Transfer Elevator, Built 1916
history under ground
vines
An emergency slide to help workers evacuate the blending house in an emergency.
There were a few large houses on the Old Crow property where employees would live. The glen had little housing.
From the bottom of the skyway I looked back, my eyes tracing the vines from the marsh up the smokestacks to the perfect Midwestern sky.
The sun shining through one of the buildings; everything was overgrown.
This battlement-like tower is the first thing one sees coming to Old Taylor from Frankfort.
Looking down Pommenicher Straße from Gaststätte Rosarius, the monstrous machine about to devour the town bites at the ground.
What you see is not a crack in the floor, but a long vine extending ten feet onto the shop floor, as if reaching in to escape the wind and rain.
A side door on the rear of the castle that let guests out into a small stone courtyard below a tall turret.
Sadly, this picture is dated from the fact there’s a single piece of glass unbroken. Since this was taken, the entrance to the church has been vandalized even more.
The barracks are being reclaimed by nature.
Between all of the buildings was dense growth, especially vines.
Mark poses for scale in the natural section of the cave. It appears to have been created by erosion, where water following the natural fault (crack above) washed the sandstone below away, thereby creating a dead space. The stone doorway appeared to be original.
North of the assembly complex is a storage network of earthen and concrete bunkers.
A typical hallway in the rocket assembly line.
I was squatting overnight in one of the buildings and woke up with the sunrise. This is what I woke up to.
Vines are finding their way into the roundhouse.
One of the storage bunkers was cracked open. I wonder how effective this heavy door would actually be… I expect, not very.
One side of the street is demolished. The other is not.
A view of the Harris offices, complete with great block glass.
Across the walls of the brick repair shop, near where men and machine entered Shaft No. 3, vines, pipes, and graffiti battle unknowingly for visual prominence.
One thing that struck me as a midwesterner in the South was the vines. They seem to be able to completely cover a building when left alone for a few decades.
The historical entrance.
In this old repair shop, vines fall from the rotting roof to meet mossy concrete. Even though it had been dry for days, water dripped in from the roof to make permanent puddles between workstations. It was full of color and sound and industry and nature.
Looking into the cut made for the streetcar tunnel. It looks like there is a door in the wall, but it’s an optical illusion.
The headquarters for the plant was in the middle of it. It’s abandoned but well preserved–a strange sight in Gary, Indiana.
This ruined skyway looks like it should be at ground level because of the growth, but it’s actually the second floor of the building.
I love these heavy rolling doors in the old tobacco processing building.
The left building is active, the right building is not, though both were built as Wilson Bros buildings. The skyway was rough, inside and out, but I liked the small gate in the bottom of it–it reminded me of a castle. Skyways like these were a fireproofing measure.
ZC was sure proud of his castle!
The back door into the old distillery building. Not castle-like at all, sadly.
Between lines of Number Sixes right after sun rose behind them. This photo shows how extremely lush the grounds are that make getting around in some places impossible.
The vines are thick across the asylum.