maps/@41.7837...7i16384!8i8192