Rolling Acres Mall - An abandoned Akron, OH mall has been overrun by snow, which seeped through its broken glass ceiling.
The Rolling Acres Mall, once a popular outlet, was permanently closed in October 2008 after it's California based owner filed for bankruptcy. The mall was originally opened in August 1975.
Now, more than 5 years later, the mall is getting a lot of attention - mainly because of the now viral pictures from a local journalist, who captured its snowy state.
24-year-old photojournalist Johnny Joo, a resident of Akron, on Friday posted the pictures of the snow covered atrium of the abandoned 1.3 million-square-foot-mall, which once bustled with activity.
"As most of the glass ceiling has given away, we are left with the very strange scene of winter wonderland staged by nature in the middle of destruction," Joo wrote. "Nature paints a soft and beautiful world into the last place you would expect to see it."
Joo, who hadn't been in the mall for years, said things have changed and he was pleasantly shocked after arriving to find the beautiful scene.
"It's was eerie seeing the destruction in such a strange light,' Joo said."As I always notice, nature has a beautiful way of just wrapping the destruction of abandonment into such a breathtaking scenery, different with every place."
Joo runs an online photo gallery called Architectural Afterlife. He started photographing abandoned buildings and home at 16 simply because he was intrigued of the story behind their present state.
"It's that something has been left behind. It's something you see every day but after a while you come back and it looks post-apocalyptic," Joo said. "You just put stories together and try to figure out what happened to those people when they just seemingly disappeared."
