The world’s biggest paper machine was installed here about a century before this photo was taken. The orange in the windows is the brick building across the street–the new part of the plant.
history under ground
windows
In its last years, the church had a congregation of only about 100. It opened with 1.700…
In the ward for the criminally insane, this door was the most-worn. Nail scratches mark the area around the peep hole, the wood is gouged everywhere from thrown chairs and hard kicks, and a ominous blood-colored stain is visible where it dripped in the second inset from the bottom. Aside from the damage, the coloring in this section was very vibrant, though it was probably little reprieve for those who had to work here.
A steel powder keg serves as a door prop on the static-proof wood core floor. Note the ‘XXX’ marking to the left of the double door.
The clock, which was sold after Amtrak dumped the building, was returned to the Waiting Room in 2005.
Note the maps still left on the wall.
The side of the oldest building on the property, the former casket factory.
A volcano (?) under a window.
The man behind the curtain watches, but doesn’t say anything. Probably the smartest one in the room.
The sun unzipped the clouds. Mist blew across the harbor.
These long curved corridors connected the wards. Locked doors on both of their ends were a security and comfort feature. Sounds and people would be sealed in their respective wards, as the hallways would act like beautiful airlocks; they were so long that it was unlikely that doors would be open on both sides at the same time. Portra 160.
Another perfect Indianan sunset alights like a bird on the tops of the vent houses and tree-packed smokestacks.
A small machine shop level.
This is one of the more private rooms in the old section of the hospital. It likely only accommodated one patient.
It’s almost hard to tell whether the colors come from oil in the water or the colorful glass lit up by the Michigan sunset.
The Osborne Mercantile reflected in Twohy Mercantile’s eastern windows, minutes before subset. The current owner has done a fair job replacing broken windows with plexiglass to keep the elements out.
Even without the kettles the Hamm’s brewhouse is beautifully lit, ornamented architecturally and begging for photographers to remember it.
One of the pair of motors that powered this mine shaft. In the 1950s, this shaft was designated a rescue shaft, and was only maintained for emergencies. One reason that Cheratte built Shaft 3 nearby was because these motors and infrastructure did not have the capacity that the giant mine below called for.
When not running 24 hours a day during a campaign, the plant was being repaired. Every sugar mill has a large shop and parts room for those times.
Inside the main entrance to the depot. Through the ‘To Station’ door, you can see some of the news stands. Look at the floor!
The power gauge showed… broken.
In most places, it may seem off for there to be a tunnel door on the top floor of a building, but Ford was that kind of place. This door from the steam plant led into a skyway and tunnel that connected to the main assembly floor.
One of the walls of the train shed was growing, thanks to a little bit of sunlight and a constant trickle of rainwater over it. FP-100C.
Connecting the Administration Building to the wards fanning out. Historical photos show cots lining this hallway when the hospital was severely overcrowded. Lit by lightning outside the grounds during a huge thunderstorm.
A screened water wheel, presumably for rotating the dredge once it lowered its “foot” to pivot in place.
Taken in the last few minutes of the day. You can tell by the way that the wall is deteriorating that the windows using to have an arched top!
A different kind of tree fort.
This picture is lit by a direct lightning strike of the building. It’s impossible to describe the feeling of being in this giant open building the moment it channeled an electric explosion into the earth.
Call me angsty, but I like it. Found in the Auxiliary Hospital.
A walk-up service window on the side of an administration building of some sort. I have a feeling the buildings were color coded.
Peering into a remote office at Manitoba Wheat Pool #3. Someone left their to-do list behind.
The copula where molten metal would pour is on the left. It seems the whole floor was covered in ash in front of it.
The gothic landing between balcony and classroom level and the ground floor.
The old offices for the Oberon Elevator are defunct, but seem to be holding up to the brutal prairie snows and winds. Medium Format.
These Twin Cities kisses
Sound like clicks and hisses.
We all tumbled down and
Drowned in the Mississippi River. -The Hold Steady
The front of the Art Deco hospital, complete with Art Deco gears and Crosses of Loraine!
One of my favorite shots of the headhouse at the Saskatchewan Wheat Pool #4, with one seagull threading the needle. The socket holes on the frame got blown out thanks to my bad developing, but I like the effect. Arista 100.
This is where the transformers were housed. Note the steel tracks in the floor for moving equipment around the building.
Taken on a short trip where the whole floor of the roundhouse and engine shop was covered in fresh snow–thanks to the holes in the roof and open windows.
A better view of the belt system that drives all the machinery in the plant.
They left and took their God with ’em. Doesn’t feel too empty without ‘im, though.
Imagine with yellow window guards are eyebrows and the open windows are the eyes. This headframe seems a bit curious.
The common rooms bulge out of the institutional geometry of the wards.
Looking up to the second floor of the Nitrating House, where cotton would be soaked in nitric acid. These brought cotton into the building.
A rusting disconnect gangway. The smokestack is for a boiler, if I recall.
The Clipper was one of the most popular Packards, but its production was cut short by WWII. Had they produced the car instead of Rolls Royce plane engines I imagine there would might be driving a Packard today, rather than a Ford.
Windows provided the 250-some workers with fresh air and light, and helped to keep flour dust from building up in the air, helping to prevent explosions. Today, machines control air flow better without windows, so they were bricked.
The buildings were level with one another, so one could look through as many as a dozen factory floors from one window.
Wide stairs between the ground, the mine shaft, and the dry house.
The Osborn Block (front) and the Twohy (rear) at sunset. In the distance, you can almost make out Globe Elevators. One of my favorite photos of 2013.
Looking into the engine works from the concrete addition.
Looking down at the Port Arthur Ore Dock from Manitoba Pool Elevator #3. The conveyor belts are gone and King Elevator is in the far distance.
One of the ugly modern staircases.
From atop a concrete slap that seals the old path of Mine Shaft #3, I loop up into the hoisting room.
This bay would host boxcars as workers would fill them with the fruits of the factory.
Looking into a common from the grounds. The block glass makes the interior seem dreamlike and distorted. Note the poor condition of the bricks around the window.
The old mill (right) and power plant (left) with the new mill behind them.
This section of the production floor was constantly dripping. Someone had laid down giant plastic sheeting to attempt to protect the lower floors, but it hasn’t worked.
This building was responsible for storing and drying the barrels. Compare right.
Birch shadows on stone walls… have you been looking at my Christmas list?
Watching the comings and goings of doctors, nurses and new patients was a mainstay of asylum routine; one can find it easy to imagine pale faces pressed against the block glass windows, staring out at the world moving past them.
The south wall of the power plant. Its sheet metal skin couldn’t fit around the structure, it seems… note the very strange protruding superstructure.
The service window in the Administration Tower had seen some abuse, even if it wasn’t so old.
Through a section of the tailings boom where mountain winds tore open the sheet metal around the conveyor, I poked my head out.
Connecting the Administration building’s tower and top floors is this beautiful cast iron staircase. It was probably designed to help service the clock originally planned to be set in the tower, but when the hospital went over budget the state cancelled the timepiece. Now we are left with a gorgeous stair with little or no real purpose–not that I’m complaining. I am a long-admitted spiral staircase fetishist.
The backdrop has become the pallet for water damage and graffiti.
This “pit” would allow workers to crawl below locomotives to service them.
A crack in a window in a wall. What’s this doing here?
A cloud moves across the attic in front of the window. How? A photographer’s secret.
Energy conserving window plastic does no good when the doors are all open and the heat’s off.
A long exposure in the crane cab at sunset throws a bit of color into the bleak yellow glows between the windows and car shaker.
Redlining is the practice of shutting certain races out of neighborhoods, and it is still a big problem today. Such behaviors were a big factor in creating the need for these projects.
The fences helped discourage patients from throwing themselves down the stairs.
Standing atop the dust collector, the factory breaks down into diverging patterns, processes.
The walls are separating on the adobe house…
Looking toward a void–formerly a hallway to the mineshaft–now a hole in the ground.
A cottage for masons infected with TB to live together.
A self portrait, from the early 2000s.
Part of the Laundry Building with an ugly archway between rooms. Note that even this building had a nurse’s station with shatterproof windows. Laundry was done by supervised patients as part of their Occupational Therapy and the staff took no chances.
Between two brick buildings is a metal one with many windows set into it. Having been in many mills of similar design, I conjecture that this was the milling building, where machines ground the corn before it was boiled.
“See anything?” “No, just more of it.” “How much to go?” “Oh god–we’ve only seen about 10%.” “Guess we should keep moving then…”
This building looked like some sort of office.
The roof has been replaced since this was taken. Hopefully, that will stem the water damage.
The power lines follow the street, down to the mineshaft. Everything revolved around the mine, it seemed.
Found in one of the rooms that hosted an inpatient chemical dependency unit in its later years. Connect the dots yourself.
In an era where smoking was ubiquitous and sexy, smoking stations had to be a part of the job, even at an explosives factory.
An old name for an older elevator, as seen from an abandoned rail spur.
Looking into the tunnel system from below the Women’s Ward. The tunnels were used mostly by staff to move food and laundry.
This wide skyway connected two of the inner factory buildings, where parts would have to be transported to keep the operation moving, which is why it is much wider than other bridges in the plant.
I wonder when fluorescent lighting was added.
It’s a small world… look at it.
Dust explosions were a real risk for grain mills. These funnels helped to filter the air in the mill.
Steam pipes snake up the walls like vines, but with asbestos.
This ornamental stair is cast iron and used to connect all floors of the Administration building. Now it connects the first and second floor, then the third and fourth floors, with a strange cinder block and drywall barrier separating the new and old sections of the building. Note the insulation on the floor to seal heat into the lower floors that were used as offices until the hospital closed. On the corners of the staircase are lions, on the corners of the suspended section of stair are down-hanging pineapples. Set in the stairs themselves are shield motifs with slate tops.
The old hotel doesn’t like to show its age. Indeed, if it had a few paint job and soft remodel it would be fit to open–that is, if there was a need for it in this tiny rural New York town.
Above the offices is this little section of factory that still has strips of wood flooring. This may be where the upholstery was cut.
This room’s trim was unlike the others. Perhaps it was for a live in supervisor.
A colorful makeshift wall.
Sheet metal over the windows. A red boot sole in the tumbleweeds. Is it inside, or outside?
This seemed to be the newest building on the property.
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.
To get more light into the wards, the building was narrow and had angular rooms, often staff space, perpendicular to the main hallway.
A white star marks the landing between the Keeper’s Quarters (Second Floor) and the radiobeacon and furnace rooms (First Floor).
A closeup of a high window in Bunge.
I had to search the shelves a while to find this old logbook. The open page lists changes in stock numbers for Cutler Hammer Coils, and one row says that a new coil was installed on the black larry. The larry is the machine that loads coke ovens.
One of the generators, weeks before it was taken apart to be shipped to another power plant somewhere else.
This side of the mill, which abuts the Great Miami River, is much older than the other side of B Street. You can tell it went through many revisions.
Looking at the boarded exterior of the newer area of the orphanage from its 1914 section.
Algae grows where water flows/From the sawtooth roof/To the mines below/The sun climbs high/But is in no one’s eyes/A wall alone crumbles/It was no suprise
Looking from the mill at the old transfer elevator’s steel tanks.
One of the few windows that escaped steel plating the last time the hospital was sealed tight to let nature roam within.
A breeze and broken window has animated one of the few curtains still hanging in Nopeming as of 2015.
Some of the rotting clothes were in boxes, split long ago from moisture. Others were just heaped in piles.
The skylights with geared-to-open windows were massive and quite functional.
Shadows of the trees from the materials yard.
The headquarters for the plant was in the middle of it. It’s abandoned but well preserved–a strange sight in Gary, Indiana.
One of my favorite shots from that year, conveyor line parts stacked and hung with Postal Service bins from decades ago.
What time is it?
Looking through the old brewhouse toward the Keg Wash House.
I like this picture because it shows some of the only unbroken windows at Packard.
In an old ward, two men would have shared this room.
A bunk room, minus the bunks.
The organ and bits of glass that have lost their way. Try not to see the upside-down wooden cross dangling from the stained-glass-crown on the church’s front side. Of course, it’s to keep the loose panes from falling out onto the road in wind, but at the same time…
A tower above Minneapolis that few people see.
Everyone loves water towers.
The front of the power plant (right), the distillery itself (center), and the regaling house (left).
The Sun Rooms, or Common Rooms, reminded me of the Panopitcon turned inside-out.
In the power house corner is this gratuitously gigantic doorway. It used to be even bigger, too, as indicated by the brick arch another foot over the top windows.
When I looked out of the old mill, I couldn’t help but wonder what the hell was holding it all up.
A control panel that was mothballed, anticipating a time when the plant may be reactivated.
When you watch TV from the jars, it seems so much more real, they tell me.
Looking from one workhouse at another, with the other residents of Mill Hell falling into place as the distance grows. Across the rail yard you can see Froedert Malt elevator and Calumet.
The main shaft’s cable spooled with bird castings belies the fact that lives used to dangle from its steel-wound strength. Arrows on the circles would indicate the mine level the cars were currently at.
In what Studebaker called the ‘Materials Building’ are these giant concrete bins of fine molding sand, there for casting metal parts using the molten metal from the adjoining building. On the far left side there is a train track and once upon a time a gantry crane traced the room under the roof
The east side of the boiler shop sported a platform with a control booth and heavy machine mounts. Note the door that replaces the lower section of stairs for explorers.
The very top of the Administration Tower’s spiral staircase. There’s an old antenna of some kind there, as you can see.
The powerhouse had two elevated tracks behind it, one for coal and one for deliveries.
The grand staircase with little balconies leaning over it. All the stone stairs are broken and graffiti marks every wall.
The machine shop today.
Looking out of a door to nowhere at the fiery sky above.
Tarpaper telling time-
Wood wittling weather-
Rust rot ruins.
The stone chapel sits beside the main house and received a particularly heavy dose of gothic architectural touches.
Mill Hell before the University of Minnesota began developing the area. Now many of the buildings are gone, there are new roads and even bike paths.
Originally, this part of the dock was reserved for the weather station.
In some places in the mine shops, you can still make out narrow gauge track in the floors.
Like looking out of an airship.
Heavy industrial looks good in cotton candy pink.
The exterior of one of the administrative wings.
I really like the way this high-ceilinged room is decaying. Well, decayed. It’s demolished now.
The stonework was done by a local handyman of sorts, who was also a guard at a nearby insane asylum. He did a great job, it seems to me.
These were some of the most attractive shops of all the mines in the area. It’s no wonder Hanna Mining wanted to use them as their center of operations in the Iron River district.
Fire doors separate the buildings.
A typical room in the barracks, reinforced from mortars and light shelling, possibly.
In the middle of one of the outlying cottages, perhaps the Masonic Cottage–it was too damaged to tell, really–are these pair of skinny doors that led from patient rooms to a common area with rotting shag carpet.
As if they were planning to move the furniture out of the hospital, it all sits in the main hallway in the ground floor.
The company labs. If you can believe it, this area is even more destroyed today.
Paperwork litters the floors of the zinc mine offices.
Part of the plant has been reused as a scrap metal yard.
…somebody get the number of that truck! Near the Day Rooms in the Paying Patient ward.
The turbine hall sported a beautiful Whiting gantry crane.
Germany’s steel mill city.
A broken scale in Isabella A, next to an old wood stove.
In the middle of the foundry, an office is untouched by scrappers, legal and not. Inside, warnings and catalogs for machines that are gone, obsolete, and melted down.
The Barker turning around before it backed into Tac Harbor to unload coal for Minnesota Power.
The building on the right was where parts not assembled onto vehicles would be set in crates for shipment.
The screen and mineral stained window cross-processed the sky.
Looking toward the Female Infirmary Ward from the long, glass, Conservatory hallway.
A familiar scene in Control Tower B, though the microphone has not been used for years.
The view from the larry, looking out at the overgrowing coke oven top. Papers listed the order of the charges for each oven, noting the sticky doors and persistent leaks. Emergency respirators and rescue gear was stored close, as long exposure to emissions from the rusty hatches could make worker pass out on the top of the ovens.
Looking above the altar.
The topmost roof of the hospital is covered in antennae and includes a star that faced the rest of the complex, now demolished.
These dump cars moved copper ore to the top of the furnaces… it’s about two stories above ground level.
After a little rain, the roof took on the color of the bright pink letters.
West Elevation of the Depot. Ektar 100/Mamiya 6
The seminal architectural feature of the old hospital–the parts built by Illinois Central Railroad–was this staircase. Wide and graceful, adorned with paint chips and fire extinguishers, and leading from offices to surgical suites to the cafeteria.
While squatting in the power plant a very powerful storm moved over unforgettable, throwing blasts of lightning across the countryside. The plant got a direct hit, in fact, and the sound of the boom reverberating through the turbine hall is something unforgettable.
The mostly-empty distilling room is easy to spot from the outside because of the distinctive round window.
In this ghost town where there were brick, wooden, and dirt-brick buildings, the latter fared the best by far.
The office building was fancy compared to the utilitarian factory behind it. My favorite part was the logo crown.
Wind blew taconite dust against the walls of these suspended control room, making even the glass appear to rust.
A pipe bracket seems to have rusted off of the ceiling.
After crushing, these machines would float lighter material to the surface of the water, where it would be skimmed and discarded. Gold and silver laden stone would sink to the bottom, where it was collected for the next stage of processing. Leica/Summilux 35/Ektar 100
In the barracks.
The coke plant looked more natural through a grimy window.
I love the big old industrial windows.
These stairs connected some small main-level offices with one of the main sewing rooms above. Because the roof on this building was strong, it was pretty well preserved–look at those colors. Through the open fire door on the left, though, you can see that the roof has given out.
The sun was setting outside, highlighting the textures and lines that made the form of the power plant take a fourth dimension–time.
Looking up at the most conspicuous graffiti in the city on ADM #4.
Pozo Mine, the most menacing mine building I’ve ever seen. Black and white film, shot with the Fuji GX680, a beast of a camera.
Much of the circa-1950s buildings remain with few alterations, such as these long boring sheet metal ruststicks.
Negative twenty looks much warmer in retrospect, wouldn’t you say? Taken through the window of a gantry crane cab.
One of two control towers that reached over the lake. The control panel here was used to move the conveyors over the ship’s hold doors, adjust flow of the taconite, and so on.
Outside the Chateau, where the fuel oil tank blocks the chapel.
An ajar car elevator car afar, technically.
This little curled yellow thing is one of the last hints that this adobe building was lived in.
A window for light and air pokes above the big arch in the hallway. Most of the interior ceilings were broad brick archways.
You can almost make out the concrete chute through the open window. Kodak Portra 160/Mamiya 6.
An interesting crane in the back of the machine shop. It seems very light duty, so I am not certain what it was used for.