The Marsh supermarket on Wheeling Avenue in Muncie was opened in 1995 to replace a smaller store across the street in Northwest Plaza. It closed in 2017. The supermarket was purchased by a subsidiary of Kroger, which operates it today as part of its Pay-Less marquee.
When Grand Rapids-based Meijer decided to expand the reach of its Michigan hypermarkets to a trio of new states in the early 1990s, officials decided that a unique aesthetic was necessary to introduce their massive stores to a new batch of customers. There’s little that can be done to make a 200,000-square-foot building unique, but Meijer did just that, in large part through the use of a pineapple.
Continue reading “Meijer’s whimsical pineapple of discovery”
“Abandoned Marsh” was my project to stylistically document the Marsh Supermarkets closed by Sun Capital Partners, an investment firm that owned the home-grown company for the final decade of its eighty-six year history. The last Marsh supermarket closed in 2017.
Continue reading “Abandoned Marsh: Fox Road in Indianapolis”
Movie theaters are closing: the rise of streaming services, competition from entertainment, changing consumer preferences, and residual economic factors from COVID-19 have shuttered many multiplexes over the past several years. Anderson, Indiana, alone has four! That’s not uncommon for a community of its size in the midwestern rust belt, but what is uncommon is that three of them sit within an astonishing eight hundred feet of one another!
Continue reading “Three shuttered cinemas a stone’s throw apart in Anderson, Indiana”
“Abandoned Marsh” was my project to stylistically document the Marsh Supermarkets closed by Sun Capital Partners, an investment firm that owned the home-grown company for the final decade of its eighty-six year history. The last Marsh supermarket closed in 2017.
Continue reading “Abandoned Marsh: South Jefferson Street in Huntington”
I have an overactive imagination that occasionally leads me to question whether or not things I think I’ve seen are real. The first time I experienced that phenomenon was when I was a kid and happened past a disembodied steeple rising from a cornfield. The second time was years later: I thought I found water gushing from a boulder in a rural display of some biblical miracle. The third time was about a decade ago. I was driving down I-75 towards Knoxville when I stopped to get gas. I swear that I saw the unmistakable outline of a Ferris wheel gazing down at me from the mountainside! Ten years later, it turns out that I had.
Continue reading “The abandoned Ferris wheels of Royal Blue, Tennessee”
We’ve officially made it into the second week of 2023. In just seven days, this blog has already welcomed nearly half of the visitors it saw in all of 2022! I only started in September, granted, but I’ve been blown away by how many people have found my peculiar interests and obsessions compelling enough to stop by. I have no doubt that it’s going to be a great year here!
Continue reading ““Buy me a coffee” to help support what I do here, if you want”
“Abandoned Marsh” was my project to stylistically document the Marsh supermarkets closed by Sun Capital Partners, an investment firm that owned the home-grown company for the final decade of its eighty-six year history. Marsh was a regional grocery store chain that was founded in Muncie and eventually grew to encompass 157 supermarkets, 154 convenience stores, three florists, two catering services, and a restaurant. The last Marsh supermarket closed in 2017.
Continue reading “Abandoned Marsh: North Walnut Street in Muncie”
A few years ago, my friend Ben mentioned to me how much fun he thought tracking down old Holiday Inn Holidomes would be. I agreed! Unfortunately, they’re thinning out around these parts. On Monday, my dormant interest woke up in full force when I stumbled across an old Holidome masquerading as the Baymont Inn & Suites in northwestern Knoxville, Tennessee- or so I thought.
Continue reading “Hunting Holidomes: Knoxville’s Baymont Inn & Suites”
Filled with empty storefronts and deserted hallways, dead malls are a haunting reminder of a bygone era of retail. Recently, they’ve have been blowing up my social media feeds as prime locations for urban explorers to go investigate as eerie relics of the past. But what about zombie malls- establishments that have risen from the grave under new guise to continue on long after their original demise? Elkhart’s old Pierre Moran Mall is one. Known as Woodland Crossing since 2006, portions of the mall rest -and rust- in pieces.
Continue reading “The Pierre Moran Mall in Elkhart: Resting -and Rusting- in Pieces”
Ted Shideler 