Occasionally a random find on Google Maps whilst planning part of a roadtrip to a city I hadn't visited before comes up trumps, big time.
Back in the spring I organised a three day roadtrip over the Easter weekend with one of my best exploring friends out there as part of my last adventure, and during the few days before the flight whilst researching locations and scanning Google Maps I made a very intriguing discovery. It was near another place I had pinned to check out, and I only put the street view man down as the building was such an unusual shape and I was simply interested in what it was. However when I got Street View up I saw, on the front lawn, a large banner saying something along the lines of 'we are moving premises soon'. So I stuck a pin in it as something to have a look at, without even knowing if it was empty or not.
Well it was, and my god what a place. As far as I know, me and my friend were the first ones in here, which in such a large city with such a large exploring base is something rather special. The Synagogue sits between two more modern school wings, only one of which is abandoned - the other one is still very much active and the only thing that separates the derelict Synagogue from it is a plastic asbestos removal type sheet taped over the doorway. Neither of us could believe that we'd found it accessible, we were absolutely certain that there'd be alarms all over the joint but other than a PIR alarm with a cut wire there were none to be found.
After a few minutes cautiously looking around for alarms we started shooting, I really wish I'd taken more photos inside, especially of the back rooms as they were empty but seriously dated, but I was so in awe of the building it kind of became secondary.
Thanks for looking
Back in the spring I organised a three day roadtrip over the Easter weekend with one of my best exploring friends out there as part of my last adventure, and during the few days before the flight whilst researching locations and scanning Google Maps I made a very intriguing discovery. It was near another place I had pinned to check out, and I only put the street view man down as the building was such an unusual shape and I was simply interested in what it was. However when I got Street View up I saw, on the front lawn, a large banner saying something along the lines of 'we are moving premises soon'. So I stuck a pin in it as something to have a look at, without even knowing if it was empty or not.
Well it was, and my god what a place. As far as I know, me and my friend were the first ones in here, which in such a large city with such a large exploring base is something rather special. The Synagogue sits between two more modern school wings, only one of which is abandoned - the other one is still very much active and the only thing that separates the derelict Synagogue from it is a plastic asbestos removal type sheet taped over the doorway. Neither of us could believe that we'd found it accessible, we were absolutely certain that there'd be alarms all over the joint but other than a PIR alarm with a cut wire there were none to be found.
After a few minutes cautiously looking around for alarms we started shooting, I really wish I'd taken more photos inside, especially of the back rooms as they were empty but seriously dated, but I was so in awe of the building it kind of became secondary.
Thanks for looking
