A fireproof room in the basement, perhaps for ammunition storage at one time.
history under ground
chairs
2015. Water damage hastens the decay of the annex and its stage. Every time I visit this room, the chairs are in different places. Kodak Portra 400 in a Voigtlander Bessa.
Pocket door and light switches in the upper control room, at the top of the spiral staircase.
This chair burned in the 2005 arson that gutted this building, which is the oldest on the property.
It’s a straight view from the projection booth to the stage, but hell of a walk. At a fast pace, I think it would take 10 minutes to walk from this spot to the chair. Behind the curtains is a big white screen, so the theatre could be used for either stagework or moving pictures. The two projectors are set up for 3D movies right now–hence the little switch below the window–a Polaroid 3D synchronizer. Cool, huh?
Though the proscenium went through two overhauls (1940s, 1970s), it is almost totally original to the 1916 design.
A blue chair in a blue room
The primitive chair caught the falling plaster.
When you’re incoming’s piling up with paint chips, what’s one to do? Call in a sick?
The second floor in the smaller house, which was a bit smaller than the Head Keeper’s house.
Where the workers would rest their feet and clean their plates.
Part of the hotel where employees slept and spare bed parts were stored.
Chairs facing the stage in the old cafeteria. Fuji FP100c in Fuji GX680.
This is the far interior of the hotel, where the darkness made the shag carpet seem to move whenever the trees outside swayed. That is to say, constantly.
The main floor of the hospital was crammed with furniture.
From the back of the house, looking at a lone chair on stage. From these seats it’s amazing to me that such a giant theater existed out of sight in the middle of downtown.
As if they were planning to move the furniture out of the hospital, it all sits in the main hallway in the ground floor.
In the corner of the foundry, this lunchroom was literally collapsing under one small leak in the roof. Tile by tile the water ate away the ceiling. Note the clock.
Someone’s abandoned to-do list.
This section of the hospital recently collapsed.
One of my favorite pictures of the tunnel. I am holding a bike rim and wearing a headlamp. My friend triggered the flash just behind my lower back. The fog is a temperature inversion at the entrance of the tunnel; it was 102 degrees outside of the tunnel and about 50 degrees inside, and humid.
The new dining room is still set up for the Twelve Step meetings that took place here a few years ago.
The perfect place to have a post-industrial picnic.
The balcony used to be beautiful, you say. I say, it still is.
One of two control towers that reached over the lake. The control panel here was used to move the conveyors over the ship’s hold doors, adjust flow of the taconite, and so on.
Camera: Pentax 67. Film: Kodak Ektar 100.
…when injection molding was the new thing that everyone was experimenting with.
The private bathroom for the staff in this building was simple. As blue paint peels away from the yellow undercoat, islands emerge and grow.
The stage had two pianos. Did they ever duel?
The Hamm-stenciled chairs are all destroyed as far as I know, now, as are the custom ladders built in-house for the company. Taken between the Filter House and Keg Wash House.
There’s a chair in there… on the auditorium balcony.
Looking out of the boarded windows in the Great Western Sugar office.
A scene on the balcony.
Hard to find your seat when it doesn’t know its own name.
The well-worn chair in one larry’s operator cab, next to an overgrown coke battery.
This seems to be the space where upholstery patterns would be drafted. On the table were half-finished notes on a new design.
“Place Tripod Here” my friends would say. But for me, it’s the money shot. Note the painting around the inside of the skylight.
The chair tried to leave, but found it had grown heavy with the weight of water and wood. Today, it shelters the mice and maggots.
Part of the historical hospital was walled off with glass block.
Looking up at the remodeled projection booth from the small stage.
A green chair in a green room.
Behind one of the kitchens is one of the few pieces of furniture remaining. Beside it, a small electric space heater–small by 1970s standards.
This is my favorite wallpaper in the whole hotel.
The man behind the curtain watches, but doesn’t say anything. Probably the smartest one in the room.
In the nurses’ dormitories, beds, couches and chairs still sit. It’s unclear whether these are remnants of the homeless shelter in the 80s or the actual nurses.
Seating in the former top balcony is now front row for a secondary stage above and behind the main house.
A closeup of the finely-carved seats in the house, presumably original to the Sattler. There are not too many of these in this kind of condition. If you have a better name for this figure than Cordelia, leave a comment.
Plaster doesn’t last long without a roof.
Lacy hated playing for people. She wanted to make the piano speak back to her, not make people stare.
On the ground floor of the main factory there seems to be only one chair left.
Below the main stage are some of the older (I will guess 1940s) theater seats, along with an assortment of old screens.
Mismatched chairs in a patient room.
The last wooden school chair survives—almost intact—by being jammed between a pipe and the ceiling of the boiler room.