DEFUNCTSITE

Sometimes I take documents from buildings being torn down, but only if I’m certain that they would be otherwise thrown away. I’ll be posting some of my finds here…

(Click on the image above to make it big)

This is a 1939 blueprint of the sewer lines underneath The Liquid Carbonic Corporation, which later became the home of Washburne Trade School. You can see the outlines of all of the buildings that were part of the complex, including the warehouse section that was torn down in early 2007 and the Administration Building that was just demolished. The now partially demolished west wing of the complex must have been built after 1939, because that area on the blueprint just has an outline with the phrase ‘foundation for future building’ (edit 4/29/08: or maybe I was just reading the blueprint wrong, since the west wing is clearly visible in the 1938 aerial photo that I posted HERE). I’m not sure if I remember the ‘gas works’, though that may have been a small separate building I found when the warehouse section was demolished.

I found this sheet among a huge pile of old blueprints on the floor above the boiler room, or what the plan calls the ‘gas plant’. Every time I would sneak into Washburne to shoot photos, I made sure to visit this room so I could thumb through all of the drawings and get a sense of what the building used to be like. Many of the blueprints were as old as the one posted above, others were more recent, and oddly enough a few looked like plans for an unrelated building across the street.

I was often temped to take some of the plans home, but decided that would just be pointless looting. Finally, after work crews started to move demolition equipment onto the site I decided to grab this one sheet. At first I felt uncomfortable taking the blueprint, but then a week later the building with all of the plans inside was demolished, so I stopped worrying about it. Now I regret not taking more.