Floyd Bennett Field: Abandoned

My dude and I recently biked out to Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn. I had visited FBF once before, but we were walking and exhausted after exploring Dead Horse Bay, so we didn't get too far. Floyd Bennett was New York City's first municipal airport. Before JFK and third-world-country LaGuardia came into existence, Amelia Earhart and Howard Hughes were using Floyd Bennett's runways to break records.

FBF is sprawling, as you'd expect an airport to be, and is much better suited to biking than it is to walking. I was already tired and grumpy from our 12-mile ride by the time we arrived, but nothing gives me life like a good abandoned building—luckily, Floyd Bennett has its fair share of good ones. In addition to its life as a airfield, FBF has been home to the Coast Guard and a naval station—today it's controlled by the National Parks Service, as part of the Gateway National Recreation Area.

We came across several abandoned buildings as we rode further into the complex, but I only had the energy to really creep on a few. We didn't go inside of any, and some looked structurally unsafe, but just seeing all of these crumbling structures being overtaken by crawling vines and trees was a thrill. The fact that we couldn't exactly figure out what the buildings had been used for—military dorm housing maybe?—only added to the mystery.

One of the complexes included a picnic area and basketball courts, which made it seem as if we'd wandered into a post-apocalyptic neighborhood where all the inhabitants have suddenly and mysteriously disappeared. Sidewalks were cracked, windows were shattered, doors boarded up, stairs led to nowhere and it was hard to believe that we were still in present-day Brooklyn.