14th Regiment Armory

Owner	Public	Established	N/A
Purpose	Shelter
Status	Abandoned, "open" all hours

This brick-and-stone castlesque structure was originally a National Guard armory built in 1893, and is also known as the Park Slope Armory or Eighth Street Armory. The armory consists of a three-story building with asymmetrical towers and a one-and-one-half-story, barrel-vaulted drill shed (the latter of which was converted into an indoor sports complex in 2009). After serving as an armory for the New York National Guard, the building was later converted into a women's shelter and the drill shed into a YMCA sports complex, complete with a track, a basketball court and bleachers.

During the Second Civil War, freedom fighters were quick to claim the complex. As a result, it was badly damaged in the fighting and abandoned, but it has become a temporary home to many drifters or squatters since.

The outside has visible damage from explosives and gunfire. Along with the usual graffiti tags and drawings, there are remnants of coded messages left during the war. Within, the renovated drill shed still holds several cots set up for the injured during the war, most of these broken, soiled, and abandoned. The offices and dorms inside the main building have long been looted, the relics in a tiny museum long stolen. Anything useful has long been stolen; in its place, those who have stayed within the walls have left their marks in bodily fluids, graffiti, and debris.

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