I loved to spend time in the Hamm’s caves in my teen years. It was cold, wet, but it felt familiar and had its share of surprises.
history under ground
brickwork
Beds line a basement room that is part way between the concepts of inside and outside. Boards and bricks were falling while I was photographing it—stay out.
I like to imagine this as fountain.
One of the few doors.
In the barracks.
The side stairs were worn smooth by use.
Steam pipes squirm around the stacks.
My favorite shot of the 17-story Art Deco office tower attached to the train station.
The great entrance to the Service Building shows the detail once present in the old hospital.
A window for light and air pokes above the big arch in the hallway. Most of the interior ceilings were broad brick archways.
Small rooms in the basement of the asylum were seemingly too tiny to be used, even for storage.
Sarah below Cascade Park. This space was destroyed when the park flooded.
I love this original brick archway, near the narrow gauge shop. Gorgeous!
An iron gate separates vaults below the barracks.
Carvings on the back of a barracks building.
Global Trading remarked the building in the mid-60s, but far above the door is the old ‘Detroit Shipbuilding’ paint, though it’s faint nowadays.
Don’t know what’s heavier… the bricks or shadows.
The top of the giant arched windows facing the Mississippi and the swing bridge.
The substation has definite structural issues. Pictured is the sidewalk that connected the plant to the company housing.
Bells are highly symbolic, being used from everything from calling worshipers in the morning to exorcising demons at night.
It’s not hard to see how Germany could turn these into a prison overnight.
A typical room in the barracks, reinforced from mortars and light shelling, possibly.
The boilers are gone, but round brick portals remain where they used to meet the walls of the boiler room. Behind it appears to be the coal bunker itself.
From a distance (here, Union Yards), you can still see ARMOUR spelled out on the smokestack in white brick.
A delivery alley that cuts straight into the middle of the brewery complex.
In the power house corner is this gratuitously gigantic doorway. It used to be even bigger, too, as indicated by the brick arch another foot over the top windows.
At this junction where Brewery Creek gets a breath of fresh air stands a kid holding a paintbrush: a Banksy (famous graffiti artist) ripoff.
Looking into the coke batteries in the extant oven… chunks of coke are still hanging from the inner walls, despite the exterior’s wrecking ball pummeling.