Cleveland Urban Exploration Unit

Wild Rose Schoolhouse

Over winter break, one of our members went to his home town in rural Champaign County. While he was out there he decided to check out a couple of local abandonments.

One of these was the Wild Rose Schoolhouse.

Located on a short section of Cushman Road in Union Township, there sits a small brick schoolhouse. This schoolhouse has sat here since it was built way back in 1869. It has been decades since there were any classes here. After school let out for the last time, the building was eventually converted into a small but comfortable home. The original one-room structure was subdivided into a number of rooms and a small annex was built onto the back.

It has sat empty for a long time now. Sometime in the past it caught fire, and more recently the current owner has removed all of the internal walls and boarded over the front door and windows. There were literally three rooms to explore: The original classroom (which occupies that vast majority of the space), the annex, and the basement.

The back annex is small and appears to have been created as a porch and a pantry for storing preserved foods in jars. There is also a stairwell that leads to the basement from here.

The classroom is vast and empty. Signs of the fire are everywhere, charred wood and soot marks. The ceiling is mostly gone but the roof seems mostly fine except in a couple of spots where holes have formed. The interior walls that divided the room into multiple rooms for a house have been removed, but you can still see the outlines of where they were on the floors and walls. Here and there pipes stick up, showing where various fixtures used to be. There is a stairwell leading down to the basement from here, with an old toilet looking odd sitting behind it in the open.

The basement is only about half the size of the building. It has the most artifacts left in it, from an old furnace to an old water heater and another bunch of jars.

It is a wonderful old place, and a monument to rural schooling of days gone by. Hopefully it will stand as such for many years to come.

http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&z=14&ll=40.051189,-83.605249&spn=0.032062,0.058022&t=h&om=1

Our first urbex site was the large abandoned hotel by Randall Park Mall in North Randall, Oh. We visited some time in winter 2006. To the best of what we can figure out it was last used sometime in 1991, at which point it was a Days Inn. Everything has been taken out of the rooms and stockpiled on the first floor (except above the third floor, where it seems they got lazy and just pushed everything into the hallways). There were prices written on everything on the first floor. Seems as if they had a going-out-of-business sale or some such. Everything that didn't sell still sits. Part of the first floor has also been stripped down to the base structure. We couldn't figure out why, when everything else was left exactly as it was as a hotel.

This place was freakin' huge, ten stories of hotel, plus finished basement, an eleventh utility story, and a pseudo-twelfth story above the elevator shafts. Once we got in (no easy feat, this had been our third visit hunting for entry) everything else was simple to get into. There were no locked doors in the place. The first floor is freakin' huge, featuring a restaurant/lounge, the main offices, a couple closets full of circuit breakers, the ballroom, conference facilities, and the entire swimming pool complex. We started out in the conference center, which featured a number of empty conference rooms. There was a creepy back hallway from there that we didn't take (later we learned it led to the kitchen). Instead we took the main hallway and got our first pictures near some interesting switches on the wall.

From there we found our way to the old restaurant/lounge area. This area was separated by planters (long since having anything growing in them) forming walkways and seating areas. We kept getting tripped up on them and finally said screw it and hopped over (we were having problems seeing, as we had to keep the flashlights low to avoid alerting any passersby of our presence... windows everywhere.) We then found our way into the corridor that led to the pool, but first we were intrigued by the tiny courtyard that seemed to have no entrance. Then we continued on to the pool room.

The pool had some creepy-looking water left in it. There was also a smaller jacuzzi-looking pool. And bathrooms. With paper towels still in the dispensers. The pump room had some interesting equipment. Then we headed back out.

The corridor next to the courtyard led towards the front of the hotel, which is the part that they've stripped. We were stepping over all sorts of junk and being careful not to cut ourselves on sharp objects sticking out here and there and laying around. Eventually we found the main office and the main desk. We also found a wall o' keys. Which was interesting, because once we got up to the rooms, the doors had card readers... In any case, a side room had a "Fire Annunciator", whatever that is. And we found a paint splatter that would give us nightmares. And amusing messages left on doors.

Eventually we found our way back to the kitchen. That is one large, dark room. With a lot of stained stainless steel. The locker room in the back had a Christmas wreath hanging up. A side door led to the ballroom, which we didn't enter. It was large, dark, and the sound of dripping water made us uncertain of the floor's safety.

Then the camera's batteries ran out, so we sent out one of our members to go fetch more. Those left behind waited around in the conference center, flipping through old phone books and getting creeped out by random little noises. Eventually the camera returned, and we continued on our way.

First we went down to the basement. It smelled bad and the floor was squishy, so we decided that we didn't want to check it out this time around. Then we went up to the first floor and explored a bit. The rooms were empty, and most of the windows were open. Leading to damp carpets near the windows. And moss. Moss is amusing. After exploring a bit on the first and second floor, we got rather bored with empty hotel room after empty hotel room, and just headed up to the top looking for the suites. The end rooms on the tenth floor could be made into huge-arsed rooms of awesomeness, or cut in half to make two smaller rooms of nevertheless awesomeness. This was also the floor where the pigeon decided to freak us out (all we heard was rustling, and then saw it flap out from who-knows-where and out a window). And the fire alarm kept chirping, indicating that the battery needed changed. Why the fire alarm still had a battery is left to the imagination. Even if it was mandatory in case a fire started in the hotel, who's going to hear a fire alarm outside from the TENTH FLOOR?!

We then found the eleventh utility floor, which featured the only graffiti in the building (not counting the smiley face on tenth floor). It also featured a storage closet packed so full of holiday decorations that you couldn't even get in it. The old signage was in a corner here, as well as a bunch of machinery and such. There was a ladder in here, and a staircase to a smallish pseudo-twelfth-floor on top of the elevator shaft. There was also a door to the roof. So we of course went out on the roof, where we found a large satellite dish. And not much else. There was a ladder to get up to the roof above the eleventh floor, but it required using the ladder in the utility room to reach the bottom rung. So we drug that out and went for it. But we were all gripped by an insane fear of heights, and none of us were able to bring ourselves to swing our feet over the lip and onto the top roof. This of course means we have to return, to get that all-important roof panorama from the highest point of the building ^_~

We put the ladder back away for safekeeping and then headed back down through the hotel, taking pictures down the hallways floor by floor. We also went down the other stairs to the basement, from a long dark creepy hallway. The same stench and squishiness assaulted us, so we decided to come back better prepared later. It appears as though there may have been more conference facilities down there.

There seems to be a seam in the structure of the building that is leaking water, which has lead to the wallpaper falling off of the walls at the same spot on every floor. Other than that and the flooded basement, the building is in surprisingly good condition for being abandoned for over a decade. We found an interesting case of some form on one of the floors, and eventually made our way out. We tried to get pictures of the structure from outside, but it was too dark and our nighttime picture taking skills fail. We're working on it. Perhaps a new camera would help.

The Village of North Randall currently owns the building, and it's slated to be converted into senior housing on their master plan. However, they havn't done anything on their master plan, so who knows what the future holds for the old hotel. It wouldn't take much to turn it back into a hotel again, and it also wouldn't take much to convert it into apartments. North Randall is a suburb that was built on retail and thrived on retail. Now it is dominated by a half-dead mall and thrift stores. If North Randall ever makes a comeback, that would be some prime living space indeed.

http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&z=17&ll=41.433927,-81.527685&spn=0.003949,0.007242&t=h&om=1

So it begins. We are the Cleveland Urban Exploration Unit. We are primarily two, but others come and go. What defines our existence is a love of the forgotten and the unseen. Places that most people pass by without a thought or glance, but whose mere existence whispers of mysteries and the unknown. We seek to explore and seek out the clues to understanding the tales that these locations have to tell; discovering what is left when humans no longer care for a building and guessing as to the past, observing the lesser-traveled paths around us, peeking in at the secrets to be found behind-the-scenes and around the corner. That crumbling old building? A refuge of history and a place of beauty, where nature retakes what us humans have claimed. That back alley? A path to the unknown. The "employees-only" back hallway of the mall? Secrets waiting to be revealed.

We are on a journey of discovery, one with goals to seek out and understand more about the world around us. And to document the process for the world to see. People like you, reading this now.

To date we have explored four abandonments and countless back roads, hidden cemeteries, and even a few "off-limits" sections of active buildings. Of these, three of the abandonments and one trip through the back country (including an almost forgotten cemetery) have been documented through pictures. Those pictures shall be posted in the gallery section on the sidebar once we find a decent image gallery provider.

In the meantime, check out the other links in the sidebar for others like us, to get a feel for what we do. It should be noted that while we may trespass, we follow a strict code of ethics in line with the old saying: "Take nothing but pictures, leave nothing but footprints."

Check back often for updates.