Union Stock Yards

I wasn't going to post today, but my friend SB dropped by unannounced and we went on a long bike ride - more than five hours, I think. SB wanted to check out an abandoned stock yard. So we did.

I don't know much about it, but the stockyard used to be outside of the city, but of course now it's engulfed in the larger metro area. It sits abandoned and neglected.

We went with the intention of just looking around - SB didn't know that I had a blog about rural architecture. When we got there, we found that there were two buildings, and both of them were open. I should probably mention that now - for the sake of clarity, I wouldn't ever break into a place if it was boarded up, locked shut, or even probably had a sticky door. Both buildings were wide open, with not so much as doors to keep people out. So we did what anybody would do - we went inside. I'm glad that SB had remembered a bike light (that we used as a flashlight), otherwise we would have never been able to go inside.

This is part of the front of the first building.....



And this is the back....

This is the basement, and the open room we found out back, obviously destroyed by fire. We saw that the buiding was made from thick, solid concrete (it was a stockyard building, after all). SB is an engineer as well, so I trusted his judgment that the place looked okay to investigate. Safety first!


This is the main stairwell, up on the ground floor. I have another photo that shows everything in a lot more detail and with much better lighting, but I like these atmospheric photos better, and they much better reflect the reality that my eyes don't flash light like my camera. For the first while, this was a very freaky place. I thought ghosts were for sure going to capture our souls.


This is another set of stairs. They were solid concrete and cast iron. Amazing. The iron handrails were basically the only salvageable items in the whole building, but that might be a problem considering that they are cast into the concrete!


This is the hallway you enter when you reach the top of the first set of double stairs. I lied. There was quite a bit of fairly intact wood trim.



More stairs.






This shows about 3/4 of the length of the building. It was big. We investigated most of the rooms.


There were lots and lots of stairs. Every floor had one set of stairs up to a landing, and then two sets up to the next floor. I'm sure it was something to behold when it was brand new. This set is slightly different because it leads up to the roof.


If you stick around this blog for long enough, you'll see that I like to 'frame' the frame. Here's a view out of a window. A long time ago, this is where cows came to die so we could eat delicious beef.


This is the view from the top floor up onto the roof. Nature has taken over. At some point, there was a fire and there's not a whole lot left of the old structure.


This is a view of the roof, complete with mosquito breeding grounds.


And finally, if you look up at the first photo of this post, you'll see an elliptical hole at the top of the building. Here's the view from the other side.