Abandoned in Onomichi

Seika Ryo (Holy Flower Dormitory): an abandoned dormitory for nurses

Onomichi is a small seaside town in southeast Hiroshima. Yasujiro Ozu shoot ending scenes of Tokyo Story in Onomichi. I want to introduce this fascinating, quaint town with a web of narrow, steep, winding paths to you. I've been this town countless times, and each time I find new aspects that I didn't see from the previous visit.

This is the 4th of Onomichi series.* I've been explaining how charming Onomichi is, but today I'll tackle some of the challenges modern Onomichi is facing.      

Onomichi does have lots of abandoned houses. Like any other mid to small sized towns in Japan, the increasing senior population is a big challenge of the town.The hilly residential landscape is very charming for visitors but for the aging population, the terrain could be a huge barrier to conduct their everyday life.

*For the past series, see: The Landscape of Yasujiro Ozu, Onomichi Landscape: Local Belifes, and Onomichi Landscape: Commercial Space

Vending machine, Mukaishima Island

Onomichi Landscape: Commercial Space

Plumber shop

Onomichi is a small seaside town in southeast Hiroshima. Yasujiro Ozu shoot ending scenes of Tokyo Story in Onomichi. I want to introduce this fascinating, quaint town with a web of narrow, steep, winding paths to you. I've been this town countless times, and each time I find new aspects that I didn't see from the previous visit.

Interested? Please take a look at my post: The Landscape of Yasujiro Ozu.

Today, I'll show you some commercial spaces in Onomichi. All those photos evokes nostalgic sense to Japanese folks even he/ she didn't grow up in the mid 20th century. While the space represents our shared sense of the past, this is not a Potemkin facade like some amusement parks!

 Toy store display window

The Landscape of Yasujiro Ozu: Onomichi, Hiroshima

Just for a week, I went back to my home in Hiroshima. It's been for five years? since last time I went back. Well, I don't like an airplane trip. Wish I could afford a business class or something. Twelve hours in a sardine tine is asking too much for me. What could I do if I wanna get out and breath some outside air? No, obviously.

Enough gripe. I know, I know.

Onomichi cats are slim and have big eyes and ears!

Railroad Bridge over the Deerfield, Deerfield-Greenfield

Disused Boston and Maine railroad bridge over the Deerfield River

Google Map

Belchertown State School, Belchertown

The Belchertown State School for the "Feeble-Minded" was established in 1922. The above is a theater with an underground gym where a basketball court and a mini bowling alley left abandoned with icy, squishy floors.

A series of journalistic coverages and lawsuits in the early 70's disclosed the Belchertown's unsanitary, overcrowded condition at some of the dorms where over 80-year-old residents lived with other 120 residents who were "mentally, all two-year-olds in the physical bodies of grown-ups."*  

The school was closed in 1992. A talk of converting the complex into a "5-star living " spa  surfaced in 2006, but even twenty years later, the site remains abandoned.

What is the power that institutionalizes people? Why is such authority dismantled now...or the structures are left derelict, but the system of institution became more invisible and more pervasive? What are the forces that led to the closure of the Belchertown and other countless institutions in the nation; benevolent efforts to place intellectually disabled persons into a community based care, frail of a large scale institutional care, or shift to private enterprise? Where did all the residents go after the closure? Do I know all the answers?

*Robert Hornick, The Girls and Boys of Belchertown. Amherst: U of Mass P, 84.

Locate Belchertown State School @ Google Map

Water towers, Easthampton

While I was exploring an abandoned textile mill in Easthamtpton, I found those two water towers by a rail-trail!

To be precise, three water towers: 

Abandoned in Montreal II - Silo No. 5

This is the king of silo, period.

As I mentioned in the previous post about abandoned structures along the Lachine Canal, this 14.5 km long canal opened in 1825 used to be a bustling hub of industry and transportation until the opening of the St Laurence seaway in the late 50's.

Refereed as the "bread basket of the world", Canada was the major source of grains just after WWII.  The major beneficiaries of the export were European nations whose agricultural industry was left with little recovery.

Abandoned in Montreal I - Lachine canal

The Lachine Canal is a riverway goes through the southeast of Montreal. Connecting St Laurence River and Lake St Louis, this 14.5 km canal began its operation in 1825. Through the several extensions and a deepening, it became the transportation artery and attracted various forms of industry and manufacturing.

Crane Ltd.: a plumbing company. This used to be a part of an iron plant built in 1918. (Source: Crane Plumbing Co.)

What's on the banner photo?

This is from Medfield State Hospital, the first post I've ever done through the venue called "Creepy-chusetts, Strange-chusetts". It was... about 2 years ago. Medfield State Hospital is a now defunct psychiatric hospital open to public to wander around.

What's the instrument? It looks like for something with music or art therapy. Everything I saw was a great mystery or "discovery" waiting to tell its story. Looking thorough the past pictures, I feel the purpose of my blog (or even my life) is to function as a medium between our everyday life and forgotten or neglected.

I only have 10 days or so in Boston. There are so many places I wanted to visit. Perhaps, I should visit Danvers State Hospital and its cemetery again.

Hillcrest Cemetery (Grafton S. H. Cemetery), Shrewsbury 2-2

From Hillcrest Cemetery, Shrewsbury 1-2

So, why is there an abandoned tower in the state hospital cemetery property? There is an interesting discussion about the original purpose of the tower speculating it was: a Civil War era watching tower, Irish tower commemorating Irish immigrants held in the hospital, water tower for the hospital, etc.

Hillcrest Cemetery (Grafton S. H. Cemetery), Shrewsbury 1-2

From Grafton State Hospital, Grafton

After visiting the former Grafton State Hospital, I dropped by Hillcrest Cemetery where approximately 1,041 male and female patients held at Grafton State Hospital are buried. Their identities are only distinguished by the numbers on austere concrete blocks.

There is always a mystery in Massachusetts woods. A state hospital on the hillside and its hidden graveyard are some of those mysteries. Even the residents would not imagine there is a graveyard in their backyard, but the local teenagers find it anyway; they seem to be strangely fascinated by those numbered gravestones.

Hillcrest Cemetery has one of those Massachusetts mysteries, but there is a further puzzlement that nobody knows for sure.

Grafton State Hospital, Grafton

Grafton State Hospital was established in 1901 as a farm colony of Worcester State Hospital.  Worcester was the oldest state hospital opened in 1830, and their expansion reflected  a mandate passed in 1900 that state has the responsibility to take care of its indigent insane. A massive influx of patients from town and city level institutions was expected; prior to the mandate, a local poorhouse was the destination for the those who were less fortunate.

Newton Almshouse, Newton

Toolhouse est.1938

When I published a post about Working Boys Home in Newton about a year ago, I was also fascinated by the "infirmary" just northwest of the Home. Was there any connection between the infirmary and the Home? Were they operated by the same organization? If so, did the parents (most likely unwed mothers) at the infirmary have to be separated from their children to Working Boys Home (and Working Girls Home) ?

What you can see through the broken window

Norberg Greenhouses (now demolished), Cambridge MA

For more about these demolished greenhouses, please refer to my past posts: http://reversedview.blogspot.com/2011/01/wittemore-ave-greenhouse-cambridge.html
http://reversedview.blogspot.com/2011/10/update-on-wittemore-ave-greenhouse.html

Update on Whittemore Ave. Greenhouse

Please refer to: Whittemore Ave Greenhouse and Emerson's Iron Lung and Quonset Hut

Just yesterday, I received a letter from the City of Cambridge. I opened the envelope jokingly thinking "What? Did they finally decide hiring me as ... god knows what...wait, wait, did I pay too little tax?" Instead, it was a letter from the mayor regarding the redevelopment plan of the Fawcett Oil site.

Hoffman Building, Boston

Hoffman Building, Lovejoy Wharf, Submarine Signal Building, Schrafft's Candy Factory Quincy Cold Storage... I don't know which name rings a bell to you, but it's that abandoned loft just before you go deep under the Big Dig. When you are on I-93 south, maybe you are preoccupied by being on the Zakim Bridge or by the sight of TD Bank Garden on your right. If you turn your head opposite from the Bruins... that's the one I'm talking about. If you still don't get it, forget about it. Just drive safe.   

The Vaughn house, Dana

Dana is one of the lost towns of the Quabbin Reservoir. Dana, Enfield, Greenwich, and Prescott were impounded in 1938 upon the completion of the reservoir. Today, the 39 mi² (100 km²) Quabbin Reservoir is still in use and the largest body of fresh water in Massachusetts.

Dungeon Rock, Lynn

Dungeon Rock is probably one of the most famous New England oddities. Dungeon Rock in Lynn Woods is packed with colorful stories: the legend of pirate's treasure and the quest of a rather obsessive spiritualist family who attempted to find the truth.

Prior to this visit, I and B. visited Lynn Woods for investigating Burrill Stone Tower, a tower built by the WPA in 1936. My companion pleasantly liked the place like I do, so we decided to visit  another curiosity of the woods; the King of (Lynn) Rock.

Stonecroft, Tewksbury

Reminder: Stonecroft sits in the middle of an active hospital property. Please respect hospital workers and patients and do not disturb the property.

Continue from Tewksbury Hospital, Tewksbury

Conditions at the Tewksbury Almshouse were deplorable. Chronically underfunded, overcrowded and in disrepair, the Almshouse housed an average of 940 men, women and children during the years that Sullivan was there. The mortality rate was very high, and within three months of their arrival, Jimmie Sullivan died. --From Perkins School for the Blind

Stonecroft, Rear

Clinton Tunnel, Clinton

Note: if you want to explore the tunnel, bring a good flashlight and wear a pair of water-proof boots. I found the tunnel ground wet and slippery. There was rubble, possibly from the ceiling, on the tunnel ground, too. While it applies to all the places I introduce, please explore at your own risk, and Creepy-chusetts, Strange-chusetts cannot be held liable for your accident!

This winter, I visited the Old Stone Church in West Boylston. Communities along the Nashua River had changed completely after the Wachusett Dam was filled in 1908; I became interested in the landscape before the reservoir was filled.

After I visited the Wachusett Dam, I walked down Boylston Street for a good few minutes to a disused train tunnel. On the street level I only found a stone foundation, I looked up and found something like a portal. I decided to climb up a bit.

I was wondering about stone foundations at the basin, it looked like a remain of a bridge. But what kind of bridge? When I was on top of the portal,  it was clear that the tunnel and stone foundations in the water were aligned, so those remains were for the railroad bridge.

I first thought the tunnel was abandoned due to the completion of the Wachusett Reservoir in 1905. On the contrary, the tunnel and railroad were built to replace the line impounded by the reservoir. The tunnel was completed sometimes around in 1903 as a part of the Central Massachusetts Railroad. This 0.2 mile (340m) long tunnel was the second longest tunnel* in the state of Massachusetts when it was constructed. The line became disused in 1958, and the railroad tracks and bridge were cleared. But the tunnel goes through the Wilson Hill still remains.

*The longest tunnel in the state was the 8.5 mile (14km) long Hoosac Tunnel completed in 1875. 

Photo taken in 1902: from Waymarking.com, posted by Downy288

Is it okay to enter or not: that was the question. I saw an article about an off-duty police officer exploring the tunnel with his kids for fun. A local resident suggests calling the Clinton police department before exploring the tunnel during the night, so the police will make sure you are all right. But keep in mind; there is a local rumor that a missing girl's body was found in the tunnel some 30 or 40 years ago...

Photo taken in late March

I recommend bringing a flashlight and wear a good pair of waterproof boots, or you'll end up tripping on giant ice pillars like above.

The giant ice does look like a ghost, classic Casper type; there is a handful of ghost stories and urban legends linked to this tunnel. Possibly many of the stories were from the fear that the girl's body might be found in this very place. The darkness, amplified sound, and cold atmosphere are the prefect setting for inducing some scary visions. I only learned about the girl's body after I explored, but I must have read the story before hand. It means I had blocked the information out from my brain!

The most popular paranormal legend is one experiences the tunnel stretches out, looks like the other portal is in an infinite distance. But after experiencing the stretching stone steps at the Wachusett Dam, it was nothing; I reached the other portal in 5 minutes, it was on the longer side of the notion of 5 minutes, but far better than climbing up the steep stone steps for 5 minutes.

I also heard some strange mechanical sound inside, and found out it was the one of a chainsaw from somebody's house. Not the TX massacre type but the Saturday DIY type, the amicable one.

I examined the tunnel interior. The paved concrete only continues for a short distance; after that, it's a bare granite rock. I could imagine the labors 100 years ago igniting dynamites and drilling through the tunnel leaving the rough surface. Looking at the bare tunnel surface, I began worrying about the tunnel cave-in while I was going back to the other portal. Going is always easy, but returning is another story.

While I was going back, a series of bizarre incidents I had experienced in my life came up to my mind. A lady who "dropped" a jam jar from 4th floor while I was walking right under. A guy hired me as a photographer asking to take portraits of his colleague who didn't know she's going to die from cancer soon. Infirm, frail old widows by the Ganges begging money for fire logs.

I looked back for no reason and remembered the descent to the Underworld of Orpheus. I shouldn't look back because Orpheus failed to bring his dead wife to this world by doing so. It's just a bad thing to do in the dark.

I came out safe and alive, a pick up truck with thundering bass sound passed by Boylston Street. I could hear the booming sound even the truck was on the other side of the reservoir.

Continue to: Wachusett Aqueduct

Locate Clinton Tunnel @ Google Map

1943 map of Clinton, Mytopo Historical Map: http://historical.mytopo.com/getImage.asp?fname=clnt43se.jpg&state=MA
Haunted Clinton tunnel appears endless, Worcester Telegram & Gazette: http://www.telegram.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060807/NEWS/608070345/1003/NEWS03#
Tunnel Vision, New England Oddities: http://newenglandoddities.com/2008/05/19/tunnel-vision/#more-62