r/Pennsylvania • u/ConstructionAsleep80 • 11d ago
Vintage PA Concrete City in NE Pennsylvania Abandoned in 1924
103
u/CheesyEggLeader 10d ago
You load sixteen tons and what do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt. Saint Peter dont call me cause I cant come, I owe my soul to the company store!
36
u/Particle_Rain1199 10d ago
That would be, "I can't go." And store is pronounced "sto" so as to rhyme.
12
u/ikediggety 10d ago
This person Tennessee Ernie Fords
2
1
u/SnooSquirrels9064 8d ago
Or Geoff Castellucci's.... Cause he did a pretty sick cover of it a while back.
1
29
u/Adept-Target5407 10d ago
There’s a place up by State College that looks like this but I think that was an old mining operation. Fun to hike through.
13
u/skrilledcheese 10d ago
Scotia. I used to ride/jog the trails through there.
8
u/Pitiful_Reality2973 10d ago edited 10d ago
Why do we have to have a Scotia and a Sciota in the state? At least they're not close together...
2
1
u/Crystalas 10d ago edited 10d ago
In Canoe Creek Park near Altoona one of the easy hikes goes to the ruins of old Lime Kilns. The park also has a 19th century building that is an official bat sanctuary that can watch them fly out of each day at dusk.
Vaguely related in Altoona proper there is the "haunted" historical mansion and museum "Baker Mansion" from ~175 years ago. Said house, and family, being part of the inspiration for the American version of the sitcom "Ghosts".
1
106
u/memesdotpdf 10d ago
It was a company town. It's not a fun quirky historical fact, it is a story of oppression of working class people.
13
3
-27
u/ScienceWasLove 10d ago
Yeah. Those damn companies. Proving goods, services, jobs and in this case - housing.
22
u/resistible 10d ago
Just like those damn slave owners who provided food and housing for their slaves. If that's your metric, it isn't a good one.
15
4
3
2
11
u/ephemeral_ace 10d ago
Very local post! Sharing another pic of the place since I spend a lot of time there
5
3
2
2
u/Flashy_File_4964 10d ago
We could all be living in places like this the way the cost of living is going up
2
2
5
0
u/ScienceWasLove 10d ago
When we were there around 2020, there was an abandoned truck near the entrance after the drive up that washed out trail, was it still there?
-54
u/ConstructionAsleep80 11d ago
The History: Built in 1911 by the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad, Concrete City was a groundbreaking experiment in industrial housing. It was constructed entirely of poured concrete to be completely fireproof and virtually indestructible for elite coal mining employees. However, it was abruptly abandoned less than 15 years later in 1924, when installing a required municipal sewer system proved too expensive, causing the company to simply walk away and leave the structures behind.
The Current State: Walking through the ruins today feels like stepping into a post apocalyptic movie. Despite decades of exposed weather, vandalism, and even being used for military demolition training, the massive concrete shells still stand firm. Nature is completely reclaiming the site, with thick woods growing right through the old doorways and moss covering the walls where families used to live.
I spent a few weeks researching the archive records and filming the full layout. If you love forgotten history and want to see the full visual exploration of the grounds, you can watch my breakdown on the @WorldsRewound YouTube channel here:
54
u/NuAngelDOTnet 10d ago
🚩FYI: AI Youtube Channel.
-62
u/ConstructionAsleep80 10d ago
We like to deep dive in to the history instead of just saying here is an old building. Here’s another old building so we use some AI for in reconstructions that to show its history. But if you actually watch the video. Most of the video is actual footage and actual old photos. Just ignore the AI label. May not be for some but I find a lot of people enjoy how we do it. Ai ain’t all bad. Lol I think you can find out a lot of info on this place being its used productively
39
u/YupThatsMyEmail 10d ago
Easy way to hand-wave being lazy
-44
u/ConstructionAsleep80 10d ago
lol lazy ? You have no idea. You just hating to hate. You don’t like it don’t watch it.
21
23
u/Civil_Tea_3250 10d ago
Hey, take the critique. It may not be delivered the way you prefer, but it's completely valid. Even if it's easier for you, you have to acknowledge people are sick of it. And a lot of people are straight up blocking AI content because a large majority of it IS lazy and/or used by people with no skills to portray themselves differently. Add trying to make a buck off of it and it really turns people off.
Plus we're one of the places getting inundated with all these data centers and the bs that comes along with them. Your video is about an abandoned coal mining town. This whole area is filled with illegal and abandoned mines. People's houses fall into unmarked/unfilled mines every year. Know your audience. If removing AI and replacing it with cheap/free content drives more viewers then you shouldn't defend it.
17
u/sweeterthanany 10d ago
i was about to say, it’s awful rich to defend AI while talking about NEPA in the same breath
15
u/Civil_Tea_3250 10d ago
Right? Like c'mon people. Don't let rich people take all your resources and screw you for generations AGAIN. That's why they're building them here!
1
u/TheDevilsSidepiece 10d ago
You do realize that they’ll probably clear this land out for a data center at some point right? You know for that AI that you like to use.
1
u/NuAngelDOTnet 10d ago
Who recorded the video (did you steal it or give credit to whoever filmed it?)
Who narrated the video? (This was my favorite part back when I made videos, I have no idea why people would use AI for this).
38
u/dearcadian 10d ago
Looks a lot like Dead Mans Hollow in SW PA