Booking It

2008_1_16.bookheap.jpg

The New No. 2 found this heap of books and papers in an abandoned school on the West Side. Wow.

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That certainly isn't a story!

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I believe the high school in this photo is Westinghouse in Garfield Park:

http://www.landmarks.org/ten_most_2006_10.htm

Clearly with the doors left open

Um, no one thought to donate to another school or, at least, recycle all that?
Err.

Rob J: I am pretty sure that is a picture taken in the soon to be demolished Washburne Trade School at 31st & Kedzie. I wonder if we'll ever really know?

Rob J: I am pretty sure that is a picture taken in the soon to be demolished Washburne Trade School at 31st & Kedzie. I wonder if we'll ever really know?

Spill the beans! How did you get in? I wanna check it out this weekend! I once was able to access a closed grammar school on the westside, right before it became a city "senior center"- providing little or no services except a winter heating and cooling center in the summer for seniors too poor to pay O'Bama's friends who run the utility companies. Any way I salvaged the coolest old fashioned dark cherry wood teacher's desk and chair!

RobJ is correct. This is Westinghouse in Garfield Park.

It wouldn't do me much good to tell you how we got in. By the time we wanted to leave that day our entry point had already been sealed up by someone else in the building. But I think that if you look around and are creative enough there are still plenty of ways in. Just be sure to watch out for the security guards in the vans patrolling the grounds and the scrappers inside and outside of the building. Some of them didn't seem to be the friendliest sorts.

Additionally, I wouldn't jump to the conclusion that these aren't being recycled. I'm not saying that they are but I think that one of the reasons why they separated and isolated the paper was so they could put it into separate dumpsters from the building materials. That way it is easier to recycle both the paper and the building products.

That still doesn't explain why none of this could be saved.

Thank you for identifying the building!

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