In the ward for the criminally insane, this door was the most-worn. Nail scratches mark the area around the peep hole, the wood is gouged everywhere from thrown chairs and hard kicks, and a ominous blood-colored stain is visible where it dripped in the second inset from the bottom. Aside from the damage, the coloring in this section was very vibrant, though it was probably little reprieve for those who had to work here.
Shag carpet is fabulous, and I hope it makes a comeback.
A wimpy crane by most standards, only suitable for moving around parts of steam turbines.
It’s pretty unusual to find a fireplace like this in the midst of a factory.
Part of an ongoing series on found American flags in shuttered factories.
A steel powder keg serves as a door prop on the static-proof wood core floor. Note the ‘XXX’ marking to the left of the double door.
The steam plant at Nopeming is an iconic (and crooked) smokestack. Kodak Pro 400 on a Fuji GX680.
I am not sure, but I think this section was a storehouse; it has two ramps that connect the rail yard outside and the blacksmith shop. On all of the historic doors that face that part of the yard, signs caution workers to look out for cars…
The piano must have been a nice distraction; there is very little to do in Roberts.
Presumably, in a nuclear blast the antenna would be blown flat and pop back up, allowing communication even after a near-direct hit.
Upper Prize Street in Nevadaville earned the nickname ‘dogtown’ when a pack of dogs took over the abandoned houses.
The building collapsed except for the back room. The slats of the roof cast lines of light across the floor.
Different doors for different vehicles, I would guess. White Pine Mine used tire-based vehicles, rather than track-based, making it pretty different than other mines I’ve been to.
Looking to the chapel addition from the Chateau.
The mostly-empty distilling room is easy to spot from the outside because of the distinctive round window.
Sleeping bags mark this former courtyard as a crash pad for the local homeless.
A warped mirror in the rock crusher at the rear of the complex.
Rocket propellant and coolant were stored underground adjacent to the missile silo. This is the hallway that connects the missile area to the propellant area. Walking in this area was nice because the floor was dry.
From the bottom of the skyway I looked back, my eyes tracing the vines from the marsh up the smokestacks to the perfect Midwestern sky.
The blacksmith shop is pretty rugged looking. Through the door you can see the collapsed walkway that might have once connected to a building covering the Santiago Tunnel adit.
Looking at the ghost sign from a rust-locked cement conveyor that linked the silos with a packing warehouse.
As my friend Jonathan would say, “on a human scale.”
2016. A section of the third floor that has changed a lot over the years. Compare to 2006 shot.
The old way to get to the elevator from the mill.
In the ward for the criminally insane, this door was the most-worn. Nail scratches mark the area around the peep hole, the wood is gouged everywhere from thrown chairs and hard kicks, and a ominous blood-colored stain is visible where it dripped in the second inset from the bottom. Aside from the damage, the coloring in this section was very vibrant, though it was probably little reprieve for those who had to work here.
This is one of the biggest warps I’ve ever found in a wooden factory floor hasn’t broken yet. When you stand on it, it make a very loud popping sound as the boards shift. The poster on the pillar near the left side of the frame advertises recreational boating, presumably to the factory workers who left this floor in the early 1980s.
Looking through a launcher doorway at an outbuilding… the fire truck garage, if I recall correctly. Fomapan medium format in Pentax 67.
Hunter and the Hoist House.
Typical bunk rooms in MS-20.
The old truck scale sits in the middle of what was Nettleton Avenue Slip.
Lost words over the auditorium entrance.
Looking down into the lunch building of an Atlas D, near the motors for the retractable roof. In this design, the roof separates to allow the missile to be erected into launch position.
The last time the city sealed this door, they must have been changing out old road signs.
Note the severed skyway–that led to a set of grain elevators that have since been demolished.
Miscellaneous math and strange instructions remain all across the shipment section walls. Sadly, this section likely fell into disrepair before the others.
A sizable crane on the corner of the engine house still swings out.
A small wood-paneled office for the on-duty keeper to use.
Not ghosts. Slow-moving explorers’ shadows create a ghostly effect in the ‘Old Ward’–the second floor of the Service Building.
The cold air collided with the sun-warmed water on the floor, filling the ground floor of the Keg House with thick fog…
Note the wood and rubber wheels on this powder cart.
Looking into the main workhouse from the skyway into the annex elevator. But who care? Look at the colors!
Gloves hang in the basement of the former quality assurance labs.
Between the Old Crow and Old Taylor bonded warehouses are some of the fouled barrels, now the only ones left, which were left to rot in the elements. Nearby in a loading bay that has obviously been disused longer than the rest of the property, terra cotta roofing waits in crates.
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.
While the maps name this the compressor house, I believe, based on its size and number of heavy machine mounts, that it also housed the pumps to drain the mine.
Almost all of the doors and windows on the ground floor have been boarded, leaving the ground level very dark.
The arches of the Twohy building, before some of the signs and sills were painted in 2015.
A bunk room, minus the bunks.
What you see is not a crack in the floor, but a long vine extending ten feet onto the shop floor, as if reaching in to escape the wind and rain.
An ajar car elevator car afar, technically.
Looking out from what little remains of the second floor at the poor house, which was in terrible condition. No roof and no floors. Soon to be ruins.
This was a living space for the keepers during storms, when it was too dangerous to return to the houses on the point.
The individual ovens are skinny to allow even and fast heating of the whole interior. Numbers are cut into signs because no paint could withstand the heat or corrosive emissions from the coking process.
After climbing the elevator shaft to the illusive second level, a new pallet of colors were revealed.
The floor IS the machine…
My favorite time to be in the brewery was sunrise. That’s the kind of light that made the brewhouse glow.
The curving corridors flanking the Administration Tower are especially ornate, though the prison-like door betrays the real purpose of the building.
The shaft house, where hydraulic steel doors allowed or denied entry into the mine shaft. Overhead is a light and alarm. If it sounds, the mine is being evacuated, and you best not go in and best stay the hell out of the way. Locals dump tires here, now.
This ornamental stair is cast iron and used to connect all floors of the Administration building. Now it connects the first and second floor, then the third and fourth floors, with a strange cinder block and drywall barrier separating the new and old sections of the building. Note the insulation on the floor to seal heat into the lower floors that were used as offices until the hospital closed. On the corners of the staircase are lions, on the corners of the suspended section of stair are down-hanging pineapples. Set in the stairs themselves are shield motifs with slate tops.
One of the storage bunkers was cracked open. I wonder how effective this heavy door would actually be… I expect, not very.
It was a strange choice, although I appreciate it, for the firm reusing the shops to brick up the doorways while leaving the doors.
The sidewalks are littered with rocks.
On the second floor of the kettle building where corn mash was boiled, holes where tanks once sat were everywhere.
Office manners dictate that one must tip their file drawer back upright once it is knocked through the wall.
The side of Stelco and its scrubber-stacks. This is demolished now.
A storm passes over BOMARC’s center row of launch buildings. You can clearly see the tracks on which the roof would retract for launch.
One thing I like about the oppressive globalist-wrought future is the idea of numerically subdividing spaces; my geek side sort of wants to live in a flat that can be sorted by as Dewey Decimal-like code.
The lower door is where the rocket exhaust would flow into the blast pit during initial launch. The upper doors would vent the rocket so the erector and other equipment in the building would not be (as) damaged.
The floor in this building (now demolished) was very rotten. This picture was taken through a window from very firm ground.
At sunset the light skips from puddle to stagnant puddle across the whole foundry room, playing with the classic sawtooth roof with half-hearted shadows.
A heavy steel rail door to help funnel explosions upward, rather than outward.
This is one of my favorite doorways (yes, I have favorites) for a few reasons: 1.) You can see how the once-arched door has been squared-off for rectangular doors to fit; 2.) you can see one complete historic door and one ruined door, and the chain that used to hold them together before someone kicked-out the security, and; 3.) I like the texture of the bricks and design of the radiators in the room beyond–the blacksmith shop. Just do.
The grain-centric buildings had automatic fire doors.
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.
This picture shows all three areas of the substation. In the foreground is the transformer room, the tallest space. The darker room in the middle is the motor generator room. The room at the end through the door is the control room and office area.
An elevator to bring big somethings into the basement, it seemed. Nearby were the plant firetrucks, still ready to go. I hope they were saved.
An unintentional skylight makes the inside of the office glow, showing the inside of the front door and its strange lock.
Gaskets still organized on nails beside the power plant. This used to be a maintenance room, but since its roof and walls were torn down, it’s not any kind of room.
The Blacksmith Shop (right) was connected to the Bunk House (left) via this narrow walkway. This is likely due to the fire risk in each building. The left building had a cooking stove and furnace for heat and the right building had a small industrial furnace to repair mining equipment. A little walkway would mean that a fire on one side would be easier to fight from the other.
The historical entrance.
A rare door left on the workhouse. The stairs to the left led down into a flooded basement. Kodak Portra 160/Mamiya 6.
A big door into the fire pump room.
Aaron by the concentrator.
Glowing observation windows–and someone forgot to lock a patient’s door…
The entrance to the area where staff could sleep.
A few of the stalls in the older section of the roundhouse, the noon sky peeking in.
This used to be one of the office doors, but it’s been removed (apparently without malcontent) and placed in the shop area.
A photo from my first trip, although very little has changed in this area of the building except for the level of graffiti. I love skylights, don’t you?
A decaying door of the Medical Director for the unit. Because this is from one of the outbuildings and not Administration, I doubt that this was the Medical Director of Norwich State Hospital’s office.
There’s a roof problem above the surgical suite.
A common room with a big bay window that overlooked the main entrance of the hospital.
Like many mill-style buildings of the time, the Twohy’s loading doors (in this case, the delivery wagon doors) opened to an elevator shaft. This design cut down on loading time, as long as the elevator was operational. Of course, if it was otherwise occupied, there could be no traffic through the exterior doors!
A small stage in one of the barracks.
Dr. Muchow’s offices stand near his ‘new’ mill, but they show evidence of vandalism.
Many of the higher floors were more or less demolished–usually more. These would have been condos had ‘The Arcade’ project come to fruition. Now there are simply wide open floors punctuated only by pillars and meaningless hallways.
Before each warhead was crated, it was inspected.
The small door leads to the offices, the large door leads to the shop. My back at this time is to the corrugated steel wall. At the time I wondered why there was just one steel wall, not knowing that 40 years before there was another spot for an engine here. This section of the roundhouse has become a sort of town dump–car seats, cans of paint and tires are piled into its corners.
Gary Methodist was a filmset for Transformers 3 in 2010.
Looking across the catwalk attache to the elevated control room, in charge of the train dumping part of the operation.
One of Martinsdale’s defunct businesses perpendicular to the depot. Recall that Martinsdale is a T-town.
A blue chair in a blue room
I wanted to see the third floor to get a better view, but the third floor had already been demolished. The old walls had cascaded down the staircases. This building is gone, now, as you can expect.
Sharks in the floor.
Originally, this part of the dock was reserved for the weather station.
A portrait of the second school of McConnell, built in 1937.
After demolition in the mid 2000s, this interior door became exterior. I remember walking through the car shed as a teenager. It was a shortcut, if I didn’t get caught.
The end of one of the scrapped turbines. Judging by the aborted attempt at cutting it in half, the scrappers had some trouble with this one.
This spiral staircase isn’t doing Lemp much good–maybe they’ll let me have it! I do love, though, that there is a door going to it–without walls–and it ascends to a second floor that doesn’t exactly exist anymore.
The elevator tower seems to have been built with expansion of the dock in mind.
A side door for the shop area with ivy crawling toward it.
Connecting the Administration Building to the wards fanning out. Historical photos show cots lining this hallway when the hospital was severely overcrowded. Lit by lightning outside the grounds during a huge thunderstorm.
In the back of the warehouse is the old incinerator, probably used to destroy kegs that could not be reused.
A sheik mustard-yellow paint scheme across the roofless engine house goes great with the industrial moss and rust.
These tubes would bring cement to the top of the plant for storage in the silos.
A corner of the addition is lined with glass cabinets, formerly filled with beds.
The largest room was the diesel laboratories, which tested various devices and fuel additives to make it safer to mine underground with diesel trucks and other machinery, such as at White Pine Mine, Michigan.
Sunrise in the orphanage… between classrooms and whispers.
The right passageway is a carved staircase that winds upward to an old entrance. The left portal is one of the bigger and well-carved rooms… I would guess it’s part of the original caves.
A typical room in Birtle.
On the extended engine bay…
A window for light and air pokes above the big arch in the hallway. Most of the interior ceilings were broad brick archways.
A skyway 100 feet above this office crumbled one day. This is what happened when those two met. High-impact love.
A broken window looking through the First Aid Room and into the Control Room in charge of directing grain into ships. You can see one of the large conveyors on the right, clad in green. Chutes and staircases intertwine seemingly randomly through the big empty spaces.
A bathroom in the rear of the ballroom that overlooks the Rose Garden.
A view of the government presses, with pages of law across the floor covered in footprints.
Prize Mine has been the victim of erosion. Its north wall is pushed in by rockfall and its south side is far from ground level.
When Nopeming was affiliated with local farms, it often slaughtered its own livestock. This is the part of the hospital where food would be prepped, below the stage in the Service Building.
Paperwork litters the floors of the zinc mine offices.
A small bunker and blast wall between shell-loading buildings would have provided shelter during disasters, such as tornados, accidental explosions, and perhaps even enemy attacks.
The license plate reads “Farm Truck”.
Standing where the Standard Oil’s boiler used to sit; the coal room is on the right, and would have been filled from trackside.
My first view of the tunnel was in the dead of winter. In spite of being in the middle of the forest, it was totally silent. Mamiya GA645 / Kodak Pro 400
Beautiful doors separated the boiler room and the sugar mill. Can you imagine the gracefully curving steps in a power plant today?
There were a few large houses on the Old Crow property where employees would live. The glen had little housing.
Beautiful details in the plaster moulding have been preserved by the sheer height of this room between the cathedral and auditorium.
The first floor hallway between conference rooms and the diesel lab at the center of the facility
Stairs and power lines enter the abandoned depot. Shingles slide off the rotten roof. Ektar 100/Mamiya 6
The end of the new elevator. Line of bird droppings follow the fire sprinkler pipes and wires in the 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.
I love these heavy rolling doors in the old tobacco processing building.
Tunnels interconnected all of the complex, carrying power, steam, laundry and food throughout the hospital. This is a typical causeway that would have been very busy when the hospital was operating. In some places, signs still point to defunct areas of the hospital.
The stonework was done by a local handyman of sorts, who was also a guard at a nearby insane asylum. He did a great job, it seems to me.
A bumper sticker with the usual tagline. Note the detail on the radiator!
The bottom of the stairs leading from the work floor to the cafeteria.
The bottom of the elevator which seemed too modern for the building. The top of the elevator opens into open air, as the second floor has long since collapsed.
The factory’s first aid room and laboratory. Sure makes me wonder how safe the lab was!
David Aho pictured.
The stone chapel sits beside the main house and received a particularly heavy dose of gothic architectural touches.
Sawdust is the most classic of insulation materials.
The side of the maintenance shops, still home to several disassembled electric carts.
Inside the office was a small furnace and a collection of mechanical belts. You can see “SERVICE AT COST” and “POOL 168” in the background.
An insurance office.
A heavy steel security door, taken right off its hinges. This was likely installed after Grafton State School took over the hospital.
The incinerator’s hardened steel door… useless, but still sexy in a heavy-industrial kind of way.
The new steel door of the diesel car shops, built in 1948 and used through the 1960s, as seen from the service pit. On the top of the photograph you can see the exhaust vent.
A fallen branch smashed out this skylight years ago, and since then the bees have found this tiny toilet a perfect home. This is part of the hotel where employees slept.
In this section of the Men’s Ward, sealed by brick from lower floors, the room doors had messages painted in their inside–some motivational, some not. I would be interested to hear if anyone knows the backstory of this section. Lighting is natural; it was just after sunset.
A damaged roof channeled rain onto the adobe walls, cutting them in half. In the distance, a preserved house and the ruins of the Colmor School.
In most places, it may seem off for there to be a tunnel door on the top floor of a building, but Ford was that kind of place. This door from the steam plant led into a skyway and tunnel that connected to the main assembly floor.
Outside the locker room without the sandwiches and beer… plenty of glass shards, though, if you feel like it.
I believe this is the push car, meaning it would push the charge in the oven out the opposite side into the train car.
A side door on the rear of the castle that let guests out into a small stone courtyard below a tall turret.
A facade that tells the story of demolition and neglect. The sign on the garage door indicates that if one finds themselves there, that they enter the buildings at their own risk. If only property owners in the US took this philosophy!
Inside the main entrance is a whiteboard and mirror, then it branches into discrete spaces.
The doorframes become more askew every year as the buildings slip downward into the gulch at different rates. This seems to be the part of the mine ruins where transients leave their marks. The graffiti dated back to the 1970s, at least.
Pozo Mine, the most menacing mine building I’ve ever seen. Black and white film, shot with the Fuji GX680, a beast of a camera.
Jef throws open the back door of an alley for the trailing photographers and historians.
These stairs lead to the balcony.
The nurse’s station on this floor, a ward still in its original design, featured a half-door where patients could get their medicine. Portra 160.
The offices for the Five Roses elevator have long been boarded. To the left you can see the Manitoba Pool Elevator slogan, “Service at Cost”, meaning they would not make profit off farmers and dues.
Looking into the engine works from the concrete addition.
A series of interconnected offices that look like they hadn’t been painted in 40 years.
The big door at the bottom of the concentrator was where a tram once connected to lower the (pre-) processed ore into the river valley, where the railroad was. It’s unclear whether this ever connected directly to Eureka’s Sunnyside mill, although it’s possible.
Kat’s pretty cool.
The substation has definite structural issues. Pictured is the sidewalk that connected the plant to the company housing.
The back wall of the ballroom, showing water-warped floors.
Hip bump girl.
Perhaps this office was for a film studio or music producer.
Looking through the old brewhouse toward the Keg Wash House.
A typical shower in the old section of the hospital. It looks a little horrifying in the harsh light of a camera flash on the thousands of little white tiles. One soap holder hadn’t been stolen yet.
A look at another “Belt-o-Vator”. I like the sign.
The city has taken steps to prevent the curious and the desperate from going into the elevators, including piling rocks against the doors and windows.
This is what I believe to be the Masonic Cottage, where infected Freemasons would be treated together and enjoy some simple luxuries because of their social connections. Freemasonry is still popular in North Dakota.
The machine shop today.
These houses was built by hard rock miners in the early 1900s.
This is one of my favorite images of the year because of the color, light and textures. Someone told me once that the medium of photographers is not film or digital sensors, but rather shadows. This photo is evidence of that.
The only door into a large windowless concrete room, probably a storage bin. Kodak Portra 160/Mamiya 6.
In the corner of most of the factory floors, freight elevators flanked restrooms to leave more central space for machines and their masters.
The top floor of the Meal Storage Elevator.
Easier-to-demolish parts of the power plant were torched apart. Catwalks to nowhere meant lots of dead ends.
A high-ceilinged room where kegs would be delivered for cleaning, before they were refilled with fresh booze.
This train shed was later converted to load trucks with concrete from the silos.
Redlining is the practice of shutting certain races out of neighborhoods, and it is still a big problem today. Such behaviors were a big factor in creating the need for these projects.
The bathtub fell into the basement, ala The Miller’s Tale. That’s right. Chaucer.
Some of the internal staircases were fitted with cages that wound round down the stairs to deter suicidal patients from taking a dive.
This building would store and maintain warheads. It was right next to the launch pad, but the two were separated by a high mound.
The truck scale is closed at Lena, MB.
The view into one of the asylum rooms of Norwich Hospital. A long time ago, a window broke, letting the vines crawling up the bricks outside to move indoors and across the floor.
An old nurse’s station (you can tell because of the half-door with table) with torn-up tiles. Notice through the curved doorway that even the ceiling has a curvature.
