St. Luke's Entrance
The day I visited Saint Luke’s Hospital, it was brought to my attention almost as a perfect accident. Driving slowly down Shaker Blvd. under the bright mid-day sun, a tall, crumbling clock tower caught my eye. The tower stuck out like a sore thumb, looming over the neighborhood – milk glass broken from its clock face and copper torn from the top. I was taken away when my eyes followed the clock tower downward, only to see the largest abandoned structure I had witnessed to date. It was the summer of 2010, and up until this point, my experience in exploring abandoned buildings was fairly limited – mostly to 4 years of forgotten farm houses, empty factories and some busted apartment complexes. I had yet to explore much within the city, and had never seen something as massive as this hospital, let alone imagined that a structure this monumental could just become abandoned. The fact that this sat so close to home was a great bonus, being that photographing abandoned places had become somewhat of a passion for me.