Famous Abandoned Places in Indiana

The best known abandoned places in Indiana are a mix of Gary’s big steel era buildings, an old state hospital in Indianapolis and a car factory in South Bend, and almost all of them are documented in news reports, preservation groups’ lists and city plans. Five of them are the City Methodist Church, Gary’s Union Station, Gary Roosevelt High School, Central State Hospital and the Studebaker plant.

I only list places that are already famous and publicly documented, and every fact here links to its source. I never list or hint at the locations of my own spots, and I won’t give them out. This is entertainment and general information, not legal advice, and none of these places is a reason to go looking for a way in. Most are owned, fenced or under active plans.

City Methodist Church, Gary

It’s one of the most reported on ruins in Gary, and it’s about to be torn down. The Chicago Sun-Times reports that it was once the largest Methodist church in the Midwest, at 577 Washington Street, and closed in 1975. In September 2026 the paper said the Northwest Indiana Regional Development Authority awarded a demolition contract to Homrich Wrecking, with an estimated cost of $5.3 million, after a $4.2 million stabilization plan never found a funding partner. FOX 32 quoted Indiana Landmarks saying the church “really does right now present a safety hazard.”

I wrote the full history in City Methodist Church in Gary, Indiana.

It isn’t the only Gary landmark on the way out. The Sun-Times says the Genesis Convention Center is also slated for demolition, and that the Gary Water Tower and Gary Memorial Auditorium were both demolished in 2020. FOX 32 adds that plans to repurpose City Methodist, including a ruins park and saving part of the structure, never materialized because fundraising wasn’t enough and the city found the cost unfeasible. When people ask why a famous ruin wasn’t saved, that is usually the answer in the paperwork, and it comes down to money rather than interest.

Union Station, Gary

The train station has outlasted the trains. PBS NewsHour reported that it was built in 1910 with steel reinforced concrete, four years after Gary was founded, and closed in the early 1970s. A nonprofit called Decay Devils acquired it in 2018 for $10. The group estimates at least $6 million is needed to make it functional, with plans for a visitors center, a cafe and space for local vendors and artists.

PBS counted some 10,000 abandoned buildings in Gary and said the city has lost more than half its population since the 1960s, which the report attributes to fewer steel jobs and white flight. The poverty rate is nearly three times the national rate.

That context matters, because the building lost its purpose along with the jobs and people around it. The same idea is in what is urban decay.

Gary Roosevelt High School

This one is on a national endangered list. Lakeshore Public Media reported on May 1, 2024 that the National Trust for Historic Preservation put it on its list of America’s 11 most endangered historic places. The school was built in 1930 and, in the Trust’s words, “built specifically to serve the educational needs of Black Americans in the Jim Crow era.” It is one of just three high schools in Indiana built for that purpose, and at its peak it held more than 3,000 students.

It closed in 2019 after damage from burst pipes. Restoration is estimated at more than $20 million. A coalition that includes the Gary East Side Community Development Corporation, the National Gary Theodore Roosevelt Alumni Association and Indiana Landmarks’ Black Heritage Preservation Program is exploring future uses, and Gary Mayor Eddie Melton called the school “the epicenter of Black excellence.”

Burst pipes in a closed building are the same water problem I describe in what is still water, just on a much bigger scale.

Central State Hospital, Indianapolis

It was a state hospital for almost 150 years, and parts of it are still being redeveloped. Indiana Public Media says it opened in 1848 as the Indiana Hospital for the Insane, with five patients in a single brick building on Washington Street, and closed in 1994. Inside INdiana Business reported in October 2024 that it housed more than 2,500 patients at its 1950s peak, and that the city bought the roughly 150 acre property about a decade after it closed.

Redevelopment started in 2011 with a 144 unit affordable apartment complex called The Steeples. Developer Reverie Estates later converted the 1938 administration building and an 1899 event center into micro offices, creative studios and co living spaces. The city put three more buildings out for proposals, including a powerhouse built in 1886. A structural assessment cited a 2023 partial collapse and a 2016 fire, and said full restoration could cost up to $10 million.

It’s a good example of how long a campus can take to come back. The state hospital closed in 1994, and the city was still taking proposals on its leftover buildings 30 years later.

The Studebaker plant, South Bend

It was the end of a car company and a big piece of a city’s payroll. The Associated Press said the company shut down its South Bend assembly line in 1963. According to another AP story, news of the closing broke on December 9, 1963, production ended on December 20, and about 7,000 people worked for Studebaker in South Bend at the shutdown, roughly 8 percent of St. Joseph County’s employment. The company had employed more than 22,000 people in South Bend in 1950.

The building outlived it. The Journal Gazette reported in 2015 that for decades the unheated building was used mostly for leased storage of cars, boats and industrial supplies, and that asbestos and much of the PCB removal was complete. Workers found about 100 barrels of oil or lubricant based hazardous materials in the basement, and the city paid about $26,838 to remove them. By July 2017 the AP described the 94 year old plant as largely abandoned and unused for decades, with a $7 million facade project funded half by the state and half by the city, as part of a mixed use technology center expected to cost more than $150 million over more than 10 years.

If you want the hazards explained, those are in asbestos in abandoned buildings and PCBs and old transformers.

How do preservation groups track these places?

Indiana Landmarks keeps a list. Its 10 Most Endangered announcement from August 18, 2025 included College Hall at the Merom Camp and Retreat Center, Kiwanis Field in La Porte, the Mineral Springs Hotel in Paoli and the West Side Recreation Club in South Bend, among others. The page says places on the list often face combined problems such as abandonment, neglect, dilapidation, obsolete use, development pressure or owners lacking repair funds.

What does this look like in practice?

I’m only linking two of my own Indiana videos. One is Abandoned Football Stadium in Gary, Indiana (Gilroy Stadium), because the title already names the place. The other is a bus.

I also found an abandoned bus on the side of a road somewhere in Indiana. We had no service, so I never knew where it was. That’s the opposite of everything on this list. A bus in the woods has no paper trail, and a state hospital has almost 150 years of one.

How I research a building before I decide whether it’s worth documenting is in how to research an abandoned building and my $9.99 PDF, How to Find Abandoned Places.

Every place on this list has a paper trail, and that is the only kind I’ll name.