Acme Steel, Chicago Coke PlantA deep dive into some of the thousands of historic documents I have recovered from the coke plant, brought home and scanned.
During my last visit I continued to attempt to unearth documents from the BP Office. These are the worst condition of any in the plant, largely attributed to the building being in very bad condition with a wooden roof which is collapsing. This means more and more precipitation has made it’s way into the building […]
In my document archeology, I often times find a quotation or proposal for a project, then some accompanying notes. Often times these notes seem to be preparation to ‘sell’ the idea of the capital improvement to a superior. Or other times, they may be notes taken while in a meeting with the vendor, who explains […]
I initially covered finding this massive text back on site visit #15. This is a draft written by an outside vendor and clearly Acme was not happy with the results. I shared a crop previously – the inside front cover is filled with notes about the difficult correspondence with the vendor, here they are in […]
I found this cassette tape in the asst. division manager’s office on my last visit. The introduction at the beginning of the tape identifies the company as Interlake Inc., which should put it as pre-1986. It was buried under mountains of documents and was not in a case. Despite twenty hard Chicago winters, and twenty […]
I first found two related prints in the coal bunker a while back. I was thrilled to find them and they were in almost perfect condition. I don’t remember but I’m pretty sure I never found any in that building again. I started finding them, a couple a week, in the main office and I […]
I have been lucky enough to find a total of three lidman training guides. The most recent, was a giant 50 page binder, complete with quizzes for each chapter and an answer page. I first watched the video above a couple months ago. Even at less than a minute long, I am fascinated. But after […]