Concrete City
Pennsylvania
Just outside Nanticoke, Pennsylvania, a curious ghost town sits in the woods: twenty-two concrete duplex houses, abandoned since nineteen twenty-four, still standing because no one can tear them down.
The Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad built Concrete City in nineteen eleven to house elite workers at its nearby Truesdale coal colliery. Designers called it the Garden City of the Anthracite Region. Residents got electric streetlights, sidewalks, tennis courts, a baseball field, and a concrete swimming pool. The catch: only a select group of the colliery's workers qualified for a house.
When the Glen Alden Coal Company took over, they saw no reason to maintain it. They tried to demolish the houses, but the reinforced concrete proved indestructible. So they simply walked away. The Garden City has been an eerie, forest-reclaimed ruin ever since.
