Tuesday, September 29, 2015

The Woodward Avenue Presbyterian Church in Detroit


The Woodward Avenue Presbyterian Church was built in 1911 in Detroit, Michigan to serve congregants located in what was then the north Woodward area. The church had 163 members. Designed by architect Sidney Badgley, Woodward Avenue Presbyterian is an English Gothic-style church, faced with rough rock and trimmed with a contrasting limestone, and measuring 184 feet (56 meters) long by 104 feet (31 meters) wide. 

In 1921 the church had reached over 2200 members but by the 1950s many of them had started leaving Detroit for the northern suburbs. Only 404 members had left behind in 1971 and in 1981 the church merged with Covenant Church. 

A death of a pastor in 2005 was the end of the Presbyterian church, then known as the Abyssinia Interdenominational Church. with the building left abandoned for the following years. In 2011 the interior was used as a set for the movie Alex Cross. A few years ago there were plans for the church to be turned into a homeless shelter but until today it remains one of the many abandoned buildings of Detroit. 









Monday, September 21, 2015

Inside Keranis cigarette factory in Athens


Starting in 1933 and for more than 70 years, this building in Piraeus, near Athens, was the headquarters of Keranis, one of Greece's largest tobacco companies. In its prime, more than 2,500 people were working inside the 28,700 m² (309,000 ft²) factory, manufacturing more than 2.5 million cigarettes per shift and making Keranis the biggest Greek tobacco company. 

Things started to change from the 70s and 80s when more and more Greeks would rather buy imported cigarette brands instead of the Greek ones. In 1998, the family controlling the business sold it to a brokerage firm which shut down a few years later, together with Keranis. Today, the building belongs to an asset management company and it is up for lease. There were plans for the Piraeus courthouse to move inside the abandoned factory but those plans fell through.