What Does 'Sealed' Mean? When a Building Gets Closed Up

A “sealed” building is one whose openings have been closed off with boards, steel plates, cinder block or welded doors so it can’t be entered. Sealed isn’t the same as locked. A locked building still has a way in for someone with a key. A sealed one has had the way in removed. My rule is short: sealed means leave it alone. Everything on this page is entertainment, not legal advice, and there’s no section here on getting past a seal.

Who seals a building, and why?

Somebody with a reason, often with a deadline. In city paperwork the word isn’t “sealed.” It’s “secure,” or “board-up.”

Cities. Chicago’s Department of Buildings says a vacant building must be registered within 30 days and tells owners to “Secure all openings to prevent unlawful entry.” If an owner doesn’t, the City can “obtain authority to board-up or demolish the building,” according to its Vacant Buildings FAQ. The department’s rules set fines at $500 to $1,000 per offense, and each day is a separate offense. A business building counts as vacant once “substantially all lawful business operations have ceased,” so a closed shop is on the clock too.

Illinois law backs the city up. A municipality can ask a court for authority to “demolish, repair, or enclose” dangerous and unsafe or abandoned buildings, with the cost becoming a lien on the property. In its abandoned property cases the statute also lets a city seek “the appointment of a receiver or other equitable relief to correct the conditions at the property” (65 ILCS 5/11-31-1). A receiver is someone a court appoints when an owner or bank can’t or won’t fix a building. In Chicago’s program, HUD USER says, the receiver does the repairs the court orders, and the cost goes back to the owner or is recorded as a lien on the title.

The city also wants to know who’s responsible. Owners of registered vacant buildings have to post a sign with their name, phone number and registration number, renew the registration every six months, and keep the property maintained and visited. A sealed building usually has a paper trail behind it, and someone is paying for it.

Owners and insurers. Owners seal to follow those rules, and sometimes because an insurance policy requires it. One insurer’s vacant building endorsement posted by a Massachusetts town makes it “a condition of coverage” that windows, doors and passageways “are and shall remain fully secured and protected from all forms of unauthorized entry.”

How are buildings sealed?

Here are the four from the definition.

Boards. Plywood over the doors and windows is the quick option, and Chicago’s rules treat it as temporary, with an initial six months and anything longer only with the Department of Buildings’ prior approval.

Panels. The same rules name steel panels and polycarbonate as approved coverings.

Block. They also allow masonry or concrete, which they describe as exceeding “the durability and reliability” of the other options. That’s where cinder block comes in. It’s the permanent end of the scale.

Welds. Steel doors welded shut.

The method is a clue to how long the building is expected to sit. Boards say months. Block and steel say longer.

What happens to a building after it’s sealed?

For explorers, a seal is usually the end of a location. The way in is gone, and the building waits on a decision from an owner, a city or a court.

Sometimes the decision is to reuse it. Sometimes it’s demolition. Chicago’s page lists “board-up or demolish” in the same breath, and the Illinois statute is titled “Demolition, repair, enclosure, or remediation.” HUD USER’s case study of Chicago’s program says some buildings can’t be saved and have to be demolished.

The reasoning is safety, and it’s blunt. In April 2012 a wall collapsed at a fire in a vacant, abandoned factory complex in Pennsylvania, killing a lieutenant and a firefighter and injuring two others. The report called the building deteriorated, not secured and considered abandoned. NIOSH, the CDC’s workplace safety institute, wrote that “The best way to prevent vacant building fires is to prevent vacant buildings,” and that local authorities should “have programs in place to address abandoned building abatement and demolition.” A seal is the first step in that process, not the last.

Why does sealed mean leave it alone?

It comes straight from the code. Leave every place exactly as found. A seal is part of how a place was found. Breaking one is damage, and damage isn’t footprints.

A seal is also somebody’s decision. In Chicago it’s a legal requirement with a daily fine behind it. Some buildings are closed up because they’re unsafe. The Illinois statute covers “dangerous and unsafe buildings” along with abandoned ones. A seal tells you nothing about what’s behind it, and no action cam and no flashlight changes that.

The French mansion post has a small version, a doorway in a boy’s room that’s been “cut into the wall and sealed.” Somebody closed that opening on purpose. Closed doesn’t always mean unwatched, either. Kentucky Speedway’s gates are locked, and the Gallatin County sheriff has said the property is not abandoned, WHIO reported. If you want the longer version of how I find places and stay safe, it’s in my guide, How to Find Abandoned Places.