In the spirit of Halloween, the Binghamton University Students in Urban Planning (SUP) club took a tour of an abandoned factory building in Johnson City on Saturday.

The “Victory Building,” located on the corner of Lester Avenue and Helen Drive, opened in 1921 and housed the factory for the Endicott Johnson (EJ) Corporation. EJ started in the Victory Building and made up 30 percent of the nation’s shoe market at the time. The company relocated and stopped working out of Johnson City in the 1970s, and the building was bought by a private owner for car and boat storage, before it was eventually abandoned.

Frank Evangelisti, an adjunct lecturer of urban and regional planning and the director of Broome County planning, has worked closely with SUP. The Victory Building is currently owned by Broome County, and will be up for auction. According to Evangelisti, the building may be of interest to BU as it is in close proximity to the new pharmacy school.

“I think it’s important for people to see these abandoned buildings before they become something. People see these beautifully redone buildings and don’t realize how far they’ve come,” Evangelisti said. “With the interest that the University has seen in Johnson City, this will definitely be a hot property in the upcoming years.”

Nathaniel Schwartz, the current president of SUP and a senior double-majoring in financial economics and geography, said he thinks that it’s important for students to understand the history of the buildings in Binghamton and the surrounding area.

“We want to get Binghamton students more involved and aware of the physical infrastructure of the city of Binghamton,” Schwartz said. “We like to get them interested in redevelopment and other acpects of urban planning. We thought it would be cool to open a building that used to serve as a huge manufacturing site.”

The eight-person tour was allowed to go up to the third floor of the building, as any floors above are not safe or stable enough to sustain the weight. The building has grooved floors from years of water damage and many holes in the walls and windows.

Alejandra Lee, a sophomore majoring in computer science, went on the tour expecting to see an empty and bare old building, but saw a lot more than that.

“The building was so full of history,” Lee said. “Signs were still intact and old-time looking bathrooms were still all around. We even found a pile of magazines, pictures and CDs from the 80s and 90s.”

According to Schwartz, this was a good opportunity for students to see a bit more of the surrounding area than they might have previously.

“Binghamton has such a rich history in manufacturing, and I think it’s really important to make students aware of the city that they work in, live in and play in,” Schwartz said. “We thought this would be a cool thing to do during this time of year.”