Sometimes I go places, this is where you can read about my adventures. Road trips, cemeteries, abandoned places – they’re all here.
Whenever Jesi comes to Cleveland to hang out I always rack my brain to think of awesome places to take her. This city has no shortage of abandoned buildings but I want to take her places that will just wow her. The abandoned “rubber duck factory” was a hit and something that I felt would be super hard to top. My only real idea for our adventure was a building formerly home to a company that supplied window displays for large companies, and rented decorations for parties. The company closed in 2009 after nearly 80 years in business. The internet boom basically killed the need for a place like this, people can now order these things from the comfort of their own home instead of buying locally.
Before closing the company held a liquidation sale but clearly they weren’t able to get rid of everything. This building is chock-full of left over decorations. There are three floors, not including the basement, that are just absolutely packed with things. The floors seem to be somewhat organized by holiday or theme. The top level is Christmas. There are boxes upon boxes, still unopened, of tinsel, ornaments, even trees!
The second floor seems to have a lot of craft supplies. Massive bolts of now moldy fabric, and fake flowers litter the floor. Two large cutting tables sit on one side of the room. Shelving units now hold a few random bottles and an empty pack of cigarettes, signs others come here to a have their own party.
Sometime after closing a portion of the building caught fire. That and some pretty extensive water damage make the floors on one whole side of the building pretty dangerous to traverse across. Despite the fact this was my third time inside the building I still haven’t covered a lot of ground simply because it’s not worth the risk of falling through the floor. There are also lots of really really dark areas in the building, which I don’t venture into either. What can I say? When it comes right down to it, I’m a huge weenie.
Even excluding those huge portions of the building I may never see, it’s incredible the wide range of things there are to discover. I understand that a lot of times it’s easier just to leave things behind especially in a situation like this where your business goes belly up but this just seems like such a huge waste. I can’t even imagine how much money worth of merchandise is still in this building, the great majority of it non-salvageable now.
My very first visit to this building was late at night during a storm. The rain was just pouring into the building like there was no roof at all. Even though it’s been abandoned for a while now but I can’t imagine it’ll stay up much longer. Ohio weather is rough on structures that have no one left to fend for them. Although I say it in nearly every abandoned post, I do look forward to visiting this building again in the future to see how it decays.
xoxo
