A presentation by Rusty Tagliareni and Christina Mathews

Every town has its share of derelict and abandoned buildings, places that many drive by daily without a second thought. Hidden in plain sight, these properties are often seen as eyesores, if they are even seen at all. Though they may be husks of their former selves their roots survive still, running deep through communities and through time - conduits that connect us to the past, holding a lesson or two for a patient observer.

Abandoned asylums are not the haunted houses Hollywood portrays them to be, rather they are somber places of remembrance brimming with lessons about our mental healthcare industry, and the stigmas that plague us to this very day.

Disused schools and churches stand as monuments to the rise and fall of neighborhoods, as entire regional industries went from boom to bust. Sprawling resorts overgrown in the mountains remind us of simpler times, an era before cell phones, social media, and ever-shortening attention spans. Even private homes have their tales. Though far more intimate in scope their stories are no less significant, for it is in these places that we may see ourselves reflected in the murk, and come to accept that we all share the same fleeting existence.

Rusty Tagliareni and Christina Mathews, professional photographer and videographer, and authors of the best-selling award-winning Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital, a book in the Images of America series by Arcadia publishing. They have also written Antiquity Echoes: A Photographed Tour of Abandoned America, Abandoned Asylums of the Northeast, and Abandoned Resorts of the Northeast."

This presentation is free and open to the public.