Forgotten.

The images shown below are a mix from my visits to the Woodhaven Learning Center in Columbia, Missouri, and Shamel Manor just outside of Petersburg, Illinois. Although these establishments are long gone and long forgotten, remnants of each still remain today. Woodhaven was a place that focused on helping children with developmental disabilities for almost thirty years before closing their doors in the early nineties. These grounds were once home to over two hundred children, adolescents, and adults with developmental disabilities such as behavior disorders, down syndrome, and all forms of autism. However, these buildings, remnants and memories slowly deteriorate into nothingness. The organization has continued to evolve and expand their work to help those affected individuals as well. Still, this place that might’ve once felt like home to some, will continue to decay away, while still holding onto little pieces of what used to be.

Shamel Manor on the other hand, was much more mysterious and harder to find details on. This establishment was a much, much smaller facility, that housed children and adolescents in numbers closer to thirty than two hundred. It had many different wings and areas for all the different age groups of children that would have been housed there. The one thing that persisted throughout basically every area of the manor, were major signs of mental health issues. With deteriorated places like these, graffiti or forms of vandalism are not out of the question. But this place didn’t have very much of those things. Instead, there would be writing on the walls, not showing an expression of art, but showing a deeply troubled mind. In certain areas, nature would be reclaiming the grounds that the manor sits on. It is unclear what, if anything will ever be done to the grounds, but to me continuing to let nature do its thing is not the worst end to the story. For all of the remnants of the lost and trapped minds that occupied this place for so many years, there still lives on a sense of hope. Hope that if done properly, one can always escape the darkest parts of the mind. Hope that tomorrow will be better if you keep going.