Acme Steel, Chicago Coke Plant
Besides a good salesman, nothing sells a product quite like a fancy brochure. It was three such glossy, elegant brochures that caught my eye during a document retrieval back in the winter of 2021. Only a few pages long each, but printed on high color, heavy card stock, their beauty was too much to pass […]
This is a short video that was inspired by probably my favorite document of the thousands I have handled and removed from the site. It captures everything that my imagination creates when I think of the hardships of working at a coke plant. In my mind’s eye I can see everything described here. I will […]
The main office is a sight to behold to all visitors to the plant, whether seasoned or not. 93 years old as of this writing, its solid construction is built to last a millenia. I have found countless artifacts and important documents here and while I have had many interesting times around the property, I […]
Acme/Interlake was more than just a coke plant. This was an integrated steel maker. That refers to a corporation that consists of a coke plant – which feeds it’s blast furnaces to make iron. That iron is then sent to a mill where it is converted into steel via a basic oxygen furnace. However Acme […]
On January 15 2022, I was on what must have been my 35th site visit. I wandered into the coal bunker for the first time in months and came across this. Another yellow suggestion box! This one is also cracked open and ‘TQI’ has been scrawled onto the door. Above it is a bulletin board […]
I doubt very much that too many people (perhaps none) have been curious or stupid enough to walk or ride along the tracks to investigate this western border of the plant. If they had, they would have discovered this very unique sign and certainly someone would have scooped it up long ago. But to the […]
I was eager to get back to the plant after the nightmare wet weather last week. It was bitterly cold but I am well acquainted with that after at least a dozen visits last winter. It feels good to know that I have the place to myself and won’t be disturbed, normal people have families […]
Employee #1, a larry-car operator on top of a coke oven, regularly cleared coal that became stuck in the distribution hoppers above the larry-car. This involved climbing up on top of the larry-car volumetric and “rodding” the upper bin chutes with a long pole until the coal would free. On the day of the accident, […]
It had been a few weeks since I visited the plant, and quite a bit longer since I spent any amount of quality time there. As Saturday rolled around, a blizzard was supposedly in the works as well so I thought it would be a good day to accept the challenge and do it the […]
When I first started retrieving documents from the plant in the autumn of 2020, I would only scan what was worth saving, and then discard. Soon after I began to realize that this was a mistake and I ought to save some of them for posterity. I have a laminator at my disposal and no […]