Part of the vast sea of media-created and media-mediated pablum is the loss of meaning of actual physical objects. For example, cars, in addition to their ever-so-important roles as substitute penises and markers of coolness, are actual a form of transportation that billions of people use and carry with them actual physical benefits and problems.
Mill buildings are in great demand as theme restaurants, as visibly hip apartment houses, and as reminders of the past as told by Walt Disney and Ken Burns. They are, also, actual places connected with industrial and agricultural history. I’ve been working on and off for several years on a probably futile project to save a grist mill on Long Island. The building is slowly rotting away and no one has both the will and the money to stop that process.
From the street it doesn’t look like much because the street grade is some 20 feet higher than when the building was built in the 1700s.
The building has a heavy timber frame supporting its two floors and roof…
but I actually find the most interesting piece of the interior to be the frames that held the grinding stones.
Bottom pic: That’s more like the basements I’ve been in. Love the wiring job(s). “Code? We don’t need to follow no steenking code!” Thems some beeg timbers. Also too, that pipe insulation likely contains asbestos.
“From the street it doesn’t look like much because the street grade is some 20 feet higher than when the building was built in the 1700s.” Futurama and Blade Runner come to mind.
The pipe wrap doesn’t contain asbestos, it is asbestos. Unadulterated.
The tannery I mentioned a while back, that I had also done some futile work in trying to reuse and it got torn down anyway (and people wonder why Zombie drinks) had the same thing with the street, at least on the older side of the street; when municipal services were put in, they just laid ‘em down the middle of the street, and piled dirt on top of em to the new road height. Left some awesomely deep lightwells alongside the sidewalk, just like what you show there.
I’ve been working on and off for several years on a probably futile project to save a grist mill on Long Island. The building is slowly rotting away and no one has both the will and the money to stop that process.
Is there still a body of water nearby, or was the streambed rerouted? Could a hydroelectric turbine be installed? I’ve met a guy who builds low flow turbines based on the Archimedes screw- install one, and turn the mill into a “steampunk” themed bar.
You know where I work, so you know how I feel about mills… be a dam (sic) shame if this building were razed.
Saw this and thought “gift idea.”
If the mouse-over text didn’t show that the link went to Boing Boing, I was not going to click on general avoiding-goatse grounds.
your captions totally crack me up…
As much as three seconds of thought goes into each.
Oh, it’s REALLY charming, N_B.
I bet you say that to all the
boysmills.