Dark Dogma Church, USA

The Dark Dogma Church is over 120 years old, it has been abandoned for 20 years. The church was built in an imposing Gothic (Gothic Revival) architectural style, with a tall looming vaulted ceiling. The hall is lined with brightly coloured stained-glass windows, imported from Germany and made by the finest craftsmen of the time.

The old convent was converted into a girls school at the turn of the 20th Century. The school taught practical skills such as sewing cooking dressmaking, as well as arts such as painting and music. The church was struck by lightning a few years later, starting a fire destroying almost everything. The church was repaired, and rose from the ashes.

The church closed in the early 1990s, as the number of parishioners dwindled. This decline was in response to the mass exodus of the local population in response to closure of the steel mills, which were one of the main employers in this city. This church merged with five other churches in the area to form a new congregation at another premesis.

In the mid-1990s a nondenominational church purchased the building and the old school for less than $100,000. Full repairs have been estimated to potentially cost up to $5m to fully restore the church. They planned to turn the site into a charter school, but seemingly these plans have evaporated. Repeated break-ins and ransacking by burglars mean the church is now a cavernous, empty void. Items were taken over state lines and sold on the antiques black market and via auction houses, these customers likely unknowingly receiving stolen property. The owners let the empty church fall into neglect, losing interesting in replacing boards that would only be torn off again.
The church is now in a very sorry state, covered with garish graffiti and tags.

The church was also used for filming scenes in the cult 1998 movie, Dogma.