Martin Luther King High School

Old parts catalogs litter the floor. The office overlooks empty shelves. Graffiti glue peeling paint in place.

The new concrete workhouse, as seen through chickenwire.

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.

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.

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 leg of the headframe meets the hoist house. Two cranes are rusted in place.

I wonder if these windows were bricked after the 1950 explosion with the hopes that, if another silos blew, the people in this office would be better protected.

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 Martinsdale’s defunct businesses perpendicular to the depot. Recall that Martinsdale is a T-town.