The bottom area of the smokestacks house storage spaces. The windows of these rooms that were never completed line up perfect.
history under ground
windows
To get more light into the wards, the building was narrow and had angular rooms, often staff space, perpendicular to the main hallway.
The old mill (right) and power plant (left) with the new mill behind them.
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!
“It must have been beautiful once.” “Yeah, especially in the winter.”
…somebody get the number of that truck! Near the Day Rooms in the Paying Patient ward.
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.
Another perfect Indianan sunset alights like a bird on the tops of the vent houses and tree-packed smokestacks.
This room on the top floor of one of the oldest buildings has seemingly not changed since it was adapted for employee use. Some sections of the hospital were adapted for staff to live in. Paying Patient Ward–where capable patients were separated from wards of the state.
When block glass shatters, it looks like ice.
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.
Part of the plant has been reused as a scrap metal yard.
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.
This is where the transformers were housed. Note the steel tracks in the floor for moving equipment around the building.
Inside the main entrance to the depot. Through the ‘To Station’ door, you can see some of the news stands. Look at the floor!
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.
A bunk room, minus the bunks.
Taken while standing on the torn outline of a scrapped altar. With my back to the faded outlines of men, books and the Holy Grail, the room seems much lighter.
A bedroom, from the basement. The Dog Days are Over.
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
Germany’s steel mill city.
Since this picture was taken, the roof has totally collapsed in this area.
Wide stairs between the ground, the mine shaft, and the dry house.
The stone chapel sits beside the main house and received a particularly heavy dose of gothic architectural touches.
The fences helped discourage patients from throwing themselves down the stairs.
A shuttered house at the end of the block doesn’t even have boards on it anymore.
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.
The side of the oldest building on the property, the former casket factory.
One of the ugly modern staircases.
This part of the roundhouse was being brought down by rain and gravity.
This building looked like some sort of office.
A circular common room in one of the original parts of the hospital. When the asylum was especially crowded, this would be filled with patient beds, too. It’s very strange that this floor was not tiled like the other common rooms. It makes me wonder if especially dangerous patients were kept in this ward; those who could not be trusted to not extract and sharpen the ceramic tiles. Portra 160.
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
From atop a concrete slap that seals the old path of Mine Shaft #3, I loop up into the hoisting room.
Inside the MLK High School chemistry laboratory.
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 trees were so overgrown, it was difficult to see the hotel at all from the road.
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 exterior of one of the administrative wings.
This little curled yellow thing is one of the last hints that this adobe building was lived in.
I love the big old industrial windows.
Found in one of the rooms that hosted an inpatient chemical dependency unit in its later years. Connect the dots yourself.
Through a section of the tailings boom where mountain winds tore open the sheet metal around the conveyor, I poked my head out.
Even without the kettles the Hamm’s brewhouse is beautifully lit, ornamented architecturally and begging for photographers to remember it.
Looking up at the most conspicuous graffiti in the city on ADM #4.
A self portrait, from the early 2000s.
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.
The arches of the Twohy building, before some of the signs and sills were painted in 2015.
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.
Looking from the shaft room into the room where an electric hoist would be.
Call me angsty, but I like it. Found in the Auxiliary Hospital.
Looking through a secure ward door at the destroyed rooms beyond.
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.
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.
The old men’s ward is an example of what the hospital resembled before part of the complex was modernized. Small rooms, light switches outside the door, small observation windows set into heavy wood. If you ask me, though, the tile work across the floors is the most spectacular.
The front of the Art Deco hospital, complete with Art Deco gears and Crosses of Loraine!
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.
There were a few large houses on the Old Crow property where employees would live. The glen had little housing.
These Twin Cities kisses
Sound like clicks and hisses.
We all tumbled down and
Drowned in the Mississippi River. -The Hold Steady
One of the few windows that escaped steel plating the last time the hospital was sealed tight to let nature roam within.
The front of the power plant (right), the distillery itself (center), and the regaling house (left).
Above my head while taking this picture was the seal of the Department of the Interior.
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.
Above the offices is this little section of factory that still has strips of wood flooring. This may be where the upholstery was cut.
The spiral staircase ends in the basement, where two oil tanks (for the lantern) and a freshwater tank (for the Keeper) were stored. The basement consists of two long arched vaults like this.
Looking into the engine works from the concrete addition.
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.
Paperwork litters the floors of the zinc mine offices.
This is what the complex looks like today to the bare eye. Dull, monochrome, quiet.
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.
A staircase threads between the top floor and the sluices, which are in the middle of the dredge-mill.
The barracks are being reclaimed by nature.
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 out of a door to nowhere at the fiery sky above.
Looking into the tunnel system from below the Women’s Ward. The tunnels were used mostly by staff to move food and laundry.
Looking through the hole where a glass pane once was at the Columbus Mine ruins, just south of Animas Forks. It was quiet when I took the picture, but for the gurgle of the nearby Animas River.
Looking toward Mitchell from its last building.
A closeup of a high window in Bunge.
A cottage for masons infected with TB to live together.
A closeup of one of the winding machines that found itself under a leaky section of roof.
The building on the right was where parts not assembled onto vehicles would be set in crates for shipment.
The coke plant looked more natural through a grimy window.
A small machine shop level.
West Elevation of the Depot. Ektar 100/Mamiya 6
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…
Looking toward a void–formerly a hallway to the mineshaft–now a hole in the ground.
Not a part of the Foundry, but the Enclosed Body Building. The rebar welded over the windows and the rust patterns with the lighting makes this geometric photos one of my favorites from the year.
The top of the giant arched windows facing the Mississippi and the swing bridge.
Looking out of the labs at the company garages.
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.
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
John’s wife’s face.
I wonder when fluorescent lighting was added.
The skylights with geared-to-open windows were massive and quite functional.
Steam pipes snake up the walls like vines, but with asbestos.
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.
Standing atop the dust collector, the factory breaks down into diverging patterns, processes.
Noontime light, long criticized for the boring shadows it grants photographers, comes into its own sometimes.
Archeologists believe the great house on the mesa was rebuilt shortly before it was abandoned in the 13th Century AD. Tri-X 400 Film, haphazardly self developed.
Outside the Chateau, where the fuel oil tank blocks the chapel.
The machine shop today.
What time is it?
The Barker turning around before it backed into Tac Harbor to unload coal for Minnesota Power.
The fresh snow makes the whole complex look a lot cleaner than it actually is.
Heavy industrial looks good in cotton candy pink.
A cloud moves across the attic in front of the window. How? A photographer’s secret.
I am not sure what caused the discoloration, but two of the walls near the door to the machine shop are stained yellow-red. I assume this had to do with the walls in relation to blowing piles of iron ore, and that the walls have been partly infused with iron oxide. Any other ideas?
Dust explosions were a real risk for grain mills. These funnels helped to filter the air in the mill.
The turbine hall sported a beautiful Whiting gantry crane.
Judging by the bed, this room was used by employees in its later years.
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 engine room.
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.
Some of the rotting clothes were in boxes, split long ago from moisture. Others were just heaped in piles.
The very top of the Administration Tower’s spiral staircase. There’s an old antenna of some kind there, as you can see.
2005. A skyway connecting two Which tube carried the beer? I hope it’s the big one!
Because Oshkosh is close to Green Bay, the Packers are very popular there. Everywhere in the plant there were traces of ‘Cheese Head’ culture.
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.
Ultimately, it was the bad roof that doomed these buildings.
In an old ward, two men would have shared this room.
HDR matrix panorama. Looking from the grain elevators, now doomed, toward the city between the flour mill’s water tower and tile elevator’s neon sign, the old and new economies seem almost united. Yet the financial centers rise in reality to shadow the now-abandoned industry and manufacturing. The way of things, I’m told.
A typical room in the barracks, reinforced from mortars and light shelling, possibly.
From Main Street, looking straight up at the A Mill, only the silence makes one think that nobody’s still inside, grinding grain into Pillsbury’s Best.
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.
At sunset the light skips from puddle to stagnant puddle across the whole foundry room, playing with the classic sawtooth roof with half-hearted shadows.
The layout and design of the buildings reminded me strongly of a brewery or distillery. To the right you can see some of the retrofits by the first lumber company to buy the buildings, in the 1970s.
On the top floor of one of the old wards, the slanted roofline makes the this group room more claustrophobic. Portra 160.
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.
Sluice tables stretch into the darkness.
Looking out the second-floor lighthouse office window. On this visit, the last ice of the season was slowly drifting into the harbor.
A view from the loft in the shipping/receiving building, where the crane operator would step into his cab.
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.
A familiar scene in Control Tower B, though the microphone has not been used for years.
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.
A broken scale in Isabella A, next to an old wood stove.
Looking above the altar.
A better view of the belt system that drives all the machinery in the plant.
Looking up to the second floor of the Nitrating House, where cotton would be soaked in nitric acid. These brought cotton into the building.
The screen and mineral stained window cross-processed the sky.
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.
Much of the circa-1950s buildings remain with few alterations, such as these long boring sheet metal ruststicks.
I revisited the mill years after my documentary. Now it is even more destroyed and surrounded by new fences.
A pipe bracket seems to have rusted off of the ceiling.
The sexiest feature of Kurth is this steel arch over the silos on its south side. The manholes in the floor open to the silos directly, and flimsy grates might catch a hurried worker. Grates were removable so that workers could descend into the concrete tubes, so a few are missing today.
The wings of the church had a lot more water damage than the rest. The organ on the balcony was in decent condition when I arrived.
Peering through the glass in the Hoist Operator’s cab, stained with graffiti. The cable and reels can be seen through the glass… these are now gone.
Frontenac’s shaft house is well preserved, compared to all other around it. Leica/Summilux 35/Ektar 100
A sign facing the city on an exterior wall–a sort of motivational poster.
The State School stage, taken as it was getting scrapped.
Peering into a remote office at Manitoba Wheat Pool #3. Someone left their to-do list behind.
The balcony used to be beautiful, you say. I say, it still is.
Looking from the powerhouse across to the old Electrical Assembly side of the plant that manufactured products like thermostats. Most of the complex is connected by skyway and tunnel systems.
The buildings were level with one another, so one could look through as many as a dozen factory floors from one window.
These dump cars moved copper ore to the top of the furnaces… it’s about two stories above ground level.
The powerhouse had two elevated tracks behind it, one for coal and one for deliveries.
One of Martinsdale’s defunct businesses perpendicular to the depot. Recall that Martinsdale is a T-town.
The sun was setting outside, highlighting the textures and lines that made the form of the power plant take a fourth dimension–time.
A breeze and broken window has animated one of the few curtains still hanging in Nopeming as of 2015.
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.
After a little rain, the roof took on the color of the bright pink letters.
You can almost make out the concrete chute through the open window. Kodak Portra 160/Mamiya 6.
A tower above Minneapolis that few people see.
When I looked out of the old mill, I couldn’t help but wonder what the hell was holding it all up.
A back-lit tree with the silhouette of a roof spire in the background.
In some places in the mine shops, you can still make out narrow gauge track in the floors.
Different colors stained the small panes on the top floor. For once, it seemed more ridiculous to not be inside an abandoned factory.
An ajar car elevator car afar, technically.
Stairs and power lines enter the abandoned depot. Shingles slide off the rotten roof. Ektar 100/Mamiya 6
Tarpaper telling time-
Wood wittling weather-
Rust rot ruins.
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.
The power gauge showed… broken.
The gothic landing between balcony and classroom level and the ground floor.
The sun shining through one of the buildings; everything was overgrown.
The conveyorway that carried the sintering material to the mixing floor at the top of the plant.
The four buildings seen here comprise almost all of the notable remaining structures.
Like looking out of an airship.
A bleak double room in what used to be the Receiving Hospital, built apart from the Kirkbride to observe incoming patients before they were placed in a ward.
Catwalk crating, welded over the yard crane operator cab’s windows.
This seemed to be the newest building on the property.
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.
This dirt-brick building hasn’t fared well.
A window for light and air pokes above the big arch in the hallway. Most of the interior ceilings were broad brick archways.
This is a room where the actual explosive elements were mixed. In the event of an accident, this glass wall would give way before the concrete and thus direct the flames and shockwave away from the rest of the building. In other words, the glass is not just to get a lot of wonderful natural light into the building.
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.
An old name for an older elevator, as seen from an abandoned rail spur.
The backdrop has become the pallet for water damage and graffiti.
The roof has been replaced since this was taken. Hopefully, that will stem the water damage.
This is a great example of a combination rock house; the silos below used to fill trains with ore dropped from mine cars pulled to the top of the structure.
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.
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.
In the barracks.
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.
They left and took their God with ’em. Doesn’t feel too empty without ‘im, though.
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.
A skyway 100 feet above this office crumbled one day. This is what happened when those two met. High-impact love.
I can confirm the existence of the long-rumored Federal Rectangle Research Institute labs.
The mostly-empty distilling room is easy to spot from the outside because of the distinctive round window.
A white star marks the landing between the Keeper’s Quarters (Second Floor) and the radiobeacon and furnace rooms (First Floor).