One of the many small treasures hiding in the mill…
history under ground
shelves
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.
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.
Below the pressure gauges are rows of little pipe fitting drawers.
Behind a nurse’s station.
More than half a century of plans rot in the shadows, seemingly useless.
The classic Solvay shot. Everyone has it.
A fireproof room in the basement, perhaps for ammunition storage at one time.
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.
Looking out of the wavy stock shop.
The room where all of the miners would leave their lamps to be refilled, reconditioned, repaired, etc. when they were not in use underground.
The parts room had the best light in the whole plant.
Thousands of tags in a supply closet. Each has lots its meaning.
Pipe fittings in little drawers, lit by tea lights.
These racks lined many of the floors, although I couldn’t decipher their purpose. Tastes like duotone…
Records of ore samples, mostly ruined by the water flowing into the space.
Books in nooks and not getting a look… about the crook with hooks that cooks.
Candy jar molds, in the far corner of the paint shop.
In some places in the mine shops, you can still make out narrow gauge track in the floors.
Old parts catalogs litter the floor. The office overlooks empty shelves. Graffiti glue peeling paint in place.
Disabled forklift… I think it’s a Clark.
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.
The company labs. If you can believe it, this area is even more destroyed today.
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.
The workshop sat below the main working floor and had serious power going to it.
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.