Urbex - Egged tower - Haifa, Israel
As you saw recently, I started becoming more active here and creating more content, and somehow this adventure — and the photos that came out of this URBEX exploration - never made their way here until now.
Back in late 2018, I explored one of the most mysterious and massive abandoned structures in Israel The old Egged Tower in Haifa.
The building used as a central bus station and office over the station
* photo from Wikipedia, probably taken at early 2000 before the staition was closed
the building was originally built during the late 60s and planed by architects Sharon-Idelson together with Rozov-Freiberger and was very typical for the Brutalistic architectural style
In the mid 2000s, after two new central bus stations were built in - East and North - the Egged Tower, which was once located in the center of the city, was closed, and for almost 20 years it has remained abandoned.
Fun fact - I moved to this city to study architecture, and many of my friends at the faculty took this building as their final project. That fact helped me get the original plans of the building and study its interior out of pure curiosity.
I must say that this building is very iconic in the skyline of.
After a few years, the time finally came for me to explore this building myself. During my studies, I fell in love with studying old buildings that I took as projects.
Some of my friends managed to get into this building before me, but they told me that as time passed it became harder and harder to enter. The site became heavily guarded. Before 2018 you could still reach the ground floor and walk around the bus platforms freely. There were also still some businesses operating in the front facade of the building until around 2015, so people could still walk there.
So with this information, I understood that the guards were mostly focused on the ground floor, meaning I had to avoid them and get as quickly as possible into the tower core and climb through it. My goal was to reach the roof. As I said, I had the plans of the building, so I found a possible route into the tower core from the bus platforms, while also studying alternative ways to reach it in case some entrances were blocked.
The next thing was that the plans I had were the original ones, and if I wanted to reach the roof I had to make sure the plans were still correct and that nothing had changed over the years. So I took my drone and sent it to investigate the roof.
And from this point on, the photos will be mine.
you can see in this photo the roof of the bus platform and the tower over it
So after getting the information and locating some openings on the roof I had a better understanding of the way I need to take
So now comes the day of the actual exploration.
I think it was during a weekend evening. I didn’t really have any plans, and then a friend called me and told me he was nearby and asked if I wanted to do something. I told him I had no plans, but somehow I mentioned my idea of exploring this tower, and he immediately said: “Let’s do it.”
I took my car, picked him up, and we drove toward the tower. After parking nearby, we started walking along the site fence, searching for some kind of opening or hole to get through.
After reaching the far corner of the site, on the opposite side from where we parked, we finally found a hole in the fence. We climbed through it, and just like that, we suddenly found ourselves inside the abandoned site.
This is the place where we found ourselves after entering the site. Somewhere behind the photo there was an old road leading to nowhere, blocked off by the fence - that’s where we climbed through.
In the front of the photo stood the tower we wanted to reach. But near the end of the climbing road leading toward it, there was supposedly a guard station, at least from what I had heard from others before entering the site.
So we started walking quietly and carefully, trying not to make any noise, and somehow we managed to pass the guard without being noticed.
After that, we moved toward the back side of the bus platforms and found a staircase that led us onto the roof of the bus platform itself.
after relaxing on the bus platform roof we went to a tower and mange to find an opening that took us to the tower core
The interior of the building was completely destroyed. The lightweight acoustic ceiling panels were scattered all over the floor, and I even found some old 1.44 floppy disks lying around. There were almost no windows left.
The elevator doors were left wide open, adding even more to the unsettling atmosphere of the place.
Walking through the building at night with only a flashlight felt surreal, almost like being inside some post-apocalyptic video game.
At the end, we finally reached the technical floor, where the ventilation systems and the elevator motors were located.
Finally, I reached the hatch that led to the top roof — the same one I had seen in the original plans and later confirmed with the drone photos.
At that moment, I finally reached my goal of getting to the top roof of the tower.
So the next thing was setting the camera and taking some photos
After reaching and conquering one of my “life goals,” there was nothing better than finishing the adventure with a cold beer
The way back was much easier. From the roof we found a ladder that led directly back to the technical floor instead of having to climb back through the hatch.
We made our way down, avoided the guard once again, and exited through the same hole in the fence that we used to enter the site. And just like that - we were outside again.
And now I’m sharing this night with you almost 10 years later.
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