Abandoned NYC

A homemade submarine lies half-submerged in the mud of Coney Island Creek in Brooklyn. The vessel became lodged in the muck shortly after embarking on a failed treasure hunting expedition in the 1970s.

The Freedom Tunnel under Riverside Park once held a vast homeless encampment known as "the mole people." Amtrak evicted the residents and reactivated the line in the 1990s, but the tunnel remains a mecca for graffiti artists.

In Queens, a population of pigeons has inhabited an abandoned ward at Creedmoor State Hospital for decades. Dropping stalagmites accrue under popular roosts on the top floor.

The Gowanus "Batcave" was the home of a thriving squatter community in the early 2000s. Today it's being renovated into artists' studios and exhibition space.

The Staten Island Farm Colony was constructed in the 19th century to house and rehabilitate the city's poor. This was the last room standing in a collapsed dormitory now slated for demolition.

Grossinger's Catskills Resort was once a favored upscale destination for Jewish New Yorkers. A summer at Grossinger's is said to be the inspiration for the movie "Dirty Dancing."

Letchworth Village is located just an hour's drive from NYC in Thiells, NY. It was founded in 1912 to house the city's developmentally disabled as a "state institution for the epileptic and feeble-minded."

The Harlem Renaissance Ballroom was a notable meeting place for the movement's movers and shakers in the 1920s. It once hosted the greatest jazz perfomers of the age, as well as the nation's first all-black professional basketball team.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/photos/abandoned-nyc-1422901342-slideshow/