Catholic School

St. Agnes School

Published on -- by Nina AraicaLeave a comment

I was fortunate enough to be able to take a 2,600 mile journey to Detroit….a place I like to call “the motherland of all things abandoned” lol. Oh my word…I surely was not disappointed!! In 3 days of exploring, I took about 3,000 photos! Whewwwwwwww…busy girl! Those photos got filtered down to the best of the best. About 600 images I felt were edit worthy.

Needless to say, I have only edited about 200 lol. Yea…I’m kinda behind on my editing. Well hey, what can I say. I’m always exploring and gathering even more photos to edit, and I’m a mommy and a new wife and have a full time career. Sometimes I have to cram in editing marathons on the weekend lol.

Anywho, back to “the motherland” haha. I had strategically mapped out about 8-10 locations that I wanted to hit. I made plans to meet up with an Instagram friend Aaron (@doctorhaircut) one of my days there and we hit the ground running! We were like a well oiled machine 😉 In a matter of 3-4 hours, we hit about 4-5 locations. One of them was this amazing school.

The beautiful decay that was around every corner was almost enough to make me giddy inside! I’m pretty sure I couldn’t stop my smile if I tried haha. Words cannot even begin to describe the decay and the beauty. Hopefully some of my pics from this Detroit series, do it justice.

Catholic School

Published on -- by Nina AraicaLeave a comment

I found it difficult to locate any substantial history on this particular location. All I was able to find out was, the school was built in 1924 and abandoned in 1989. The church building is still being used, by another denomination.

Interesting Statistics:
During the 1960’s there were 55 Catholic High Schools within the Detroit city limits. Today there are only 3! At the same time, there were also over 100 Catholic Elementary Schools within the city limits. Today there are only 7!

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I had this school on my enormous list of locations to explore during this trip, but when reviewing with a friend/local I was sadly told that this school was either inaccessible or being renovated. So we didn’t even bother checking it out. Luckily after speaking with another friend/local we were told quite the opposite! It was accessible and awesome. So we immediately headed over to investigate 🙂

We drove by and noticed an open window, where the wood panel had been ripped off. It sucked because it was directly facing a busy street, but we figured if we harnessed our inner ninja skills, we could hop up and in pretty quickly, without being seen by too many cars passing by. We parked our car, grabbed our camera backpacks, hustled into the window and were immediately in awwwwww! This school was amaaaaaaazing! It is in such a beautiful state of decay. The photographs just don’t do it justice. You can tell there must have been minor fire damage at one point (inside, not outside to the structure), as there were any charred walls and doorways. Oh and the gymnasium was breathtaking!

When we were ready to head out, we started looking for the window we had came through…only to find out there was a door, wide open, right around the corner, lol – DOH!!! So instead of hopping through the window, we simply strolled out.

Simply Known As “Woods”

Published on -- by Nina AraicaLeave a comment

I typically like to provide a bit of history about an exploration site, however, sadly I couldn’t find a lot of information about this particular site. But what I do know is that, the original church, Visitation Catholic was built in 1925 and operated until the parish was dissolved in 1989. It is unclear how long the church sat vacant, before it was purchased and reopened as Woods Cathedral Church of God in Christ. Woods closed its doors in 2005 and the church has been quietly decaying ever since.

In May 2012, much to the surprise of urban explorers who frequently visit the church, two Los Angeles based artists had spent several hours and/or days assembling a sizable artistic installation on the sanctuary floor with furniture and other miscellaneous items that had been left behind (including desks, sofas, chairs, televisions, tables, pianos and pews). As of April 2014, the installation remains pretty much undisturbed.