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.
history under ground
doors
The piano must have been a nice distraction; there is very little to do in Roberts.
Offices above the labs. Note all the air handling equipment. I love the utilitarian design.
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.
Taken several years before the tornado story when the weather, and the condition of the buildings, were nice.
The building collapsed except for the back room. The slats of the roof cast lines of light across the floor.
Note the severed skyway–that led to a set of grain elevators that have since been demolished.
A typical narrow hallway at Birtle.
Behind the grand staircase is this beautifully preserved hallway with medieval-style arches and vivid paint.
Looking out at the abandoned neighborhood around the house.
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.
A high-ceilinged room where kegs would be delivered for cleaning, before they were refilled with fresh booze.
Old parts catalogs litter the floor. The office overlooks empty shelves. Graffiti glue peeling paint in place.
The bottom of the stairs leading from the work floor to the cafeteria.
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.
On the extended engine bay…
The incinerator’s hardened steel door… useless, but still sexy in a heavy-industrial kind of way.
Heavy wood doors for keeping people in.
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.
These houses was built by hard rock miners in the early 1900s.
Sleeping bags mark this former courtyard as a crash pad for the local homeless.
A side door on the rear of the castle that let guests out into a small stone courtyard below a tall turret.
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 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.
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.
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.
This bedroom built for a tuberculosis patient has been converted into a safe room.
Old boathouses near the dock.
This used to be one of the office doors, but it’s been removed (apparently without malcontent) and placed in the shop area.
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.
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.
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.
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.
It was a strange choice, although I appreciate it, for the firm reusing the shops to brick up the doorways while leaving the doors.
Shag carpet is fabulous, and I hope it makes a comeback.
There’s a roof problem above the surgical suite.
Gary Methodist was a filmset for Transformers 3 in 2010.
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.
Rubber dock boots still sits under the desk in the dock office, near keys to rusted locks and files of fired employees.
The old way to get to the elevator from the mill.
Miscellaneous math and strange instructions remain all across the shipment section walls. Sadly, this section likely fell into disrepair before the others.
The back wall of the ballroom, showing water-warped floors.
A sheik mustard-yellow paint scheme across the roofless engine house goes great with the industrial moss and rust.
The top floor of the Meal Storage Elevator.
Not ghosts. Slow-moving explorers’ shadows create a ghostly effect in the ‘Old Ward’–the second floor of the Service Building.
These racks lined many of the floors, although I couldn’t decipher their purpose. Tastes like duotone…
This miner locker room has probably never been so clean.
The factory’s first aid room and laboratory. Sure makes me wonder how safe the lab was!
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.
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 floor in this building (now demolished) was very rotten. This picture was taken through a window from very firm ground.
These stairs lead to the balcony.
Vines are finding their way into the roundhouse.
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.
In the corner of most of the factory floors, freight elevators flanked restrooms to leave more central space for machines and their masters.
The moon highlights the contrails over the engine house in the middle of the night. Foreground light painted.
The truck scale is closed at Lena, MB.
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.
Camera: Pentax 67. Film: Kodak Ektar 100.
Typical bunk rooms in MS-20.
A bunk room, minus the bunks.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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 old truck scale sits in the middle of what was Nettleton Avenue Slip.
2016. A section of the third floor that has changed a lot over the years. Compare to 2006 shot.
Inside the main entrance is a whiteboard and mirror, then it branches into discrete spaces.
Inside the main entrance to the depot. Through the ‘To Station’ door, you can see some of the news stands. Look at the floor!
On the second floor of the kettle building where corn mash was boiled, holes where tanks once sat were everywhere.
The side of Stelco and its scrubber-stacks. This is demolished now.
Looking toward Mitchell from its last building.
A view of the government presses, with pages of law across the floor covered in footprints.
A bumper sticker with the usual tagline. Note the detail on the radiator!
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.
Looking at the ghost sign from a rust-locked cement conveyor that linked the silos with a packing warehouse.
Upper Prize Street in Nevadaville earned the nickname ‘dogtown’ when a pack of dogs took over the abandoned houses.
The license plate reads “Farm Truck”.
A window for light and air pokes above the big arch in the hallway. Most of the interior ceilings were broad brick archways.
I can confirm the existence of the long-rumored Federal Rectangle Research Institute labs.
A side door for the brick factory.
After climbing the elevator shaft to the illusive second level, a new pallet of colors were revealed.
Before each warhead was crated, it was inspected.
This is what I believe to be the Masonic Cottage, where infected Freemasons would be treated together and enjoy some simple luxuries because of their social connections. Freemasonry is still popular in North Dakota.
The 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.
Hip bump girl.
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.
Looking to the chapel addition from the Chateau.
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.
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.
Here, the concentrated gold (and silver, and zinc, I would guess) would be loaded into trucks bound for the smelter.
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 side of the church, taken from a grungy sidewalk.
Office manners dictate that one must tip their file drawer back upright once it is knocked through the wall.
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.
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.
The last time the city sealed this door, they must have been changing out old road signs.
An automatically closing door, in case of fire or flood in the engine compartment.
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.
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.
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 skyway 100 feet above this office crumbled one day. This is what happened when those two met. High-impact love.
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.
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 single metal emergency slide rusts away at sunrise.
The Wheeler Rec Center was very nice and included gymnasiums and a pool.
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.
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.
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.
Call me angsty, but I like it. Found in the Auxiliary Hospital.
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…
One of Martinsdale’s defunct businesses perpendicular to the depot. Recall that Martinsdale is a T-town.
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.
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”)
2013. A perfect summer day meets a beautiful old roundhouse on the edge of town.
I believe this is the push car, meaning it would push the charge in the oven out the opposite side into the train car.
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 rare door left on the workhouse. The stairs to the left led down into a flooded basement. Kodak Portra 160/Mamiya 6.
The bathtub fell into the basement, ala The Miller’s Tale. That’s right. Chaucer.
An unintentional skylight makes the inside of the office glow, showing the inside of the front door and its strange lock.
Why the door had to be moved over 2 1/2 feet will remain a mystery.
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!
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.
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.
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 dead work truck rusts near an outbuilding. Everything is marked with a code. Modernity.
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…
Beautiful doors separated the boiler room and the sugar mill. Can you imagine the gracefully curving steps in a power plant today?
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 city has taken steps to prevent the curious and the desperate from going into the elevators, including piling rocks against the doors and windows.
Fire doors separate the buildings.
A portrait of the second school of McConnell, built in 1937.
Looking into the engine works from the concrete addition.
An ajar car elevator car afar, technically.
Easier-to-demolish parts of the power plant were torched apart. Catwalks to nowhere meant lots of dead ends.
The curving corridors flanking the Administration Tower are especially ornate, though the prison-like door betrays the real purpose of the building.
Presumably, in a nuclear blast the antenna would be blown flat and pop back up, allowing communication even after a near-direct hit.
A warped mirror in the rock crusher at the rear of the complex.
The stone chapel sits beside the main house and received a particularly heavy dose of gothic architectural touches.
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 blue chair in a blue room
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.
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.
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.
A small wood-paneled office for the on-duty keeper to use.
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 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.
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 substation has definite structural issues. Pictured is the sidewalk that connected the plant to the company housing.
This was a living space for the keepers during storms, when it was too dangerous to return to the houses on the point.
A common room with a big bay window that overlooked the main entrance of the hospital.
Outside the locker room without the sandwiches and beer… plenty of glass shards, though, if you feel like it.
One of the few doors.
Perhaps this office was for a film studio or music producer.
A wimpy crane by most standards, only suitable for moving around parts of steam turbines.
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 heavy steel security door, taken right off its hinges. This was likely installed after Grafton State School took over the hospital.
A comrade lights-up where so many workers apparently congregated to do the same.
The machine shop today.
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.
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.
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 side door for the shop area with ivy crawling toward it.
David Aho pictured.
Looking into the main workhouse from the skyway into the annex elevator. But who care? Look at the colors!
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.
I love this original brick archway, near the narrow gauge shop. Gorgeous!
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
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 arches of the Twohy building, before some of the signs and sills were painted in 2015.
The tallest dock structure is an equipment elevator that connects the many dock levels.
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.
Note the wood and rubber wheels on this powder cart.
An employee lunchroom with every door and window covered in vented steel.
A storage vault for guns and other weapons to protect the base from attack.
The sidewalks are littered with rocks.
Jef throws open the back door of an alley for the trailing photographers and historians.
Unloading boats had the option to take on fuel at Taconite Harbor. This building, among other things, pumped fuel to the dock.
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.
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.
The entrance to the area where staff could sleep.
The steam plant at Nopeming is an iconic (and crooked) smokestack. Kodak Pro 400 on a Fuji GX680.
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 big door into the fire pump room.
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.
Sunrise in the orphanage… between classrooms and whispers.
An insurance office.
This building cleaned the barrels that transported ingredients through the plant.
Books in nooks and not getting a look… about the crook with hooks that cooks.
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.
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 through the old brewhouse toward the Keg Wash House.
Looking through a launcher doorway at an outbuilding… the fire truck garage, if I recall correctly. Fomapan medium format in Pentax 67.
Almost all of the doors and windows on the ground floor have been boarded, leaving the ground level very dark.
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?
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!