BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAYA Small Town Mayor Invites Street Artists to Revive His Abandoned Town – Swoon and Others Heed the Call.
By Salome Oggenfuss
An abandoned church now referred to as "Transformazium" by Street Artist Swoon and some friends who recently purchased it for renovation in Braddock, PA. (photo © Salome Oggenfuss)
Artist and photographer Salome Oggenfuss recently took a trip from Bushwick, Brooklyn to visit the town of Braddock, Pennsylvania. She invites us to take a look at the beautiful work she found on the streets there, and to consider moving.
Braddock is a small town about a half hour drive outside of Pittsburgh in the Pennsylvania “Rust Belt”. In its heyday in the 1970s, the town used to boast about 20,000 residents, but when the steel industry started collapsing soon after, people moved away. The crack epidemic in the 80s further diminished the town’s population, and nowadays only about 3,000 people are left in Braddock and almost half of the town’s buildings are unoccupied.
A view inside an abandoned house. (photo © Salome Oggenfuss)
A view inside an abandoned house. (photo © Salome Oggenfuss)
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