The workshop sat below the main working floor and had serious power going to it.
history under ground
shelves
You can see why so few products had bright packaging. If the can here was brown, you’d never see it in a dark wood cabinet.
Sugar mills have endless numbers of pipes, washers, seals, and flanges to connect all of the equipment. This is where the spare parts were all stored by size and rating.
Shelves in in the coloring department, where hundreds of different mixer lids are splashed with hardened glass dyes. Color thanks to a yellow-tinted skylight.
More than half a century of plans rot in the shadows, seemingly useless.
Books in nooks and not getting a look… about the crook with hooks that cooks.
One of the many small treasures hiding in the mill…
We mark our world in unexpected ways… this is how patient possessions would be stored during their stay in the old asylum wards. It’s about the size of a shoebox, and this particular drawer has a name where the others do not. Its place reminded me of the hospital cemetery where more than 3,000 are buried and less than 1% of whom are recorded by stone or plaque in their resting place.
Asbestos rope isn’t something you can buy at Home Depot anymore, but it’s fire and heat resistant stuff; great for industrial work, like in a sugar mill.
In some places in the mine shops, you can still make out narrow gauge track in the floors.
The parts room had the best light in the whole plant.
Records of ore samples, mostly ruined by the water flowing into the space.
A fireproof room in the basement, perhaps for ammunition storage at one time.
Old parts catalogs litter the floor. The office overlooks empty shelves. Graffiti glue peeling paint in place.
The company labs. If you can believe it, this area is even more destroyed today.
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.
Looking out of the wavy stock shop.
Disabled forklift… I think it’s a Clark.
Candy jar molds, in the far corner of the paint shop.
The classic Solvay shot. Everyone has it.
Pipe fittings in little drawers, lit by tea lights.
Below the pressure gauges are rows of little pipe fitting drawers.
Behind a nurse’s station.
Thousands of tags in a supply closet. Each has lots its meaning.
These racks lined many of the floors, although I couldn’t decipher their purpose. Tastes like duotone…
The room where all of the miners would leave their lamps to be refilled, reconditioned, repaired, etc. when they were not in use underground.