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.
history under ground
doors
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 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 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.
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.
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.
This dock goes between loading bays (see glass brick walls) and the railroad.
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.
A view of the government presses, with pages of law across the floor covered in footprints.
One of the occupied buildings in Nevadaville.
There were a few large houses on the Old Crow property where employees would live. The glen had little housing.
This wide skyway connected two of the inner factory buildings, where parts would have to be transported to keep the operation moving, which is why it is much wider than other bridges in the plant.
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 corner of the addition is lined with glass cabinets, formerly filled with beds.
Looking out at the abandoned neighborhood around the house.
This train shed was later converted to load trucks with concrete from the silos.
The entrance to the area where staff could sleep.
Books in nooks and not getting a look… about the crook with hooks that cooks.
These tubes would bring cement to the top of the plant for storage in the silos.
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.
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.
Inside the main entrance is a whiteboard and mirror, then it branches into discrete spaces.
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.
These stairs lead to the balcony.
This was a living space for the keepers during storms, when it was too dangerous to return to the houses on the point.
An automatically closing door, in case of fire or flood in the engine compartment.
My favorite time to be in the brewery was sunrise. That’s the kind of light that made the brewhouse glow.
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.
The factory’s first aid room and laboratory. Sure makes me wonder how safe the lab was!
A small wood-paneled office for the on-duty keeper to use.
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.
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.
Camera: Pentax 67. Film: Kodak Ektar 100.
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 skyway 100 feet above this office crumbled one day. This is what happened when those two met. High-impact love.
Part of the unremodeled hospital, above the Service Building, where employees would stay sometimes.
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”.
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.
At noon, the lower skylights around the shops glow yellow-green, thanks to the flora blooming on the roof above.
Looking to the chapel addition from the Chateau.
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.
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 common room with a big bay window that overlooked the main entrance of the hospital.
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.
Inside the main entrance to the depot. Through the ‘To Station’ door, you can see some of the news stands. Look at the floor!
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.
The cold air collided with the sun-warmed water on the floor, filling the ground floor of the Keg House with thick fog…
Watching the comings and goings of doctors, nurses and new patients was a mainstay of asylum routine; one can find it easy to imagine pale faces pressed against the block glass windows, staring out at the world moving past them.
Sunrise in the orphanage… between classrooms and whispers.
The floor IS the machine…
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.
This building would store and maintain warheads. It was right next to the launch pad, but the two were separated by a high mound.
David Aho pictured.
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.
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.
In the corner of most of the factory floors, freight elevators flanked restrooms to leave more central space for machines and their masters.
The piano must have been a nice distraction; there is very little to do in Roberts.
Note the pit is filled in here.
Perhaps this office was for a film studio or music producer.
The last time the city sealed this door, they must have been changing out old road signs.
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.
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.
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.
Almost all of the doors and windows on the ground floor have been boarded, leaving the ground level very dark.
A side door for the shop area with ivy crawling toward it.
Everything is texture.
An employee lunchroom with every door and window covered in vented steel.
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.
Presumably, in a nuclear blast the antenna would be blown flat and pop back up, allowing communication even after a near-direct hit.
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.
The elevator tower seems to have been built with expansion of the dock in mind.
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.
Beautiful doors separated the boiler room and the sugar mill. Can you imagine the gracefully curving steps in a power plant today?
Some of the doors had sliding plastic windows, but most of the older ward doors simply had these peep holes drilled through them. The inside was always marked and worn more than the outside.
Dominion was acquired by UGG, which designated the elevator ‘M’. Their offices still have safety signage.
Upper Prize Street in Nevadaville earned the nickname ‘dogtown’ when a pack of dogs took over the abandoned houses.
A view of the hallway outside of the auditorium.
The machine shop today.
Looking from the main shop into the boiler shop, one of three attached buildings that specialized in certain repairs. One thing that architectural photographers have to work with is an elongated “magic hour” with ideal shadowing and coloring–this photo is a result of that lighting.
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.
Numbers on a pillar counted tank capacity for a removed water container; an unhinged door in an unhinged factory beguiles those looking for an exit.
Looking through a launcher doorway at an outbuilding… the fire truck garage, if I recall correctly. Fomapan medium format in Pentax 67.
Sliding fireproof doors and an old hydrant at Harlowton’s old yards.
Hip bump girl.
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 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.
Expanding foam provides some textural contrast to the wood floors, worn smooth over a century. This building dates to the 1890s and was built as the coffin plant.
The tallest dock structure is an equipment elevator that connects the many dock levels.
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 first floor hallway between conference rooms and the diesel lab at the center of the facility
Shag carpet is fabulous, and I hope it makes a comeback.
Sleeping bags mark this former courtyard as a crash pad for the local homeless.
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.
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.
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 miner locker room has probably never been so clean.
The bottom of the stairs leading from the work floor to the cafeteria.
Hunter and the Hoist House.
It’s pretty unusual to find a fireplace like this in the midst of a factory.
One of the storage bunkers was cracked open. I wonder how effective this heavy door would actually be… I expect, not very.
A small stage in one of the barracks.
The roof compromised, rain water rolls down the main stairway.
The pits have long since been filled so the roundhouse could be used for storage.
Looking into the main workhouse from the skyway into the annex elevator. But who care? Look at the colors!
In the back of the warehouse is the old incinerator, probably used to destroy kegs that could not be reused.
A bunk room, minus the bunks.
These racks lined many of the floors, although I couldn’t decipher their purpose. Tastes like duotone…
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 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.
Jef throws open the back door of an alley for the trailing photographers and historians.
A typical narrow hallway at Birtle.
A single metal emergency slide rusts away at sunrise.
Looking toward Mitchell from its last building.
The front door to the auditorium.
A pink room with very heavy doors that reminds me of the rooms at some of the insane asylums that I’ve explored.
A few of the stalls in the older section of the roundhouse, the noon sky peeking in.
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.
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 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.
A heavy steel security door, taken right off its hinges. This was likely installed after Grafton State School took over the hospital.
Dr. Muchow’s offices stand near his ‘new’ mill, but they show evidence of vandalism.
After climbing the elevator shaft to the illusive second level, a new pallet of colors were revealed.
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.
Some of the internal staircases were fitted with cages that wound round down the stairs to deter suicidal patients from taking a dive.
Part of an ongoing series on found American flags in shuttered factories.
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.
The shed in the front was full of worker supplies–namely goggles and heavy leather gloves. Molten copper isn’t a friendly thing to handle.
The floor in this building (now demolished) was very rotten. This picture was taken through a window from very firm ground.
The roof could be vented when locomotives were running inside.
Looking at the ghost sign from a rust-locked cement conveyor that linked the silos with a packing warehouse.
Heavy wood doors for keeping people in.
I can confirm the existence of the long-rumored Federal Rectangle Research Institute labs.
I believe this is the push car, meaning it would push the charge in the oven out the opposite side into the train car.
Heavy steel doors to isolate the underground magnetic separation mill from Eagle Mine’s main tunnel.
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”)
The grain-centric buildings had automatic fire doors.
I love these heavy rolling doors in the old tobacco processing building.
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.
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.
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.
Originally, this part of the dock was reserved for the weather station.
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 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
The beacon was installed in 1938 and removed in the mid-2000s.
Stairs and power lines enter the abandoned depot. Shingles slide off the rotten roof. Ektar 100/Mamiya 6
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.
A comrade lights-up where so many workers apparently congregated to do the same.
The old way to get to the elevator from the mill.
These houses was built by hard rock miners in the early 1900s.
Fire doors separate the buildings.
2016. A section of the third floor that has changed a lot over the years. Compare to 2006 shot.
A warped mirror in the rock crusher at the rear of the complex.
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.
S&X seen in the background through the fog.
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.
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.
“Place Tripod Here” my friends would say. But for me, it’s the money shot. Note the painting around the inside of the skylight.
A big sliding fire door opens onto a train dock.
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.
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!
Pocket door and light switches in the upper control room, at the top of the spiral staircase.
Not ghosts. Slow-moving explorers’ shadows create a ghostly effect in the ‘Old Ward’–the second floor of the Service Building.
The office was redder than the rest of the building.
Gloves hang in the basement of the former quality assurance labs.
The arches of the Twohy building, before some of the signs and sills were painted in 2015.
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 side door on the rear of the castle that let guests out into a small stone courtyard below a tall turret.
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…
Offices above the labs. Note all the air handling equipment. I love the utilitarian design.
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.
Between the repair shops and the stock department is this odd little structure. No, the walls are not level–it’s not your eyes. The shops slope left, the structure slopes right.
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.
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.
An unplanned skylight. It’s unclear why some parts of the building had wooden roofing, while others were highly reinforced with brick.
One of Martinsdale’s defunct businesses perpendicular to the depot. Recall that Martinsdale is a T-town.
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 back wall of the ballroom, showing water-warped floors.
The bathtub fell into the basement, ala The Miller’s Tale. That’s right. Chaucer.
A look at another “Belt-o-Vator”. I like the sign.
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.
Typical bunk rooms in MS-20.
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.
Here, the concentrated gold (and silver, and zinc, I would guess) would be loaded into trucks bound for the smelter.
As my friend Jonathan would say, “on a human scale.”
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.
A Merrill Piano from Boston, in the Recreation Room of the Front Dorm.
Easier-to-demolish parts of the power plant were torched apart. Catwalks to nowhere meant lots of dead ends.
Note the wood and rubber wheels on this powder cart.
An unintentional skylight makes the inside of the office glow, showing the inside of the front door and its strange lock.
The sidewalks are littered with rocks.
The third floor corridor is not so welcoming, as it requires visitors to walk along the support breams without the luxury of a floor. I didn’t mind, but I can’t see the family with young children that was also exploring Noisy doing the same.
The side of the church, taken from a grungy sidewalk.
This is the former air compressor house–one of them, at least–which turned steam power into air power to drive machinery across the production line.
A sheik mustard-yellow paint scheme across the roofless engine house goes great with the industrial moss and rust.
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.
Before the gold could be extracted, the rock was turned to powder. Depending on the size of the steel balls inside the mill, the rock would be reduced to a certain size. So, multiple mills were usually used in stages.
Glowing observation windows–and someone forgot to lock a patient’s door…