From what I understand, pretty much all of the lower Cuyahoga Valley, including Whiskey Island, is known as the Flats, which is the lowlands along the twisting course of the waterway that soon found itself clogged with boats coming to and from the many factories and distilleries crowding its banks. As you might imagine, it…
Tag: Power Plants
Former Herman Kiefer Hospital, Detroit
Herman Kiefer Hospital sits vacant nowadays, but once it served as the contagious disease treatment facility for the City of Detroit. It’s a massive complex, sitting just to the west of the John C. Lodge Freeway on Taylor Street. It was designed by George D. Mason and opened in 1911. Albert Kahn later added buildings…
River Rouge
I’ll be blunt: I was deeply concerned by my visit to the famous River Rouge area, a short drive just south of Detroit. First, a bit of clarification is in order; there is the actual town of River Rouge, which is located along the banks of the Detroit River, and includes the mouth of the…
Stockton Lake, Cedar County
It’s been years since I featured a manmade lake, and recently we visited Stockton Lake, created in 1969 from the Sac River in Cedar County. Pop-up storms were brewing over the lake, so in some directions dark clouds loomed, while in other directions sunny skies prevailed. It seems like the great era of dam building…
Former Lincoln State School
The second I saw the distinctive buildings on the south side of Lincoln, I knew exactly what I had just stumbled upon on my tour of the Central Illinois city that my family has driven by hundreds of times, but never visited. This is the former Lincoln State School, which has gone by numerous other…
Checking In on the Metro East: Granite City Industry
After leaving Madison, I wandered over into Granite City, where I soon found myself on East 23rd Street, and lo and behold, there was TMS Services. I went to their website, and after reading their “About Us” section I still have absolutely no idea what they do. I guess it looks like they probably scrap…
Near North Riverfront, Early Fall 2022
Update: Both buildings have now been destroyed by fire. The building on the left, the Norvell-Shapleigh Warehouse was completely destroyed by fire on February 3, 2024. It had been a little while since I had photographed the rapidly diminishing warehouses of the Near North Riverfront, specifically the ones just to the north of the casino,…
South Riverfront Near the Wreck of the Intrepid, October 2021
I went down to the South Riverfront bright and early on Saturday and cut through the flood wall. The sun was shining across the Mississippi River. The water level is still low, but I think it has been rising a bit since the last time I looked. I had come to see if I could…
New Power Plant, Lemp Brewery, Fall 2021
They don’t make power plants like this anymore. I wrote an extensive article about the Lemp Brewery’s power plant several years ago, so you can learn about it here. This is another work by Guy Tyler Norton, with extensive collaboration from General Electric. Remember the northeastern exposure would have been blocked by the Second Bottling…
Liggett-Meyers Tobacco Company, North Side
The Liggett and Meyers Tobacco Factory stretches between Folsom and Park Avenues, and the north side of the building is perhaps not as often photographed. There are large rounded arch windows of what was originally the power plant, with ten boilers that were served by the massive octagonal smokestack. It’s one of the most popular…