Edit: Realized I'd skimped on photos, so I added more.
This one is kind of personal to me. I live really close to this place, know the owners very well. I coughed on the smoke as it burned down. (I was told, and due to basically the roads being blocked off and my knowing the owners, I listened, not to go near it as it burned down. Also, there was the explosion risk from there being 300 gallons of gas underground, which thankfully, never went off. They had one fire truck on that at all times.)
I sorta wish I had gone anyway, because some people got some great photos as it was going down of the firemen fighting it (five fire departments came to the fire), but I also am sort of glad I only got to see the wreckage from a distance (physically and temporally) and second-hand.
It probably wasn't wise of me to go in when I did... the place was still smoking when I did (you might see it if I pick the right pictures.)
View from the street. The entire second floor had collapsed in on the first. I found the desks from the second floor on the ground. (Like a lot of places on the lake, the building was not built on level ground, so you could walk straight into it from the road and from the lake.) The balcony can't be seen off to the side, because that's the part of it that burned down. It's ironic that half of the balcony was still standing though, because that thing was falling apart before the fire. (You could step through it. The boards were rotting.)
Edit: I don't know what I'm talking about, the immortal balcony is right there...
View from the lake. There was a stop-light they used to show when they were open on the lake-side, so people didn't waste gas trying to get there only to find out they were closed. Only a bit of the red was left. (I checked in with the owners later. A nice island-owning couple (read: super rich) bought them a new one for when the new building goes up.
At this point I had someone stop me and talk to me for a while about what a shame it was. Only the second time I've ever been talked to during one of my explorations. They saw me walk right into the wreckage.
Seeing the metal and how it reacted to the fire the most interesting part, to me. The other side of the motor's cover in the second photo? Totally fine. And the owner was able to recover tons of parts off that motor that were functional. He told me the screws were actually easier to get off. (The motor itself was already non-functional before the fire.)
Pretty normal exploration-wise if it's a fire, I just liked the contrast.
It hurt me a little bit that it took me a little bit to recognize this desk, re-organize it in my mind to figure out what it would have looked like before the fire. (That black plastic with an antennae would be on top of the cabinet in the back. Everything else was just insulation, which was exposed when you walked in, so it was no wonder it fell.)
Another view of the "back room." Apparently they pulled a plastic toolbox out of here perfectly unharmed. I got a look at it. Their definition of "perfectly unharmed" meant "a little warped" but it was true... the tools on the inside were perfect.
By the time I had gotten to this part of the building, the sun had begun to set, meaning I had to use flash for the rest of my photos. I knew I couldn't make myself return for a second time, and demolition was so imminent that I might not be able to. I had simply chosen a bad time to explore the place.
The metal parts underneath a lot of these carts had literally fused together, they were so small.
This chair was upstairs.
That was the gas pump the marina had in 1920 when it opened. Pretty sure they let it go to the landfill. Why not? It wasn't salvageable.
Final outside shots of the marina.
If anyone is curious, the official cause of the fire? Mice building a nest in a freezer. The owner says he's getting a cat for the new building. And he insists he hates cats. (I think he kinda likes them though.)
