City Gardens: Trenton's Lost Punk Rock Mecca

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The building seemed to sag against the Trenton sky, its walls leaning in a way that looked both tired and dangerous. I was driving, searching for a lunch spot after a morning spent exploring the city's industrial skeletons, when I saw it. A questionable choice, maybe, but curiosity is a powerful guide. I pulled over. Getting inside was one of the sketchiest entrances I’ve ever attempted. But once my feet were on the dusty floor, the danger faded. An enormous space stretched before me. It was sparse, cleaned out. My footsteps echoed where a stage once stood, a fact I’d later confirm in a NNKH YouTube video about the building’s past life as an underground punk club. The video showed a vibrant scene, an electric place. But the ghosts of that life were mostly gone. The long, rounded bar, where thousands of hands must have slapped down crumpled bills, had vanished. The dust-coated wine and shot glasses that once lined its shelves were gone, too. The club’s glittering crown jewel, a l...
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St. Mary's Hospital Ongoing Renovation

Ongoing construction March 29, 2017.



The former Crown Heights hospital continues its transition from a derelict eyesore to a much anticipated 170,000-square-foot nursing home complex once completed. The eight-story hospital was constructed in 1975 and found itself in bankruptcy in 2005 due to heavy financial losses operating. Since 2005, it was left abandoned before being snapped up by its current owner, a NY healthcare group, in 2014,  who will be reopening it as a 280-bed nursing home facility. It seems nursing facilities are on the rise in New York City. Another abandoned church in another borough is also up for demolition to make way for a nursing facility.


During its demolition work, workers were bilked out of $100,000 in wages when the contractor, Andrew Miller, promised workers $14-20 hourly wages and benefits. None of it was found to be true before being prosecuted for fraud by the Brooklyn DA. St. Mary's primarily served the poor and uninsured but could not sustain its yearly $10 million capital needs and losses any further in 2005. Unfortunately, St. Mary's Hospital is no longer abandoned and another one bites the dust from inactive to active. 

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