Adults had mental hospitals, children had state schools, but an asylum is an asylum. Belchertown served from 1922 until a judge made a surprise visit…
history under ground
Demolished
Belchertown State School
Brach’s Candy Factory
Chicago, IL
In economics, one hand doesn’t wash the other; it chops the other right off. Local politics collides with global economics, draining this mega-factory of its profitability. Doors close, and a middle-class neighborhood built on chocolate confections suddenly gets much leaner.
Brewster Projects
Detroit, MI
Promises of good jobs brought tens of thousands of Black families to Detroit between 1910 and 1940, but redlining blocked them from living anywhere near the industrial districts where they worked. Brewster-Douglass was supposed to be the answer, but by the 1980s it had become a new kind of ghetto.
Buckstaff Furniture
Oshkosh, WI
Coffin factory funerals are not often so solemn. Read why this famous furniture factory closed after 160 years and see how it looks today.
Bureau of Mines Research Center
Minneapolis, MN
Minneapolis was the home of the regional offices of the US Bureau of Mines, an organization founded in 1910 as part of the Department of the Interior. Bureau of Mines was founded in the wake […]
Champion Paper
Hamilton, OH
The Champion Paper Mill opened in 1893 and closed in 2012. It was Ohio’s biggest paper mill, now it’s the emptiest. Take a page from the pulp belt, fire up your iPad, and see what a 50 acre industrial graveyard looks like.
Chateau Miranda
(Castle Noisy)
Belgium
From a family home, to a Nazi retreat, to a children’s home, this crumbling castle in rural Belgium has a lot of stories to tell.
Clark Equipment
Buchanan, MI
Buchanan was a company town unwilling to grow with its company. Then, after almost 100 years, that company left. How a rust belt city put on–then taken off–the proverbial map. Michigan edition.
DMIR Roundhouse and Railworks
Two Harbors, MN
Climbing that ladder let me see through the steam, by the orange light of the sunset dumping through the sooted skylights like the shop lights on the dead crane. It had been a while since it lifted a locomotive off its chasis, but the smell of grease was still strong enough to lubricate my sinuses
Gopher Ordnance Works
Rosemount, MN
It died when a nuke went off–and it looks like it. Nobody perished with it, though, and there is no radioactivity… just smokestacks and dead-end roads. This withered war plant has seen better days, but who doesn’t find the post-apocalyptic aesthetic a little intriguing?
Grain Elevators of
The Mill City
Minneapolis, MN
Minneapolis was Mill City; flour mills and linseed mills dotted the landscape, and not just along the Mississippi River. To support the world’s biggest flour and linseed companies, a huge network of grain elevators were built by various interests just outside of the east bank’s industrial districts. I investigate these elevators and the factories immediately around them one by one. Welcome to Mill Hell.