Acme Steel, Chicago Coke Plant
I have used Google Maps satellite view as a tool for exploring the property since before my first serious visit. This overhead view reveals details of every structure including the remains of other since fallen or destroyed. More than once, I have been unable to see or understand a structure even when I was nearly […]
I have found three large tools at the plant in the past month or so. I took them home to clean them up and give them a new life. There is something magical about giving these abandoned tools a new, safe home where they can live out their days. When I hold them in my […]
I’ve lost track of how many consecutive weeks I have risen early on a Saturday to make it down to the plant for more research. I was out the door by around 9am and was at the plant about 90 minutes later. It was a wet night and morning and roads were foul so I […]
Another Saturday with a singular plan – back to Acme I shall go. Had a couple loose missions in mind but felt a bit aimless – in the best way possible. The weather was in the balmy mid-30s range, I took advantage with an extended jaunt up Ave. O all the way to 100th before […]
Every time I visit Acme, I end up having a a few missions I know I want to complete on my next visit. But it is self-propagating, once I return new missions reveal themselves. I suppose eventually I will run out of things to do. That’s OK, when that time comes I will just pack […]
The best way to take advantage of a ruined holiday is to spend it doing something that you enjoy. I think that most people don’t have something they enjoy enough to just sit and do it for hours, with no other stimulation and only yourself as company. I slept poorly, drank too much and my […]
A few weeks ago when I first entered the coal bunker, amongst the load of paperwork I hauled away I found a videotape. Stupidly, I left it behind. When I got home, I realized I had a folder full of info pertaining to said videotape. You can read all of it over at the document […]
Digging through hundreds of pages of documentation I have pulled from the plant, I pretty quickly learned the names of some of the managers in the late 90s. One that came up again and again was Doug. After some sleuthing, I was able to contact him via email and ask him some of the nearly […]
The Friday night you see me not having a beer is rare, and it means I must have something very important to do Saturday morning. The week went by so slow waiting for my chance to go back and clean out as many documents as I could carry. I went to bed at 10pm just […]
I had another mission for this trip. I wanted to climb up and dislodge some coke from an oven, break it up and get it into a jar to display in my bedroom. This was a bit harder to accomplish than I figured but I got it done. More exciting than that was finally climbing […]