A rare door left on the workhouse. The stairs to the left led down into a flooded basement. Kodak Portra 160/Mamiya 6.
history under ground
doors
Presumably, in a nuclear blast the antenna would be blown flat and pop back up, allowing communication even after a near-direct hit.
The tallest dock structure is an equipment elevator that connects the many dock levels.
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.
A side door on the rear of the castle that let guests out into a small stone courtyard below a tall turret.
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.
My favorite time to be in the brewery was sunrise. That’s the kind of light that made the brewhouse glow.
The only door into a large windowless concrete room, probably a storage bin. Kodak Portra 160/Mamiya 6.
Office manners dictate that one must tip their file drawer back upright once it is knocked through the wall.
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.
Outside the locker room without the sandwiches and beer… plenty of glass shards, though, if you feel like it.
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.
The top floor’s old-fashioned hospital ways were too much to pass without a photo or two… with the paint falling off the walls it was as if the building was shedding its skin in an effort to become rejuvenated or useful.
Mold creeps up the walls of the offices that housed the Closing Team of the TCRC – Twin Cities Research Center – as water damage pulls ceiling tiles down.
A big sliding fire door opens onto a train dock.
Looking through the old brewhouse toward the Keg Wash House.
A bathroom in the rear of the ballroom that overlooks the Rose Garden.
Hip bump girl.
Looking at the ghost sign from a rust-locked cement conveyor that linked the silos with a packing warehouse.
This door used to open at river level, but it has since been built up and sealed with a steel grate. Still, the original doors (with original paint?) stand in the same place. Once they opened to the fresh air, now they are permanently sealed in the tunnels. This is the official entrance for inspecting the mine, hence fiber optic and ladder. Shortly after the plant was demolished, this entire area was resealed and alarmed.
Beautiful details in the plaster moulding have been preserved by the sheer height of this room between the cathedral and auditorium.
These stairs lead to the balcony.
The gauges on left of frame are the steam pressure indicators for the various steam-powered components around the ship, like the steering engine and windlass motors. Below the gauges are a case of tiny wooden parts drawers… note the ancient oiling can on the locker near the upper-right corner of the frame.
Looking across the catwalk attache to the elevated control room, in charge of the train dumping part of the operation.
Looking to the chapel addition from the Chateau.
Some of the internal staircases were fitted with cages that wound round down the stairs to deter suicidal patients from taking a dive.
In the middle of one of the outlying cottages, perhaps the Masonic Cottage–it was too damaged to tell, really–are these pair of skinny doors that led from patient rooms to a common area with rotting shag carpet.
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.
Typical bunk rooms in MS-20.
This miner locker room has probably never been so clean.
Sawdust is the most classic of insulation materials.
The west portal of the tunnel is open, and if it wasn’t for the rough track, I would think by looking at it that a train could be coasting up behind me any moment. Mamiya 6/Portra 160
When I moved from the roof back into the upper floors of the distillery, the plants growing out of the masonry caught my eye. It’s 60 feet up, but looks like it could be an old wall.
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 bumper sticker with the usual tagline. Note the detail on the radiator!
Fire doors separate the buildings.
A typical room in Birtle.
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.
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.
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.
At noon, the lower skylights around the shops glow yellow-green, thanks to the flora blooming on the roof above.
This picture tells half the story about the size of half of the complex. For Port Arthur, it’s average, but this would be a fantastically large elevator if it were anywhere else!
Safety signs decorated every floor, machine and, yes, door. This message spoke to me for reasons my coworkers will understand; suffice to say, I need to take this message to heart.
The wings of the church had a lot more water damage than the rest. The organ on the balcony was in decent condition when I arrived.
The top floor of the Meal Storage Elevator.
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.
These tubes would bring cement to the top of the plant for storage in the silos.
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.
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!
Unloading boats had the option to take on fuel at Taconite Harbor. This building, among other things, pumped fuel to the dock.
Miners would sit in this room before going into the mine. The boards on the right indicated whether every single miner was “in” or “out”.
The roof could be vented when locomotives were running inside.
These houses was built by hard rock miners in the early 1900s.
Glowing observation windows–and someone forgot to lock a patient’s door…
Dr. Muchow’s offices stand near his ‘new’ mill, but they show evidence of vandalism.
In the back of the warehouse is the old incinerator, probably used to destroy kegs that could not be reused.
When ‘men’ meant ‘worker’.
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.
A few of the stalls in the older section of the roundhouse, the noon sky peeking in.
Paperwork litters the floors of the zinc mine offices.
An unplanned skylight. It’s unclear why some parts of the building had wooden roofing, while others were highly reinforced with brick.
Inside the main entrance is a whiteboard and mirror, then it branches into discrete spaces.
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.
Shag carpet is fabulous, and I hope it makes a comeback.
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.
Offices above the labs. Note all the air handling equipment. I love the utilitarian design.
David Aho pictured.
One of my favorite photos of the ADM-Delmar #1 skyway, when it stood. Taken at sunset, with the reflection of the overcast sky in the remaining windows.
A single metal emergency slide rusts away at sunrise.
A wimpy crane by most standards, only suitable for moving around parts of steam turbines.
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.
Sharks in the floor.
Note the maps still left on the wall.
Perhaps this office was for a film studio or music producer.
The steam plant at Nopeming is an iconic (and crooked) smokestack. Kodak Pro 400 on a Fuji GX680.
Pocket door and light switches in the upper control room, at the top of the spiral staircase.
In one of the hundreds of bunkers across the busy highway from the empty plant ruins. Most did not have doors, but I got lucky on this one.
The sluice room was surrounded in fine grating. The company would want to finely control when the doors would be opened so the gold could be removed under supervision. No yellow bonus for the working man…
The floor in this building (now demolished) was very rotten. This picture was taken through a window from very firm ground.
2006. A section of the third floor that has changed a lot over the years. Compare to 2015 shot.
Note the wood and rubber wheels on this powder cart.
Books in nooks and not getting a look… about the crook with hooks that cooks.
A corner of the addition is lined with glass cabinets, formerly filled with beds.
Kat’s pretty cool.
In the many-windowed metal building, the lumberyard buildings and the abandoned starch works buildings are separated by a thick wall of pallets.
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 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.
When I first visited the chapel, it had a projection TV, two organs, Bibles, and more. Now these are mostly ruined, except for the tapestries, which have somehow survived.
A switchboard to control the flow of electricity into the plant from the city and generators.
On the extended engine bay…
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.
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.
On the top floor of the former casket building is the finishing line for the coating section; on this section the final spray of plastic would hit the wood before a small furnace would seal the plastic permanently to the surface, making it more resilient, I assume.
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.
Everything is texture.
The machine shop today.
Originally, this part of the dock was reserved for the weather station.
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.
A storage vault for guns and other weapons to protect the base from attack.
Devan setting up his 4×5 camera.
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 bathtub fell into the basement, ala The Miller’s Tale. That’s right. Chaucer.
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
The entrance to the area where staff could sleep.
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.
Old parts catalogs litter the floor. The office overlooks empty shelves. Graffiti glue peeling paint in place.
Looking into the main workhouse from the skyway into the annex elevator. But who care? Look at the colors!
Stairs and power lines enter the abandoned depot. Shingles slide off the rotten roof. Ektar 100/Mamiya 6
Lost words over the auditorium entrance.
Why the door had to be moved over 2 1/2 feet will remain a mystery.
A comrade lights-up where so many workers apparently congregated to do the same.
The last time the city sealed this door, they must have been changing out old road signs.
A colorful boiler is a happy boiler! RotoGrate systems remove ashes from the boiler firebox by revolving the bottom of the system to let the fly ash drop into a hopper. This greatly increases boiler efficiency.
The stone chapel sits beside the main house and received a particularly heavy dose of gothic architectural touches.
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 side of the maintenance shops, still home to several disassembled electric carts.
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.
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.
One of the cupola air intakes, rattled loose by the demolition downstairs, hangs stranded on the second floor. You can see that the floor I’m standing on in this picture used to extend all the way to the right wall. The blue paint on the wall made the climb absolutely worth it.
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?
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.
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.
Jef throws open the back door of an alley for the trailing photographers and historians.
The top floor of the Chateau was the original surgical suite. Later, hydrotherapy took place here. When Nopeming was converted to a nursing home, it was a place where residents watched movies. Portra 400 on Voigtlander Bessa.
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.
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 old way to get to the elevator from the mill.
An ajar car elevator car afar, technically.
A small stage in one of the barracks.
Kodak Tri-X 400/Leica M7. The office (first floor), laboratory (second floor) and mill behind it. Everything was clean and pristine.
Looking toward Mitchell from its last building.
A warped mirror in the rock crusher at the rear of the complex.
The historical entrance.
A heavy steel rail door to help funnel explosions upward, rather than outward.
Aaron by the concentrator.
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 end of the new elevator. Line of bird droppings follow the fire sprinkler pipes and wires in the room.
Note the severed skyway–that led to a set of grain elevators that have since been demolished.
Left: A medium storage chamber with access to an interconnecting steam tunnel at ceiling height. This room also has various smashed toilets. Why? Because dead toilets–all of them–always find a home in a cave. Center: Steps go past a +-intersection, left goes deeper, right goes to utility tunnels for the brewery, forward used to go to the brewery basement… it’s now backfilled. Left from the backfill is a small hallway; see ‘Backfill Self Portrait’. Center-Right: Utility tunnels tie knots between the brewery’s demolished basement and its caves. Right: Most of the storage volume is in large chambers down this causeway.
The portal facing Taconite Harbor (at a healthy distance) is mostly closed. Some kids put bullet holes in it. Shooting down a long tunnel is extremely dangerous, and you should not do it, obviously. Mamiya 6/Portra 160
The grain-centric buildings had automatic fire doors.
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.
“Place Tripod Here” my friends would say. But for me, it’s the money shot. Note the painting around the inside of the skylight.
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.
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.
The old truck scale sits in the middle of what was Nettleton Avenue Slip.
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 view of the government presses, with pages of law across the floor covered in footprints.
This was a living space for the keepers during storms, when it was too dangerous to return to the houses on the point.
I love this original brick archway, near the narrow gauge shop. Gorgeous!
You can tell from the marks on the wall that there used to be pipes running the length of this square hallway, which connected a loading dock with explosive mixers.
A window for light and air pokes above the big arch in the hallway. Most of the interior ceilings were broad brick archways.
This dock goes between loading bays (see glass brick walls) and the railroad.
Looking into the engine works from the concrete addition.
Raab
The old men’s ward is an example of what the hospital resembled before part of the complex was modernized. Small rooms, light switches outside the door, small observation windows set into heavy wood. If you ask me, though, the tile work across the floors is the most spectacular.
Pillars painted red indicated firefighting supplies. Fire was a very common enemy of early rail facilities, and many roundhouses burned down because of a combination of dry wood, hot, fire-breathing machinery and countless oil-saturated surfaces.
An interesting crane in the back of the machine shop. It seems very light duty, so I am not certain what it was used for.
The sidewalks are littered with rocks.
Dominion was acquired by UGG, which designated the elevator ‘M’. Their offices still have safety signage.
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.
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.
S&X seen in the background through the fog.
The top floor of the apartment seemed so empty without the furniture that once adorned it. Instead, my eyes were drawn to the worn paths in the floor between the rooms.
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.
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.
This corner of the building was the coal room, used to feed the two big boilers inside. The steam equipment has been replaced with electric, so this section may not have changed much in the past decades.
Miscellaneous math and strange instructions remain all across the shipment section walls. Sadly, this section likely fell into disrepair before the others.
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.
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.
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.
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.
As my friend Jonathan would say, “on a human scale.”
A sheik mustard-yellow paint scheme across the roofless engine house goes great with the industrial moss and rust.
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.
And I forget just why I taste / Oh yeah, I guess it makes me smile / I found it hard, it’s hard to find / Oh well, whatever, never mind (Nirvana, “Smells Like Teen Spirit”)
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.
A side door for the shop area with ivy crawling toward it.
One of the occupied buildings in Nevadaville.
Taken several years before the tornado story when the weather, and the condition of the buildings, were nice.
This train shed was later converted to load trucks with concrete from the silos.
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…
I can confirm the existence of the long-rumored Federal Rectangle Research Institute labs.
The front door to the auditorium.
This building would store and maintain warheads. It was right next to the launch pad, but the two were separated by a high mound.
This is a room where the actual explosive elements were mixed. In the event of an accident, this glass wall would give way before the concrete and thus direct the flames and shockwave away from the rest of the building. In other words, the glass is not just to get a lot of wonderful natural light into the building.
These were some of the most attractive shops of all the mines in the area. It’s no wonder Hanna Mining wanted to use them as their center of operations in the Iron River district.
The bottom of the stairs leading from the work floor to the cafeteria.
A side door for the brick factory.
The factory’s first aid room and laboratory. Sure makes me wonder how safe the lab was!
The license plate reads “Farm Truck”.
The floor IS the machine…
Looking out at the abandoned neighborhood around the house.
This old ward, not a victim of remodeling, still has metal screens over the open windows of the doors. It should be obvious why glass were not used.
This used to be one of the office doors, but it’s been removed (apparently without malcontent) and placed in the shop area.
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 office was redder than the rest of the building.
A common room with a big bay window that overlooked the main entrance of the hospital.