In The Shadow of Chicago: Union Station
By Kevin Robinson in Miscellaneous on Feb 18, 2010 7:00PM
Last Fall, we took a look at some of the communities and abandonments on the far South side and in Northwest Indiana. While the weather hasn't been amenable to walking the City of the Century, David Tribby has shared some of his photography of Gary with us. This week, we'll be looking at some of the notable abandoned buildings there. For a more in depth look at the architecture of the once-great city, check out his book, Gary Indiana, a City's Ruins.
Built in 1910, Gary, Indiana's Union Station was built in the Beaux Arts style, using the most modern cast-in-place concrete pouring methods of the time. The building is located just South of U.S. Steel's massive Garyworks plant, ironically situated next to Interstate 90. Closed in the 1950's, the two story building featured a huge interior skylight, architect M. A. Lang designed the building to support traffic from tens of thousands of migrating workers, moving to the Midwest for jobs in the region's state of the art factories. Although abandoned and neglected for more than half a century, the structure remains in good shape. In fact, the concrete pouring technique used at the time is the same employed today to build skyscrapers. The soundness of the building's structure can be attributed to this technique. Like many once grand buildings in Gary, plans have been tossed around for the better part of five decades to put the building back into use, none of which have panned out.
Lost Indiana has a tremendous explanation of the details and scope of the building.