office sealed since the `30s

[MrBern]

http://www.wkyt.com/Global/story.asp?S=4306566&nav=4CAL

Couple discovers hidden second floor of building

EVANSVILLE, Ind. A couple touring an old office building they hoped to buy made a shocking find _ the structure's second story had been sealed off from the world for some 70 years.

Lincoln and Lucille York Christensen bought the building last summer after discovering that a stairway passage to the second floor had been removed and the floor closed off.
Although most of the hidden floor's furnishings had been removed before it was sealed off, the room still offered a time capsule to the world of the 1930s.
A stack of canceled checks, all dated between June and December 1930, had been left on one of the two fireplace mantels. The checks were drawn on the account of the E-M Bush Hardware Company _ a dealer in cutlery, tools and builders hardware.
Underneath the stack of checks was a ledger book, all entries in pencil.
The floor was fitted with ceiling light fixtures designed for both electric and gas lights and contained a heavy wooden display rack like those seen at hardware counters of the era.
Copyright 2005 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

 

[MK]

Amazing.

I wish they would have had pictures to go with the story.

 

[Hemingway Jones]

Great story, Bern. Thanks for posting it.
I once read a story in the New Yorker in the Around the Town section about an architect in NYC who would walk around famous landmark buildings for inspiration during lunch. He was well-known, so he was given access and this was 20 years ago.

Anyway, one day he is walking around The Chrysler Building and he discovers this restaurant that had been sealed since the late 1940's. Plates were still on the tables and all of the other decorations were in place. It was perfectly preserved.

Your story reminded me about that.

 

[feltfan]

SF Maltery

For those in the SF Bay Area, if you can figure out a way
to get in to the old Maltery on Chestnut in San Francisco
(I had a personal connection- I am not suggestion you
break in!), you can have a similar experience.

Malt still on the wipers in front of the old German ovens,
books laid on tables where they were abandoned. I think
it closed in the 70s, but the place goes back a LOT further.

Similarly, some might have visited the Cabinet War Rooms
in London. Now that's a sight! Churchill's wartime bunker,
sealed after the war, and intact down to the wastepaper
baskets and notes on the tables.

 

[DanielJones]

Man, those are some neat stories. One of those things I wish I could discover. There was the Acorn Clock Building in Paso Robles, California that fell in the December 2003 quake that had a 2nd floor that was finished but never used since 1896. It was supposed to be a ballroom but never got used. now it's all gone. Shame really. It was another case as well that had no pictures of what it looked like.

Cheers!

Dan

 

[Wild Root]

PE. Building.

Ah, you know these are great stories! Now for my story.

In 1999, a friend of mine took me to LA so we could scavenge some rag mills for vintage clothing. After that, we took a brake for lunch. He drove us to a small place that has been in business since 1909. It's located at street level of the building and they serve some mighty fine Beef dip sandwiches. We go in and order. Sitting there he tells me the history of the building. I find out that building was the main office building for the Pacific Electric Rail Road that operated the "Red Cars" of Southern CA. I had to use the men's room and he showed me where it was. I entered a small hallway that hasn't been touched since the 40's. I entered and saw that it retained the original stalls and fixtures from the 1930's. The original tile and mosaic floor was there! Sad part was that the mirrors and such were tagged by gangs from over the years. As we went back to where we parked, (it was on the side of the building) he told me that where we were walking was the entrance where the street cars came in to pick up and unload passengers. The parking lot it's self had simply been converted to a parking lot some years ago but, at the entrance, you could see the rails that led from the street into that portion of the structure. We then started to snoop. Found the original waiting area that retained the original drapes and lamp fixtures hanging from the ceiling and what not! I plan to go back some time and really snoop. From the out side, you can see the old original Venetian blinds hanging in the windows!

There are some neat places to discover out there! And it just amazes me that they're still here after all those years! Some things are better left forgotten because, they don?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢t get messed with!

=WR=

PS. See where the Red Cars are going in and out? That's where the parking lot is now.

I just discovered this and it abolishes any chance of discovering something undiscovered! There are some great photos of some of the original rooms though.
http://www.pelofts.com/

 

[Harry Lime]

I've been there, too.

Wild Root,

That is a cool building. Downtown LA has been a treasure trove of cool old building like this. After WW2 when they sort of screwed up city planning and it started to get abandoned it sort of fortunately became unfashionable. I say fortunate because it kept the buildings around rather than torn down. We'll see how long that last with the current re-invention and creeping gentrification.

Know any other good LA haunts like this? I'd like to scout them next time I'm in town.

Harry Lime

 

[Quigley Brown]

I was working for a newspaper as a photographer back in Iowa about 15 years ago and the town was tearing down several blocks of the central business district to make way for a mall. I went through all the buildings to photograph the interiors (and exteriors) before they were lost forever. Although what I discovered didn't go as far back in time as your stories I did find what had been a club back in the late 60s. It still had psychedelic paintings and poetry covering about every square inch of the place. What a time capsule of that era.

 

[John in Covina]

Ah, you know these are great stories! Now for my story.

In 1999, a friend of mine took me to LA so we could scavenge some rag mills for vintage clothing. After that, we took a brake for lunch. He drove us to a small place that has been in business since 1909. It's located at street level of the building and they serve some mighty fine Beef dip sandwiches. We go in and order. Sitting there he tells me the history of the building. I find out that building was the main office building for the Pacific Electric Rail Road that operated the "Red Cars" of Southern CA. I had to use the men's room and he showed me where it was. I entered a small hallway that hasn't been touched since the 40's. I entered and saw that it retained the original stalls and fixtures from the 1930's. The original tile and mosaic floor was there! Sad part was that the mirrors and such were tagged by gangs from over the years. As we went back to where we parked, (it was on the side of the building) he told me that where we were walking was the entrance where the street cars came in to pick up and unload passengers. The parking lot it's self had simply been converted to a parking lot some years ago but, at the entrance, you could see the rails that led from the street into that portion of the structure. We then started to snoop. Found the original waiting area that retained the original drapes and lamp fixtures hanging from the ceiling and what not! I plan to go back some time and really snoop. From the out side, you can see the old original Venetian blinds hanging in the windows!

There are some neat places to discover out there! And it just amazes me that they're still here after all those years! Some things are better left forgotten because, they don?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢t get messed with!

=WR=

PS. See where the Red Cars are going in and out? That's where the parking lot is now.

****
I think this is the building the bar Eddy Valintine's girl friend is supposed to work at in "Roger Rabbit." If i am not mistaken.

*****

 

[John in Covina]

Back in Copiague, a small town on the South Coast of Long Island, a friend of mine's family rented a hous on Meucci Avenue that had been renovated and the same thing had occured. They took out the stairway. There was an attic that could be used a bedrooms, but the only access was via the roof above the front. Also there was a section of the old cellar that was kinda walled off too, but nothing really much behind the wall other than the oil heating tank.

The house was haunted for sure!

 

[DanielJones]

Here are some before & after shots of a wonderful old building.

This was taken in the summer before the quake.

This was taken the day after the quake.

The good news is, that they are currently rebuilding the building with an added floor and the familiar acorn clock tower.

Cheers!

Dan

 

[Twitch]

A little better of a story than Geraldo's Al Capone's Vault deal.

BTW- there is a complete underworld of clandestine visitations of ancient classic buildings one can find on the web. One example is the fact that the Packard plant produced its last car in 1956 but the plant still stands along with myriad old Detroit buildings. People go to these abondoned wonders and photograph them. There is a beauty to the derelict buildings that is quite unique.

 

[Mojave Jack]

I just discovered this and it abolishes any chance of discovering something undiscovered! There are some great photos of some of the original rooms though.
http://www.pelofts.com/

How great would it be to be able to afford a loft there, though! What an incredible building! I really lose interest in architecture about 1935-1940. Not to sound stodgy, but they just don't make 'em like they used to!

OK, here's my building-time-capsule story! In the Pittsburgh Strip District is an ice cream shop called Klavon's. It opened in 1920 as a drug store/soda fountain, and remained pretty much unchanged until they closed in 1979 when the original Klavon (the pharmacist) died. They just closed the doors and left it for 20 years until one of the grandchildren re-opened the shop. The place is completely original 1920, down to the Coke bottle top stool seats and the wood telephone booths (the light still goes on when you close the door)! The really cool thing is that they do everything they can to preserve the retro feel of the place, right down to the kind of candy they sell. You can get those candy cigarettes, NECOs, those wax pop bottles, etc. Plus the menu is all egg cream sodas, malts, and other traditional ice cream treats. I was talking to the younger Klavon that runs it now, and he is more than happy to show you the back of the shop, which still has all the old wood cabinets for storing all the medicines and drugs, the marble tables, and all the equipment his grandfather used to mix prescriptions.

Klavon's Ice Cream Parlor
A Scoop of History

Right around the corner is Primanti's Brother's, which has been serving sandwich's to the dock workers of the Strip District since 1933. And man, are they good sandwiches! The Strip District is where all of the produce, meat, and other foodstuffs came into Pittsburgh back in the days of small neighborhood grocery stores. The dock workers and delivery men worked all night, so they needed a lunch that they could eat as they worked or drove. The Primanti Brothers started serving sandwiches with the cole slaw and french fries right on the sandwich so they workers could eat them quickly and easily. The place hasn't changed since they opened! If you're ever there, I highly recommend the kolbassi and cheese and an Iron City!

Primanti Brothers
National Geographic article about Primanti Brothers

 

[VivianRegan]

The rest of the Evansville story, found on sfgate.com, read like this (try not to let your heart ache at the new owner's comment...)

Lucille York Christensen said she and her husband, who will turn the floor into a loft apartment where they'll live, plan to keep some of the woodwork and old features, but not all of them.

"I'm not that interested in old stuff," she said.

Lucille York Christensen, a yoga instructor, will locate an office on the building's ground floor for her alternative healing therapies practice.

I could just bawl.

And yes... Detroit! The Final Frontier! There's a great book out there called American Ruins by Camilo Jos?ɬ© Vergara with beautiful shots of abandoned Detroit. It's hard for me to imagine empty, 20-story office buildings, but that's downtown Detroit!

I wish I had a similar story to all of yours, but I don't. Most places I stumble upon have been fairly well-vandalized. Bummer.

 

[havershaw]

Mojave Jack, I grew up in Pittsburgh. I never went down to the Strip District all that much, except to go to Primanti's. Next time I'm there (my whole family still lives there), I'll have to drag my wife to Klavon's. I've never been there, never even heard about it.

 

[Michael Mallory]

This is an old story, and it's maybe not as exciting as some of the others, but about twenty years ago I was working as a temp in the offices of the Los Angeles Community Development Agency, down in a not very good section of town. After I'd been there for several weeks, I overheard somebody talking about Angel's Flight -- the legendary tiny railway that ran up and down Bunker Hill in downtown L.A. (this was years before the reinstalled it, then removed it again when an accident killed someone). Back then, it was still legendary. So I asked the man who had been talking about it if he happened to know where Angel's Flight - the actual train cars - were. All I knew is that they had been packed up and put in storage somewhere. He got a funny look on his face and said, "You want to know where Angel's Flight is?" I said I did, and he said, "Well, I can't talk to you now, but try to catch me at the end of the day." So I waited until five and looked him up. All he said was, "Follow me." he led me out to a shed-like building behind the office we worked in, which was padlocked. He undid the lock, opened the door, and said, "There she is, kid." And it was Angel's Flight...two beat up, rotting train cars and stacks and stacks of track. I felt like I had been let in on a huge secret.

Then a few years later I read something about the set of Cecil B. DeMille's original "Ten Commandments," shot in 1923. DeMille went to a remote part of Central California called Guadalupe, where there were acres of sand dunes right on Pacific shore, and that stood in for Egypt. He built a huge Egyptian facade representing the palace of the Pharaoh, and a boulevard of sphinxes. Then for reasons known only to C.B., when they were done shooting he buried the entire set in the sand. It was not well known at that time that the set was still up there. So I convinced my wife to take a vacation in that direction and go up and look. A hiked around in the freezing sand (that wind off the ocean can be nasty) until I found what was clearly the rubble of a ruined "city" -- it was DeMille's Egypt. There were still frames of chariots laying around. Today, it has all been cordoned off for official excavation, and you can't go up there anymore. But I still have my chunk of painted plaster from the "temple" that I, uh, borrowed from the site.

 

[John in Covina]

Follow the money CB.

CB was contracted to remove the set pieces but due to budget over runs did not have the money to cart it away. They tipped everything down into the sand and buldozed sand ove it. The area with debris is the "Dune that doesn't move" whereas regular dunes move.

DId you guys know that parts of the "Burning of Atlanta" scenes of fire in 'Gone With the Wind' was a filming of the torched "Wall" from the original King Kong. The big wall that seperated the wild dinosaur portion of the island from the village.

 

[Michael Mallory]

Yep. "Atlanta" under the torch just about cleared the old RKO backlot.

 

[jkath]

It's located at street level of the building and they serve some mighty fine Beef dip sandwiches. http://www.pelofts.com/

Is that Phillips?


Oh, these tales make me long to find a treasure!

 

[MrBern]

40s baseball cards

see this?
A recluse's home in Boston. Piles of trash 6 feet high. Amongst it, 500 boxes of baseball, football & hockey cards dating back to th `40s
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2006/baseball/mlb/01/19/cards.treasure.ap/index.html?cnn=yes