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…
history under ground
handpainted
A 8-foot-tall volume indicator that could be read from across the beet boiler floor–convenient when the controls are 20 feet away.
An alarm panel in the powerpplant, now demolished.
Van Dyke Cab Company and Yellow Cab served the terminal in lieu of a streetcar loop downtown, which was planned but never built.
I like the fading stencil paint.
Camera: Pentax 67. Film: Kodak Ektar 100.
A depiction of historic Liège, known for its rivers and hills.
Parking strictly forbidden. A sign in front of Cheratte’s former truck shops.
The Dock 5 sign at track level. Probably as an aid to sailors reboarding their vessels.
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.
An original stencil-brushed sign.
My favorite of the turtles in the basement mural. Mr. Fade Out.
An old name for an older elevator, as seen from an abandoned rail spur.
Serve [unknown] Build… What do you think the middle says? Tell me in the comments.
One of the four fire alarm panels in the power station.
This volume gauge could be read from 30 feet away, which is useful when the control panels and valves are that far away.
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.
All of the fire alarms had been triggered.
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.
Although most of the buildings were open and empty, a few carried signs.
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.
Peeling paint reveals the room numbers of the past.
Above the altar are faded murals. Here’s the Holy Grail.
Local kids probably call this the ‘Shootin’ Shack’, judging by its war wounds.
When ‘men’ meant ‘worker’.
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.