Originally conceived as an examination of the rise and fall of the defunct state hospital system, Philadelphia photographer Matthew Christopher's award winning website Abandoned America rapidly grew to encompass derelict factories and industrial sites, schools, churches, power plants, hospitals, prisons, military installations, hotels, resorts, homes, and more. Through his collection of writing and photography, Christopher has spent the last decade documenting the ruins of one of the greatest civilizations the world has ever known: our own. The locations presented are the monuments to America's great ambition and crumbling future. They are the remnants of a nearly forgotten past. They are some of America's last standing vestiges of our industrial age, the buildings that put our forefathers to work.

Now, broken and ruined, these places are documented in Christopher's book, Abandoned America: The Age of Consequences. Exploring sites like the charred remains of the Hotel Do De, the rusted cells of the Essex County Jail Annex, the majesty of the Church of the Transfiguration, or the eerie and dilapidated remnants of the New Castle Elks Lodge, the work spans architectural treasures left to the elements and then all too often lost forever.