675 - Letchworth Village
Today we explored an abandoned village in New York.
Also known as Letchworth Village, this ghost town was once a refuge for the intellectually disabled. But due to overcrowding and neglect, it was forced to shut down in 1996, and it’s been vacant ever since.
At its peak, the village had over 100 different buildings, but today, over 50 still remain abandoned. AKA- it’s pretty much heaven for anyone into urb ex.
The catch is that the whole place exists in some sort of grey-area trance. The village sits on a public road that's open for hikers to walk around, but a sign clearly dictates that it becomes trespassing the moment you set foot inside any of the buildings.
Realistically, it’s a solid governmental stance as far as urb ex is concerned because half these buildings are caving in, but it’s also a tease for anyone with an ounce of curiosity.
There’s also several warnings online about cops patrolling the streets, but we didn’t see a single one in our two hour excursion at 8AM. Guess they’re asleep.
In a sense, the place is overwhelming in the sheer amount of buildings to explore. You could quite literally spend all day here. We started with the cottages, which are traditional four point buildings with a skylight in the middle:
That’s the most “classic” Letchworth scene, because there’s ten or so of these cottages that all have the exact same layout. You can’t miss this skylight. But each cottage is unique in that it’s decaying in its own strange way.
Many of the cottages had old basketball courts next to them, which, despite the harsh sunlight, caught my eye:
After hitting a few more of these cottages, we moved onto the building in the center of it all, which I presume was some sort of commonplace building. This building was fun because the ceiling had collapsed in several places, and large chunks of metal were just hanging from the ceiling like spears:
We quickly got out of there and I moved onto what became my favorite building- the church. Which I needed after navigating that minefield from above.
It wasn’t a traditional church with a steeple and vaulted ceilings, it was much more like a strip mall church despite the fact that it was its own independent building.
The best part was that there was a lone white chair in the middle of the room, lit up by a massive hole in the ceiling. Plants were growing around it, and I couldn’t help but snag two different photos of it because it was presented so beautifully:
The ironic part was that we’d just spent the previous afternoon at Dia Beacon, a modern art museum about 45 minutes north of the village. It was the complete, polar opposite of this place in the fact that they had abandoned objects on display.
Exhibits of broken glass, old pieces of metal, and deteriorating what-have-yous were just sitting out for rich, pretentious folks with Leicas to walk around and snag photos of.
I couldn’t help but bask in the duality of the world.
Finally, we wrapped up the shoot at what I presume were administrative houses and/or dormitories. This part was a bit more risky because they weren’t off the side road that the other buildings were on, they were right off a main road.
It was a game of “run into a house real fast” whenever a car finally passed by. Once I was inside, I realized they were (again) all pretty much the same, but the lobby was the best part in my opinion:
Good ole’ haunted house vibes. Nothing creepier than a burnt out fluorescent bulb.
And with that, we were off. Supposedly there were many more buildings that we missed, including an old power plant, a cafeteria, and an entire tunnel network below the village.
But we’d already spent two hours running around, so we had to get a move on. One day I’ll be back for a deeper dive.
You can’t explore a whole National Park in one day ya know.
