office sealed since the `30s

[Mr. Sable]

I found this thing last week in an old doctor's office:

It's a 'metabolism machine' that runs on soda lime, apparantly, but I don't know what it actually does.

I think there's a few gents here who may use lime and soda on occassion, but not soda lime.

 

[J. M. Stovall]

did it have a D+ on it?

Now lets not pick on the old folks, ok. I might have to throw one of these at you.

 

[Dinerman]

yeah. well...

 

[Matt Crunk]

This thread reminds me of a similar experience I had several years back. Me and a filmmaker friend of mine were scouting around, oddly enough, looking for locations to shoot a short film noir. We found entrance (an unlocked basement door) to an old, five story bank building in downtown Sheffield, Alabama and decided to explore it. The first floor had been completely renovated and was currently occupied by a dance studio. But the remaining four floors looked like they had been sealed off in the 40s or 50s and never stepped foot in since. Most offices were empty. But we did find what once was a doctor's office on the 3rd floor, that had several pieces of medical equipment including exam chairs, and an old leather physicians bag full of vintage stethoscopes and the like. I was very tempted to help myself to it, but in the end decided to leave it be.
But boy was that whole place great. Perfect setting for a film noir. Too bad we never ended up making use of it.

-MC

 

[Mr. Sable]

We found entrance (an unlocked basement door) to an old, five story bank building in downtown Sheffield, Alabama and decided to explore it. -MC

Is... it... still... there?!

 

[Matt Crunk]

Is... it... still... there?!

The building itself is still there. I don't know of it's current condition. It's probably been close to ten years since we looked at it, so it very well could have been totally rennovated by now. But who knows? At the time the building was up for sale for just a little over 100K.

I live over an hour away from that city now, but may drive over soon and check it out again.

I did go back once a few months after my first visit and all the medical stuff was gone, but nothing else had changed.

-MC

 

[Story]

Italian Ro-37 biplane, made in 1937, found in an Afghan dump.

http://www.paginedidifesa.it/2006/pdd_060331.html

 

[Fletch]

I like walking trails and the like here in Westchester County, NY. One day I took a new path leading north from a trailhead next to the Tarrytown Reservoir. About a quarter mile in, I began to wonder why the trail was so straight, graded and built up from the surrounding woods. A half mile in I had my answer – heavy stone abutments and massive wood beams marked where a railroad trestle had once been.

I had stumbled on the old trackbed of the New York Central Putnam Line, which was relocated by John D. Rockefeller Jr. in about 1930 when he became concerned that smoke and soot were a nuisance in the wooded area – largely his own land – and "clinkers" off the engines might start a forest fire. While relocating the line, Mr. Rockefeller also bought the entire village of Pocantico Hills, NY, to provide a new right-of-way, and built and paid for new homes for all the village on a plot of land elsewhere in the area.

 

[Story]

Jewerly hidden during WWII unearthed in NE Hungary
By: CaboodleNews
2007-01-05 14:50:00
Archeologists discovered an iron chest containing jewerly worth nearly Ft 1 million (roughly €4,000) in October in Miskolc, but the discovery was not reported until now.

According to hirtv.hu, archeologists were working in the area behind the former Avas Hotel, when they unearthed the foundation of a building, parts of its walls and a chest containing jewerly.

The chest and its contents are currently stored in a safe deposit box at the Ott?? Herman Museum. The director of the museum said that the jewelry was probably hidden during WWII. The owners are being searched for.

 

[Stanley Doble]

There are old hidden places like that all over the country, all over the world in fact there are probably some near you. Especially if you live in the "rust belt" area or some little town or city time has passed by.

I know in my area there are lots of downtown store buildings where the upper stories have not been occupied in years. Apartments closed up because it would be too expensive to bring them up to code. Office space no one wants. I have been in some of these buildings. Saw boxes of unsold women's clothing dating from the 1930s to 1950s left behind when the dress shop downstairs closed. Old car parts from the twenties, old furniture, old store fixtures.

Two stand out in my mind. One in Port Hope, the first movie theater in Canada made specially for showing "talkies" was the Capitol theater which opened in 1928. It is still there and being used for live shows now.

But there was an old theater it replaced. It is above a bank. It was built in the 1870s for live shows and was turned into a movie theater by building a tin lined projection room. Behind the screen is the old stage and 4 small dressing rooms. In the back stage area the walls are covered by layer on layer of old theatrical posters advertising long forgotten acts dating from 1870 to the early 1900s.

The other was a Masonic lodge hall in Stirling. It is on the top floor of an old front street block. I saw it in the seventies, it had obviously been built before 1900 and last used in the twenties. The old ornate pot bellied stove was still there, the meeting hall, stage, curtain, all untouched.

Your town probably has similar secrets if it is old enough. You just have to look. The examples I gave, I was shown by the owner. In some cases shown as a potential purchaser by a real estate agent. That is another angle, get into old buildings when they are up for sale by being shown through by a realtor. If you spot something good contact the owner and buy it before the building gets sold, cleaned out and renovated.

PS also took part in the renovation of a small town store building. The top floor was last used by the militia in WW1. Hanging on the wall were rosters of volunteers and lists of guns, uniforms etc furnished to the different men.

Also in the basement of an old hotel found a stack of tin and enamel advertising signs 1890 - 1930 or so.

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

I found this thing last week in an old doctor's office:

It's a 'metabolism machine' that runs on soda lime, apparantly, but I don't know what it actually does.

I think there's a few gents here who may use lime and soda on occassion, but not soda lime.

Soda lime is used in anethesia to absorb carbon dioxide exhaled by the patient.

 

[TomS]

Wierd looking thing...

 

[St. Louis]

I'm sure you must all have heard of New York's Tenement Museum? Some time in the 1980s, a developer investigated an old store front in New York's Lower East Side, only to discover that the building had been left untouched since the mid-1930s. All of the furnishings and most of the fixtures had been removed, but the building itself was simply locked up and abandoned. It took about ten years to turn this classic tenement (built during the 1860s) into a museum, with several of the apartments restored to various periods during the building's history. I saw some of these apartments six or seven years ago, and I understand that more work has been done since then.

This isn't quite as neat a story as some of the ones posted earlier, because the building had been left in a terrible state in the 1930s--there weren't many artifacts left (except here & there inside the walls) but the museum is a wonderful venue and definitely worth a visit. In fact, I would recommend taking all the tours, maybe on separate days.

 

[Two Types]

One place that i recall is the old army camp from the top of my village. In the late 1960s some of the rooms were still complete, having been abandoned for 20 years. My sister recalls seeing playing cards left on beds, as if in mid-game and lockers with clothes still left inside. Even by the mid seventies the storeroom was still packed with uniforms all in their original paper packaging. I recall looking in the window to see piles of wrapped pakages bearign the words 'Battledress blouse'. At that point a car came past, we ducked, dropped the wire cutters and lost them in the long grass, meaning we didn't get any uniforms that day.

I have an acquaintance who, as a teenager in the early 1970s, got some work clearing out some disused farm buildings. Except it turned out the farm had been part of a wartime airfield. The building had been some form of operations room. He emptied it of everything - maps, log books, documents etc - and has been slowly selling off bits and pieces to collectors.

Another amazing story is the US Army hospital/aid post that was set up in the cellar of a school in Belgium (?) in late 1944. When the army left, it was sealed up with everything still inside. It wasn't until the 1990s that it was opened again.

 

[Amy Jeanne]

My very apartment building! The basement has been partially sealed off. These sealed off rooms include a ballroom, a tennis court, a beauty salon, a diner, and these weird storage rooms. We went exploring one night and came to the conclusion that it was sealed off sometime in the 70s, since we found a lot of late 60s/early 70s style things down there. The landlady told us the beauty salon was the last to close -- sometime in the early 80s. I was hoping to find older stuff (the building was built in 1926), but just a bunch of 60s stuff. And stacks of fancy doors! Our building was apparently very posh in it's day. Now a shadow of what it was.

The ballroom entrance. There was a "back way" into it!

Coat check? Sealed off adjacent to the ballroom doors.

This sign is hand drawn and painted. I'm guessing it's original to the building (20s?) Would anyone know anything about stuff like this?

The most awesome thing I found in our exploration was this bit of graffiti!

 

[SHOWSOMECLASS]

Intriguing, it would be a interesting story to have more than book work and original light fixtures. Sounds like Haroldo's Al Capones cellar episode.

 

[Two Types]

I've just remembered another one.

Back in the 1980s I worked in a cinema that had been built in the 1930s. By the eighties large parts were locked up. I found the keys to one room, called the 'training room'. it hadn't been used for 20 years and was filled with old promotional material from the sixties.

Most interesting was a room which I only ever saw from the outside. I spotted it from the cleaning room courtyard. I looked up and there was this single window in this massive wall. However, try as I might, I couldn't find any way of reaching the room. I couldn't even work out where the door might be. Unfortunately, by the time they pulled the place down, I was no longer living in the area. So I lost my chance to find the hidden room.

 

[Bruce Wayne]

The original article is gone. Does anyone know when it was published? I might be able to talk one of my relatives into going to the library to get a photocopy of it.
Thanx!!!
Charlie

 

[W-D Forties]

I grew up in Liverpool just up the road from The Royal Hippodrome Theatre. It was originally built in the 1870's as Hengler's Circus and had live animal acts and the circus arena could be flooded in under a minute for aquatic acts. It was a huge building and originally had beautiful mosaics on the walls and floor. When the circus folded it became a variety theatre and later a cinema. 'Yellow Submarine' had it's premier there!

The building was derelict when I was a kid but I used to hear tales of the interior and the subterranean animal pens from old folk in the area. I always promised myself I would break in for a poke around but, alas, I never did and some years later they demolished it. I always regretted not having the courage to go in.

 

[green papaya]

I lived next to an abandoned old building that was once owned by Japanese Americans that were sent to internment camps during WWII and they left a fully intact 1940's Barber shop that was sealed up, I remember seeing a barber's chair, mirrors, old stools, old magazines, barber supplies like hair tonic, old shaving brushes, ete, etc

the building has been torn down, I never found out what happened to all the old barber supplies & chair inside?