The top floor of the nitrating house was full of switches and breakers for the operation below, each bearing a label and number. Nowadays everything is printed, but when INAAP was built, all these signs were painted by hand.
history under ground
handpainted
My favorite of the turtles in the basement mural. Mr. Fade Out.
Serve [unknown] Build… What do you think the middle says? Tell me in the comments.
Although most of the buildings were open and empty, a few carried signs.
Camera: Pentax 67. Film: Kodak Ektar 100.
Peeling paint reveals the room numbers of the past.
Van Dyke Cab Company and Yellow Cab served the terminal in lieu of a streetcar loop downtown, which was planned but never built.
Local kids probably call this the ‘Shootin’ Shack’, judging by its war wounds.
An original stencil-brushed sign.
I like the fading stencil paint.
A century-old ghost sign for Royal House Flour was preserved after a building is built above and through it! Looking from the north annex elevator toward the headhouse.
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 8-foot-tall volume indicator that could be read from across the beet boiler floor–convenient when the controls are 20 feet away.
A depiction of historic Liège, known for its rivers and hills.
A panorama from a basement room protected by an amphibian platoon, hand-painted by some National Guardsman from the past. I hope it gets preserved somehow…
One of the four fire alarm panels in the power station.
All of the fire alarms had been triggered.
The Dock 5 sign at track level. Probably as an aid to sailors reboarding their vessels.
Every elevator has sets of these conveyor switches. Grain comes down through the top chute and the bottom chute rotates to move the flow onto various belts around the plant by gravity. The cross belt is another switch and the bridge belt brings the flow to the other half of the elevator.
When ‘men’ meant ‘worker’.
An alarm panel in the powerpplant, now demolished.
Parking strictly forbidden. A sign in front of Cheratte’s former truck shops.
Above the altar are faded murals. Here’s the Holy Grail.
This volume gauge could be read from 30 feet away, which is useful when the control panels and valves are that far away.
An old name for an older elevator, as seen from an abandoned rail spur.
It is unclear when the ‘Superior Warehouse Company’ sign was put up, but it was likely around 1916-1917, when maps indicate it served as a dry goods warehouse, operated by Twohy-Eimon Mercantile Company. The Sivertson sign was likely added in the mid-1980s. In this image I tried to preserve the colors the bricks turn at sunset.