The large domed rooms were surreal.
history under ground
doors
S&X seen in the background through the fog.
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.
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.
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.
Looking at the ghost sign from a rust-locked cement conveyor that linked the silos with a packing warehouse.
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.
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.
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 across the catwalk attache to the elevated control room, in charge of the train dumping part of the operation.
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.
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.
A door covered in pen graffiti.
In the many-windowed metal building, the lumberyard buildings and the abandoned starch works buildings are separated by a thick wall of pallets.
One of the occupied buildings in Nevadaville.
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!
Taken on a short trip where the whole floor of the roundhouse and engine shop was covered in fresh snow–thanks to the holes in the roof and open windows.
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.
Raab
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.
A bunk room, minus the bunks.
An unplanned skylight. It’s unclear why some parts of the building had wooden roofing, while others were highly reinforced with brick.
A common room with a big bay window that overlooked the main entrance of the hospital.
Perhaps this office was for a film studio or music producer.
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.
Looking through a launcher doorway at an outbuilding… the fire truck garage, if I recall correctly. Fomapan medium format in Pentax 67.
A series of interconnected offices that look like they hadn’t been painted in 40 years.
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”.
My favorite time to be in the brewery was sunrise. That’s the kind of light that made the brewhouse glow.
Fire doors separate the buildings.
A view of the government presses, with pages of law across the floor covered in footprints.
The side of Stelco and its scrubber-stacks. This is demolished now.
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.
Some of the internal staircases were fitted with cages that wound round down the stairs to deter suicidal patients from taking a dive.
Sawdust is the most classic of insulation materials.
Everything is texture.
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.
2016. A section of the third floor that has changed a lot over the years. Compare to 2006 shot.
This bedroom built for a tuberculosis patient has been converted into a safe room.
The beacon was installed in 1938 and removed in the mid-2000s.
The historical entrance.
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.
An insurance office.
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 grain-centric buildings had automatic fire doors.
A rare door left on the workhouse. The stairs to the left led down into a flooded basement. Kodak Portra 160/Mamiya 6.
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.
Glowing observation windows–and someone forgot to lock a patient’s door…
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.
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.
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 Wheeler Rec Center was very nice and included gymnasiums and a pool.
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.
A view of the hallway outside of 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.
Shag carpet is fabulous, and I hope it makes a comeback.
A bumper sticker with the usual tagline. Note the detail on the radiator!
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.
On the extended engine bay…
On the second floor of the kettle building where corn mash was boiled, holes where tanks once sat were everywhere.
Almost all of the doors and windows on the ground floor have been boarded, leaving the ground level very dark.
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.
Lost words over the auditorium entrance.
This miner locker room has probably never been so clean.
Paperwork litters the floors of the zinc mine offices.
This was a living space for the keepers during storms, when it was too dangerous to return to the houses on the point.
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.
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.
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 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
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.
Jef throws open the back door of an alley for the trailing photographers and historians.
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.
The floor IS the machine…
A pink room with very heavy doors that reminds me of the rooms at some of the insane asylums that I’ve explored.
The top floor of the Meal Storage Elevator.
“Man has set for himself the goal of conquering the world but in the processes loses his soul.” Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Russian writer and historian.
The front door to the auditorium.
David Aho pictured.
It was a strange choice, although I appreciate it, for the firm reusing the shops to brick up the doorways while leaving the doors.
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.
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.
Beautiful doors separated the boiler room and the sugar mill. Can you imagine the gracefully curving steps in a power plant today?
A sheik mustard-yellow paint scheme across the roofless engine house goes great with the industrial moss and rust.
Offices above the labs. Note all the air handling equipment. I love the utilitarian design.
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.
There’s a roof problem above the surgical suite.
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.
Looking toward Mitchell from its last building.
The moon highlights the contrails over the engine house in the middle of the night. Foreground light painted.
Not ghosts. Slow-moving explorers’ shadows create a ghostly effect in the ‘Old Ward’–the second floor of the Service Building.
Beautiful details in the plaster moulding have been preserved by the sheer height of this room between the cathedral and auditorium.
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!
Looking out at the abandoned neighborhood around the house.
The side of the church, taken from a grungy sidewalk.
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 side of the maintenance shops, still home to several disassembled electric carts.
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.
Note the severed skyway–that led to a set of grain elevators that have since been demolished.
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 storage vault for guns and other weapons to protect the base from attack.
The pits have long since been filled so the roundhouse could be used for storage.
The factory’s first aid room and laboratory. Sure makes me wonder how safe the lab was!
A warped mirror in the rock crusher at the rear of the complex.
The steam plant at Nopeming is an iconic (and crooked) smokestack. Kodak Pro 400 on a Fuji GX680.
To move air around the non air-conditioned buildings, may of which date to the 1920s and 1930s, fans were mounted above the high door frames.
A side door for the shop area with ivy crawling toward it.
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.
One of the few doors.
The curving corridors flanking the Administration Tower are especially ornate, though the prison-like door betrays the real purpose of the building.
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.
Gloves hang in the basement of the former quality assurance labs.
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.
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
A skyway 100 feet above this office crumbled one day. This is what happened when those two met. High-impact love.
Outside the locker room without the sandwiches and beer… plenty of glass shards, though, if you feel like it.
An automatically closing door, in case of fire or flood in the engine compartment.
The building collapsed except for the back room. The slats of the roof cast lines of light across the floor.
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.
Behind the grand staircase is this beautifully preserved hallway with medieval-style arches and vivid paint.
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!
Devan setting up his 4×5 camera.
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.
Inside the main entrance is a whiteboard and mirror, then it branches into discrete spaces.
The piano must have been a nice distraction; there is very little to do in Roberts.
2006. A section of the third floor that has changed a lot over the years. Compare to 2015 shot.
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.
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.
A single metal emergency slide rusts away at sunrise.
Gary Methodist was a filmset for Transformers 3 in 2010.
A window for light and air pokes above the big arch in the hallway. Most of the interior ceilings were broad brick archways.
Looking through a secure ward door at the destroyed rooms beyond.
Looking through the old brewhouse toward the Keg Wash House.
A sizable crane on the corner of the engine house still swings out.
Hip bump girl.
A blue chair in a blue room
The tallest dock structure is an equipment elevator that connects the many dock levels.
An employee lunchroom with every door and window covered in vented steel.
The end of the new elevator. Line of bird droppings follow the fire sprinkler pipes and wires in the room.
Heavy steel doors to isolate the underground magnetic separation mill from Eagle Mine’s main tunnel.
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.
The back wall of the ballroom, showing water-warped floors.
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.
Books in nooks and not getting a look… about the crook with hooks that cooks.
The bathtub fell into the basement, ala The Miller’s Tale. That’s right. Chaucer.
A side door for the brick factory.
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.
Unloading boats had the option to take on fuel at Taconite Harbor. This building, among other things, pumped fuel to the dock.
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.
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.
Kodak Tri-X 400/Leica M7. The office (first floor), laboratory (second floor) and mill behind it. Everything was clean and pristine.
One of Martinsdale’s defunct businesses perpendicular to the depot. Recall that Martinsdale is a T-town.
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…
There were a few large houses on the Old Crow property where employees would live. The glen had little housing.
Standing where the Standard Oil’s boiler used to sit; the coal room is on the right, and would have been filled from trackside.
Bayard Sugar Mill, as seen from the old power plant
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.
Upper Prize Street in Nevadaville earned the nickname ‘dogtown’ when a pack of dogs took over the abandoned houses.
Call me angsty, but I like it. Found in the Auxiliary Hospital.
A dead work truck rusts near an outbuilding. Everything is marked with a code. Modernity.
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.
Kat’s pretty cool.
After climbing the elevator shaft to the illusive second level, a new pallet of colors were revealed.
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 cold air collided with the sun-warmed water on the floor, filling the ground floor of the Keg House with thick fog…
The roof compromised, rain water rolls down the main stairway.
Typical bunk rooms in MS-20.
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 first floor hallway between conference rooms and the diesel lab at the center of the facility
These racks lined many of the floors, although I couldn’t decipher their purpose. Tastes like duotone…
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.
The elevator tower seems to have been built with expansion of the dock in mind.
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…
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.
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.
Sunrise in the orphanage… between classrooms and whispers.
The old way to get to the elevator from the mill.
I believe this is the push car, meaning it would push the charge in the oven out the opposite side into the train car.
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.
A bathroom in the rear of the ballroom that overlooks the Rose Garden.
A better look at the rails in the floor, installed to help move heavy equipment around the building.
“Place Tripod Here” my friends would say. But for me, it’s the money shot. Note the painting around the inside of the skylight.
The 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.
This “pit” would allow workers to crawl below locomotives to service them.
Inside the main entrance to the depot. Through the ‘To Station’ door, you can see some of the news stands. Look at the floor!
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.
An ajar car elevator car afar, technically.
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.
Part of the unremodeled hospital, above the Service Building, where employees would stay sometimes.
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.
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.
Originally, this part of the dock was reserved for the weather station.
No ambiguity here… miners, check in at this office.
When ‘men’ meant ‘worker’.
I can confirm the existence of the long-rumored Federal Rectangle Research Institute labs.
One of the storage bunkers was cracked open. I wonder how effective this heavy door would actually be… I expect, not very.
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.
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.
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.