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.
Offices above the labs. Note all the air handling equipment. I love the utilitarian design.
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.
Shag carpet is fabulous, and I hope it makes a comeback.
A rare door left on the workhouse. The stairs to the left led down into a flooded basement. Kodak Portra 160/Mamiya 6.
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.
Books in nooks and not getting a look… about the crook with hooks that cooks.
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.
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.
The back wall of the ballroom, showing water-warped floors.
The bottom of the stairs leading from the work floor to the cafeteria.
A typical narrow hallway at Birtle.
Paperwork litters the floors of the zinc mine offices.
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 old way to get to the elevator from the mill.
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.
The floor IS the machine…
Looking through the old brewhouse toward the Keg Wash House.
The sidewalks are littered with rocks.
Raab
Heavy steel doors to isolate the underground magnetic separation mill from Eagle Mine’s main tunnel.
Sunrise in the orphanage… between classrooms and whispers.
The grain-centric buildings had automatic fire doors.
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.
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.
Not ghosts. Slow-moving explorers’ shadows create a ghostly effect in the ‘Old Ward’–the second floor of the Service Building.
A look at another “Belt-o-Vator”. I like the sign.
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.
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.
In the corner of most of the factory floors, freight elevators flanked restrooms to leave more central space for machines and their masters.
The elevator tower seems to have been built with expansion of the dock in mind.
2006. A section of the third floor that has changed a lot over the years. Compare to 2015 shot.
The cold air collided with the sun-warmed water on the floor, filling the ground floor of the Keg House with thick fog…
“Place Tripod Here” my friends would say. But for me, it’s the money shot. Note the painting around the inside of the skylight.
An insurance office.
These tubes would bring cement to the top of the plant for storage in the silos.
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.
Dr. Muchow’s offices stand near his ‘new’ mill, but they show evidence of vandalism.
Looking toward Mitchell from its last building.
Looking to the chapel addition from the Chateau.
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 was a living space for the keepers during storms, when it was too dangerous to return to the houses on the point.
A bumper sticker with the usual tagline. Note the detail on the radiator!
A switchboard to control the flow of electricity into the plant from the city and generators.
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.
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.
The steam plant at Nopeming is an iconic (and crooked) smokestack. Kodak Pro 400 on a Fuji GX680.
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 top floor of the Meal Storage Elevator.
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.
The license plate reads “Farm Truck”.
A typical room in Birtle.
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 of Martinsdale’s defunct businesses perpendicular to the depot. Recall that Martinsdale is a T-town.
These racks lined many of the floors, although I couldn’t decipher their purpose. Tastes like duotone…
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.
Dominion was acquired by UGG, which designated the elevator ‘M’. Their offices still have safety signage.
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.
An ajar car elevator car afar, technically.
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”.
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!
A door covered in pen graffiti.
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.
Presumably, in a nuclear blast the antenna would be blown flat and pop back up, allowing communication even after a near-direct hit.
One of the few doors.
The office was redder than the rest of the building.
Why the door had to be moved over 2 1/2 feet will remain a mystery.
Looking from the ‘crack’ that shows a collapsed tunnel into the dry house, in the direction miners returning home would walk. Note smoke lines above door.
Devan setting up his 4×5 camera.
Here, the concentrated gold (and silver, and zinc, I would guess) would be loaded into trucks bound for the smelter.
Looking through a launcher doorway at an outbuilding… the fire truck garage, if I recall correctly. Fomapan medium format in Pentax 67.
A warped mirror in the rock crusher at the rear of the complex.
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 common room with a big bay window that overlooked the main entrance of the hospital.
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.
The roof could be vented when locomotives were running inside.
“Man has set for himself the goal of conquering the world but in the processes loses his soul.” Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Russian writer and historian.
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.
Miscellaneous math and strange instructions remain all across the shipment section walls. Sadly, this section likely fell into disrepair before the others.
The factory’s first aid room and laboratory. Sure makes me wonder how safe the lab was!
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.
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.
A heavy steel rail door to help funnel explosions upward, rather than outward.
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.
A single metal emergency slide rusts away at sunrise.
A bunk room, minus the bunks.
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.
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.
A sizable crane on the corner of the engine house still swings out.
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 side door for the shop area with ivy crawling toward it.
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.
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.
Everything is texture.
On the second floor of the kettle building where corn mash was boiled, holes where tanks once sat were everywhere.
There were a few large houses on the Old Crow property where employees would live. The glen had little housing.
Aaron by the concentrator.
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 side of the maintenance shops, still home to several disassembled electric carts.
The historical entrance.
Note the wood and rubber wheels on this powder cart.
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.
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.
This skyway, built to help seal off two parts of the complex during an out of control fire, was probably too rotten to burn by the time I saw 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?
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”)
Gloves hang in the basement of the former quality assurance labs.
The pits have long since been filled so the roundhouse could be used for storage.
Note the pit is filled in here.
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.
From the 1909 addition, it’s obvious how much water it takes to carry a single wall to, into and through the cracks between the floor tiles: exactly one roof’s worth.
Jef throws open the back door of an alley for the trailing photographers and historians.
2016. A section of the third floor that has changed a lot over the years. Compare to 2006 shot.
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.
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!
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.
Part of an ongoing series on found American flags in shuttered factories.
Old parts catalogs litter the floor. The office overlooks empty shelves. Graffiti glue peeling paint in place.
Looking out at the abandoned neighborhood around the house.
The moon highlights the contrails over the engine house in the middle of the night. Foreground light painted.
The tallest dock structure is an equipment elevator that connects the many dock levels.
Taken several years before the tornado story when the weather, and the condition of the buildings, were nice.
The mostly-empty distilling room is easy to spot from the outside because of the distinctive round window.
The substation has definite structural issues. Pictured is the sidewalk that connected the plant to the company housing.
Looking at the ghost sign from a rust-locked cement conveyor that linked the silos with a packing warehouse.
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.
The modern morgue, a replacement for the original morgue which has since been turned into a kitchen area.
Looking across the catwalk attache to the elevated control room, in charge of the train dumping part of the operation.
Beautiful doors separated the boiler room and the sugar mill. Can you imagine the gracefully curving steps in a power plant today?
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.
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 truck scale is closed at Lena, MB.
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 first floor hallway between conference rooms and the diesel lab at the center of the facility
Behind the grand staircase is this beautifully preserved hallway with medieval-style arches and vivid paint.
The beacon was installed in 1938 and removed in the mid-2000s.
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.
As my friend Jonathan would say, “on a human scale.”
Typical bunk rooms in MS-20.
A sheik mustard-yellow paint scheme across the roofless engine house goes great with the industrial moss and rust.
A heavy steel security door, taken right off its hinges. This was likely installed after Grafton State School took over the hospital.
Perhaps this office was for a film studio or music producer.
The large domed rooms were surreal.
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.
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 entrance to the area where staff could sleep.
These stairs lead to the balcony.
My favorite time to be in the brewery was sunrise. That’s the kind of light that made the brewhouse glow.
The incinerator’s hardened steel door… useless, but still sexy in a heavy-industrial kind of way.
Kat’s pretty cool.
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.
I love this original brick archway, near the narrow gauge shop. Gorgeous!
A big door into the fire pump room.
Office manners dictate that one must tip their file drawer back upright once it is knocked through the wall.
One of the storage bunkers was cracked open. I wonder how effective this heavy door would actually be… I expect, not very.
The machine shop today.
This building cleaned the barrels that transported ingredients through the plant.
The Wheeler Rec Center was very nice and included gymnasiums and a pool.
Rubber dock boots still sits under the desk in the dock office, near keys to rusted locks and files of fired employees.
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 end of the new elevator. Line of bird droppings follow the fire sprinkler pipes and wires in the room.
A small wood-paneled office for the on-duty keeper to use.
Upper Prize Street in Nevadaville earned the nickname ‘dogtown’ when a pack of dogs took over the abandoned houses.
This train shed was later converted to load trucks with concrete from the silos.
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 portrait of the second school of McConnell, built in 1937.
Vines are finding their way into the roundhouse.
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.
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.
The roof compromised, rain water rolls down the main stairway.
A pink room with very heavy doors that reminds me of the rooms at some of the insane asylums that I’ve explored.
A corner of the addition is lined with glass cabinets, formerly filled with beds.
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.
Unloading boats had the option to take on fuel at Taconite Harbor. This building, among other things, pumped fuel to the dock.
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.
One of the occupied buildings in Nevadaville.
Note the severed skyway–that led to a set of grain elevators that have since been demolished.
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.
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.
A comrade lights-up where so many workers apparently congregated to do the same.
The bathtub fell into the basement, ala The Miller’s Tale. That’s right. Chaucer.
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.
David Aho pictured.
This “pit” would allow workers to crawl below locomotives to service them.
A side door on the rear of the castle that let guests out into a small stone courtyard below a tall turret.
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 back of the warehouse is the old incinerator, probably used to destroy kegs that could not be reused.
This bedroom built for a tuberculosis patient has been converted into a safe room.
Call me angsty, but I like it. Found in the Auxiliary Hospital.
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 front door to the auditorium.
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.
Before each warhead was crated, it was inspected.
A blue chair in a blue room
No ambiguity here… miners, check in at this office.
The side of the church, taken from a grungy sidewalk.
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.
Sleeping bags mark this former courtyard as a crash pad for the local homeless.
