John Bulmer Photography + Media Development : Blog + Newswire : www.throwingpixels.com: The Ghost Neighborhood

Saturday, January 10, 2026

The Ghost Neighborhood | Restoration Obscura

The Restoration Obscura Photo Feature:
The Ghost Neighborhood
Guilderland's Abandoned Residential District

For a period of time, this anonymous residential ruin read like a dystopian movie set dropped into the heart of one of Albany’s bedroom communities, sitting directly beside the largest mall in the Capital Region. Just beyond the tree line, Crossgates Mall drew roughly ten million visitors a year, while a few hundred feet away an entire neighborhood sat boarded, silent, and slowly dissolving. Homes once built for postwar families were held in corporate suspension, secured but unmaintained, waiting out failed expansion plans, delayed approvals, and the slow recalculation of land value.

This long-form photo essay documents that interval of limbo, when a functioning suburb briefly became something unrecognizable. Ice-laden roofs, unplowed streets, camouflaged plywood, and domestic infrastructure slipping back into landscape reveal how erasure often begins long before demolition. The images trace a form of abandonment driven not by collapse or disaster, but by patience, policy, and time.

You can access the feature on Restoration Obscura or listen in the Substack app.

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Saturday, January 10, 2026

The Ghost Neighborhood | Restoration Obscura