Abandoned Illinois: Forgotten Places and Lost Histories by Beard, Lisa [Paperback ]

What causes people to leave their lives behind? How is it that places, some of great historical significance, are left unnoticed, even when in plain sight? What does that say about who we are as people and what we will become? It's easy to overlook these spaces and the people who once occupied them. Abandoned Illinois: Forgotten Places and Lost Histories is a visual chronicling of these places, from homes filled with left-behind belongings to a steel mill that was responsible for forging more aviation parts for the U.S. government than any other during WWII, to an ornately designed church whose parish lasted over 100 years before becoming obsolete, to a mental health center that was shuttered so abruptly that almost everything was left behind. Strangely beautiful and stubbornly defying neglect and the passage of time, these once well-known places are either gone or will be soon.