Abandoned Ames Store, Binghamton, New York, USA, 2010

This is an abandoned Ames store, which if I'm not mistaken is in Binghamton, NY. It really is a sign of the times when a semi-big-box store like Ames goes out of business. Ames was successful throughout the Northeastern and Midwestern U.S. from the 1950's through the 1990's, but eventually went out of business in 2002, in spite of having absorbed competitors like Zayre...

www.flickr.com/photos/jarchie/3468192709/

In my area, most of the Ames stores of the 1990's had been Zayre stores in the 1980's. The fate of the company's old properties remains undetermined for the moment, although when I call this store "abandoned," I mean by the owner. I'm sure that there's someone somewhere who owns it and still wants to rent it out.