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Showing posts from June, 2022

Peerless Cement, Detroit

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  Peerless cement was an aggregate cement manufacturing company, this was the Detroit location. Sometime in the 2010's a large portion of buildings, the smokestack and the rotating pipes were demolished for space. It was a hot summer day, we had to walk about 8 minutes to this old cement plant, in that heat. That's the DWSD water treatment plant, they were incinerating scum and such today, giving off a stench of trash and synthetic waste. Overall not a fun walk. The ruins of a storage company were to the right of the rails, a graffiti-covered building made of reinforced-concrete and brick The half-decaying but still operational St. Mary's Cement plant can also be spotted from the rail side These silo doors are supposed to be big enough to allow trains to pass through, hence the gargantuan entrance These tubes could be extended for filling of train cars possibly, in fact one of them was extended Have you ever seen a ten story spiral staircase? This is the aggregate storage s

United States Warehouse, Detroit

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The US Warehouse once was one of Detroit's many cloned warehouse structures, nowadays the building is not that interesting, even to graffiti artists. The company did not even have the time to paint the inside. The warehouse did however have a water tower at one point. As the days go by, Ford demolishes the building, and I assume it might be imploded? There is also the possibility of renovation, which would be a hard undertaking Around the main entrance, by the new parking building. You can see that it isn't entirely gone yet Another sad reminder about how we are losing important buildings, warehouses that were once more efficient than our modern day warehouses.

Robert Brass, Detroit

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Robert Brass these days is regularly kept up and boarded-over, but once they supplied their metals to other companies, an outlet for past industry. The big circular hole in the building used to have a clock in it, but alas that has 'mysteriously vanished' along with a plethora of other building bits. Here is a view into the courtyard. The building looks like it was attempted for a renovation, possibly for offices, metal beams have been put up for plaster walls, similar to the CF Smith Warehouse The reinforced concrete appears to be crumbling these days, much like the infamous Packard Plant . A thought that went through my head was that the site must be bigger on the inside than the outside, a factor I'd taken into consideration years ago.  

C.F. Smith Warehouse, Detroit

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The CF Smith warehouses sit far from many other abandoned building, relatively. These two are the largest, sitting at eight to nine floors and a basement. In the 2010's an attempt at renovation was made, but fell through and left behind a half renovated warehouse. Albert Kahn's fancy art deco facades still stand along the street. The square building had these stubs on the side so that they could expand at any time, if needed. The trick had already been preformed, because the walls of the first warehouse can be spotted within. Looks like some kind of lobby type room added by the renovating owner. It obviously does not fit in, the hallway is at an angle This would've been the room with the gauges to measure the building's power output, as well as the breaker room. Maybe to find out how much the residents would be using? This building was pitch black on the bottom two floors, indescribably dark. The windows, as previously stated, were boarded over, and the added walls did

Lauhoff Corporation, Detroit

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This is the last building left on this particular lot in the Rivertown-Warehouse District, one demolished in the 50's was north of the site, the other demolished in the 90's took up the majority of the space on the block. This company had been operational for a while in the 20th century, but closed down sometime in the latter half, I'm not sure when though. Looking into the deteriorating garage; is it really abandoned? There were tons of those old, rusting barrels, and hanging steel beams, as if there had been some sort of fire at one point. Rusting probably had a factor in this, apparently high temperature oxidation can cause carbon steel to rust e.g. in a fire. There appeared to be corrugated-sheet-metal over the exterior of the garage, creating another useless-window dilemma: Rivertown does not disappoint when it comes to interesting Ren-Cen photos

W.H. Anderson Tool & Supply Co. Warehouse, Detroit

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The Rivertown-Warehouse District is full of old buildings. Many of the hundreds of brick factories from its era have been demolished years ago. This was one of the old companies that used to operate in the area, once a quite large company, yet now defunct. The exterior was obviously in very bad condition, anybody could just walk in, it seems. It had been like this for years now too. The street had a my undeniably favorite view of the Renaissance center. The warehouse seems to blend in so well with the rest of the buildings in this developed area, that it was often overlooked. The main warehouse room was full of pretty nice furniture, perfect place for any homeless person on the streets; and it also had these weird Tibetan prayer flags put up These are some interesting steel boxes, made for stacking. The ones on the left with the wheels remind me of mine-carts  Parallel to the main warehouse was a long hallway room, which had this mini gantry crane just above my head, luckily it hadn