Update: Demolished in the summer of 2016. The beef slaughter house at Armour, labeled clearly on the Sanborn map, is fairly well preserved. I was surprised that it was on the top floor of the slaughterhouse building, but in retrospect, it makes sense; once the cattle are on the top floor, gravity works to bring…
Tag: Armour Meat Packing Plant
Armour Meat Packing Plant, Hides and Supply Building Ruins
Update: Demolished in the summer of 2016. Another building, which was interestingly enough not nearly as tall as the nearby slaughterhouse at Armour, was an auxiliary building that seemed to hold the hides of slaughtered animals. Wrapping around the building was the sheep run, which is presumably how sheep were moved towards their slaughtering location…
Armour Meat Packing Plant, The De La Vergne Engine
Update: Demolished by implosion in April 2016; the engine survived the collapse and was relocated in pieces to the American Farm Heritage Museum in Greenville, Illinois. The massive De La Vergne engine, once one of the smaller steam engines in the refrigeration plant at Armour, is now the largest, as its larger counterparts are long…
Armour Meat Packing Plant, The Refrigeration Plant
Update: The De La Vergne engine was relocated to a museum in Greenville. The plant was demolished by implosion in April 2016. The refrigeration plant at Armour is easily the most striking feature of the complex; large numbers of the original machines, far too large to be removed, remain entombed in the building. Time has…
Armour Meat Packing Plant, Tankage Building
Update: Demolished in the summer of 2016. I finally figured out what the “Tankage Building” was; it was where all of the extraneous parts of the cow went, such as bones, etc. I had always assumed this building was originally wider, but the maps show that a series of train tracks ran behind it and…
Armour Meat Packing Plant, Offal Cleaning Third Floor
Update: Demolished in the summer of 2016. It seems like Armour was probably built in sections, so that each new addition almost was its own separate building. Take for example the Blood Driers, 2nd; Offal Cleaning, 3rd; and Beef Killing, 4th Building. It seems to have completely fallen off or was demolished from the side…
Armour Meat Packing Plant, The Missing Frick Engine
Update: Demolished by implosion in April 2016. I had always wondered what the large concrete platforms were, and thanks to Dennis Bensheimer’s conversation with the original plant guard, Gus, I have learned this held a giant Frick steam engine with a 30 foot flywheel, which would have originally been mounted in a large pit filled…
Armour Meat Packing Plant, The Power Plant Boilers
Update: Demolished by implosion in the spring of 2016. Much of five of the original boilers in the power plant at Armour still survive, though two of their mates and the two newer boilers are gone, or in the case of one, severely damaged. Back behind the first smokestack, the boilers are very well preserved,…
Armour Meat Packing Plant, New Insights into the Power Plant
Image by Jason Gray. Update: Demolished by implosion in April 2016. Sanborn maps and the recollections of Dennis Bensheimer, who provided me with the wonderful photos from 1986, reveal several interesting new facets of the power plant at Armour, which is located behind the coolers and refrigeration plant. First, the Sanborn map below from 1905…
Armour Meat Packing Plant, Missing Buildings and Structures
Update: Demolished by implosion in April 2016. The above photo gives an impression how massive the National Stockyards were; Armour was in the upper right hand corner of the picture. What is most shocking about the aerial photo is just how much of the yards, and Armour itself, is gone. There were several large warehouses…