It seems someone planned on stealing the fridge, but gave up on the second floor.
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...based on the tags: beds, hallways, how-did-this-get-here, paperwork, refrigerators, staircases...
To the right is the spiral staircase. This building had a definite “floor problem”.
This seems to be the space where upholstery patterns would be drafted. On the table were half-finished notes on a new design.
Stacks of patient record cards; names in the graveyard. All ‘Not Improved’.
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.
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.
This part of the workhouse was sheathed in fiberglass, but now you can see its insides from a mile away.
In the corner of the foundry, this lunchroom was literally collapsing under one small leak in the roof. Tile by tile the water ate away the ceiling. Note the clock.
Plaster doesn’t last long without a roof.
Looking up the Dominion Elevator’s tower. I especially like this picture because it shows how so much of the electrical conduits wound round through the mostly hollow space.