Special places: Industry
Chittagong shipbreaking yards
Edward Burtynsky’s photographs of shipbreaking in Bangladesh evoke the scale and danger of this business.
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Texas bird’s-eye views
This website displays a collection of late nineteenth century bird’s-eye views of Texan cities and towns. The views were originally published as colour lithographs, full of the detail of buildings and other human artefacts set in a grand landscape.
The subjects are settlements established or expanded since the coming of the railroad. With their orderly gridded streets, heroic railway viaducts, belching smokestacks and rows of neat houses the views exude the settlers’ pride in their achievements.
I am reminded of the pattern of development of parts of Queensland in the same period. The port city of Galveston seems like Rockampton, while there are inland Texan analogs for Emerald, Barcaldine and Longreach.
Sprol
According to its tagline, Sprol is about planetary scrutiny. It’s a blog whose entries use Google satellite photographs and acerbic text to highlight places of environmental disaster and degradation.
»more»Maps of Scotland 1560-1928
The National Library of Scotland’s map collection is one of the ten largest in the world.
»more»Modern ruins
Phillip Buehler’s dossier of ruined ships, railway stations, stadiums, hospitals, Worlds Fair sites, U-boat bunkers and other remarkable places. The author has a sharp eye — look at the other sections of his site too (linked from the home page).
»more»America’s last wool pullery
Pittsburg, Pennsylvania was once the centre of a major hide and skin trading, tanning and fellmongering industry. This web site is about the factory of the Pittsburg Wool Company, and about a campaign to conserve it. The author, Dr David S Rotenstein, is a professional historian and an active campaigner.
»more»The fabulous ruins of Detroit
Lowell Boileau’s tour of the vanishing ruins of his beloved city.
Granddaddy of them all and possibly the most famous factory in history, the remains of Henry Ford’s Model T Automobile Plant in the Detroit enclave of Highland Park is still in partial use as a warehouse. Home of the moving assembly line and designed by industrial architect giant, Albert Kahn, the world beat a path to its door fuelling the second industrial revolution and catapulting Detroit to wealth and fame.»more»
Hanford Site Historic District
Hanford (near Richland, Washington, USA) .. was established in secrecy during the Second World War to produce plutonium for America’s nuclear weapons. Peak production years were reached in the 1960s when 9 production reactors were in operation at the Site. All weapons material production was halted in the late 1980s and the Site is now engaged in the world’s largest environmental cleanup project — Hanford is also the subject of a project (well documented on this web site) to conserve and interpret its historic significance.
»more»Urban adventures
This web site is maintained by the Melbourne Drain Team, a bunch of adventurers who secretly explore outlandish places above and below the ground — a garish but engaging web site, linked to a ring of others around the world