Cafeteria Stairs

Spots of yellow gravel mark gold mines with nothing left on the surface. Is this one of the drainage pipes?

This is one of the biggest warps I’ve ever found in a wooden factory floor hasn’t broken yet. When you stand on it, it make a very loud popping sound as the boards shift. The poster on the pillar near the left side of the frame advertises recreational boating, presumably to the factory workers who left this floor in the early 1980s.

Some of the doors had sliding plastic windows, but most of the older ward doors simply had these peep holes drilled through them. The inside was always marked and worn more than the outside.

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.

This seemed to be the newest building on the property.

Workers in the basement tunnels had to communicate with the workhouse operators 100 feet above and vice versa. Alarms and bells were installed to signal trouble over the sound of the elevator machinery.

Presumably, in a nuclear blast the antenna would be blown flat and pop back up, allowing communication even after a near-direct hit.

Dr. Muchow’s offices stand near his ‘new’ mill, but they show evidence of vandalism.

These ceramic bricks were likely from the fireproof tunnel that connected the elevators.