Hi all. New to the forums but so far I'm loving the community.
Figured I'd post my shots of State Line Generating from December 2014. This was a few months before it was fully demolished. I had the amazing opportunity to tour the entire site with permission one weekend thanks to some connections and favors.
Here's some of my favorites from the chilly 10°F trip. Lake Michigan winds aren't too forgiving in the winter. These are a mix of smartphone and DSLR shots so some might be a bit more compressed and artifacted than others. Wasn't the best photographer back then either
Main entrance gate. This archway has luckily been preserved and is still fully intact on the lakefront. Maybe even slightly cleaner than it was in this shot.
Entrance to the turbine hall. Amazing stonework here. Would've loved to see that sign preserved.
The turbine hall, with some missing bits. Again the limstone walls and ironwork in this place were incredible. Notice the flooded basement, the sump pumps had been off for a couple years at this point.
Some more detail on the architecture of the turbine hall.
The main entrance from the inside. Nice ironwork and cool windows.
What was the Unit 1 & 2 boilerhouse. This had been demolished the week before we were here. From the other photos I've seen this part of the plant was equally as elegant as the turbine hall.
The remaining half of Unit 3 boiler. This was definitely a sketchy trip. Lots of structurally-questionable parts due to the active demo.
Looks like a staged photo, but I swear it wasn't. This electrical supervisors' log was sitting in the rubble of the Unit 1/2 boilerhouse. I've been meaning to scan the pages of this for a while now; tons of interesting things in it.
View of the Turbine Hall, from the other end. You almost couldn't tell it was being torn down. Almost.
The holes where massive turbines once lived.
The rack and pinion for one of the water intake gates.
One of several emergency phones scattered throughout the plant. This was in the far end of the turbine hall.
We ended our trip by climbing as far as we could get in the Unit 3 boilerhouse. Definitely some sketchy sections during the climb.
I really regret not taking more pictures. We were being a bit rushed by our host as he had commitments in the evening, and we were also preoccupied with saving as many artifacts as we could from the site. Did I mention the guy who got us in gave us permission to take anything interesting we saw? "It's all getting scrapped within a few months anyway. I'd love to see some of it preserved" was the wording he used.
I've got some more pics if people are interested. These are probably the best ones though.
