Inside the Abandoned Irem Mosque

Just a block off the busy public square of Wilkes Barre, PA: you’ll find a seemingly abandoned Irem Mosque. Mosque. Funnily enough, though it may look like one right out of the middle east, this mosque had nothing to do with the more common idea as a place of worship for Muslims. Although the arabic calligraphy, the dome and the four columns on each side may fool you, this place was actually founded in the early 1900s by the Shriners, a brotherhood within the Free Masons that held regular meetings and rituals there. The architecture has an orientalist theme just because of the founder’s appreciation for Middle Eastern infrastructure. Over the years, attendance became low and rumors are there have been one too many freak accidents. One highschool student in the area mentioned something about wooden planks falling on a group in the audience and now as we know it, this gorgeous infrastructure remains abandoned for 10+ years now. Name Recent opinion favors the use of the term “Shrine” instead of “Mosque” because of the confusion it creates to an outsider. Further research into the history of the name brought us even further away from clarity. According to legends, Irem was the most beautiful of all earthly paradises which was constructed for King Sheddad, but as soon as it was completed it was struck by the lightning wand of the death angel and was never visible to the eye of man. [Collected from the Shriners website] Inside the Irem Mosque My friend and I sat outside the mosque one gloomy Sunday, watched many visitors pass by to take pictures. The mosque looks super out of place next to the churches and office buildings on N Franklin St. We saw a group of journalists roam around the perimeter, searching for a way in to the fenced off building. All the windows were nailed shut with wood. Some had locks, only one window on the second floor in the back was missing glass. Perhaps by another ambitious venturer. A few minutes later, we watched a group of three highschoolers climb into the upstairs window and we asked them to help us. 30 mins later, we were in. And the eerily cool air inside had left me sleepless for nights. We entered through the basement full of old beds that looked like they were straight out of an asylum, accompanied by the tick-tock of an old clock with an immortal battery. The main auditorium could be accessed from the backstage and we found what seemed to be a lone barber chair in the middle of the stage. The paint was chipping off the walls, plants grew inside the building and slithered their way towards the sun, through pipelines and broken windows. We tiptoed around to find a ladies room, still equipped with a mirror table and dresses. Upstairs, the office rooms had been trashed, tickets to a 1911 Masquerade ball lay in the mess. We walked into the next office room and found an old worn mattress. But something we found there made us hurry our way the basement window. There, by the mattress sat a fresh green apple.