Update: By fall of 2018, the site was a vacant lot. The old factory in Walnut Park, a victim of changing economic and technological times, is being demolished. It was never the most impressive abandoned building, but the weird mix of junk inside was famous.
Tag: Factories
Homer A. Doerr and Sons, Plating Company, JeffVanderLou
Update: This factory was gutted for redevelopment from late 2018 into early 2019. Another one of those buildings I’ve photographed before, but then can’t find the pictures, this old factory is still sitting vacant. Apparently it had serious EPA violations before closing. The giant dust collector has not been stolen by scrappers, amazingly.
Old Soap Factory, Under Demolition, Pagedale
I’ll be honest, I was never terribly impressed with the empty buildings of the old Lever Soap Factory. Apparently the owners weren’t either, and they’re now demolishing the giant factory first by implosion and then by knocking it down with backhoes. No word yet on its future after Spirtas has completed its work. Not a…
Armour Meat Packing Plant, Slaughterhouse Coming Down, Late August 2016
Slowly but surely, the slaughterhouse, the last major building left at Armour, is coming down, brick by brick. It’s fascinating, in a sad way, in that the structure of the building is becoming apparent as the walls come down. There is some value in watching deconstruction.
An Amazing Discovery, Armour, July 2016
I headed back over by Amour on Saturday, and not much has changed on the slaughterhouse, but a tons of rubble have been removed from the site of the refrigeration plant. Giant husks of metal, some recognizable as refrigeration tanks, and others as the pipes that once snaked around the building, lay about, probably about…
Alleyways, Armour, September 2014
It dawned us finally one time that this was the final alleyway that cattle were forced down, with the hose on the left used to wash the path down. Look at the worn-down bricks where millions of cattle once walked. Around the corner, I am certain this passageway was where scalding hot water stripped off…
Carcass Elevator, Armour, September 2014
I used to think this massive elevator took carcasses up into the building, but that is incorrect. Like beer brewing, slaughterhouses brought the cattle up to the top of Armour, and then lowered them down floor by floor. It’s an interesting machine.
The Slaughterhouse, September 2014
The slaughterhouse at Armour was collapsing, not dramatically, but inexorably. It was going to be a pile of rubble in a decade, probably, even without the demolition that came in the summer of 2016. Probably because it didn’t have the technical problems of two smokestacks like the refrigeration plant, wreckers took their time, pallatizing bricks…
Armour from Above, Before Demolition in 2016
I don’t know why I didn’t post this long ago, but for those who’ve never been, this is what was left of most of Armour in the last decade. Amazing, there were huge refrigerated warehouses right in front of the surviving buildings. The refrigeration plant is at bottom right, and the slaughterhouse, which will be…
Roof of the Refrigeration Plant, Armour, September 2014
We were never really sure what this structure was for; old Sanborns label this as condensers, but if they were ever there, they are long gone, and were left open to the elements for decades. There was a certain abstract beauty to the structure. Update: Demolished by implosion in April 2016.