Sublunar Photography

This police station was built in the 1930s and it closed down in 1987 at which point it appears they simply closed the doors and walked away. The power, and even the lights, have been left on the whole time which has created a goldilocks scenario leaving everything frozen in time like some sort of museum dedicated to "law enforcement as it existed prior to the age of computers". Aside from the natural elements slowly creeping in, what was hidden here behind closed doors has remained locked up, forgotten and unseen by just about anyone for nearly forty years.

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In the Detective Bureau, the daily schedule from 1987 was still hanging on the bulletin board, along with everything else from that day. A faded photograph and accompanying fingerprints of an unidentified and unfortunate Jane Doe hung on the same board next to some FBI Most Wanted bulletins and other urgent communications. Stacks of photos of both the accused and their alleged victims lay scattered around desks and strewn across the floors where the wind, evidently (or ghosts, perhaps) had over the course of intervening decades eventually made its way through eroded windowframes and had scattered this ephermera throughout what was once the headquarters of the chief criminal investigators of their city who are themselves probably as dead now as the people in said photos were then. Mountains of police lights and radios, paperwork and evidence all fill the rooms in which they were left decades ago. Due to the amount of time that has passed, even some of the more mundane details stick out to me. A vase of perfectly preserved and long dead flowers still decorate the space. Typewriters sit at most desks with phones nearby and calendars from the 80's still hang on the walls. A "typewriter" is the name of an obsolete relic from the analog days of yore when the simple task of communicating was a far more manual and laborious task. And I'm not sure how long fluorescent bulbs were designed to last but the ones here must be setting some kind of longevity record at this point. Most were burned out. All breakers still in the "ON" position.

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Imagine being a physical newspaper company in the early 2000's. Print journalism had already been on a steady, predictable, decline over the decade prior and now this newfangled thing called "the internet" was capable of spreading the written word instantaneously across the globe. For free, even. Average print circulation was dropping 1% every year and household subscriptions had declined nearly 15%. The writing was on the wall.

Faced with numbers like the above, one brave newspaper made a bold move. At a time when declining subscriptions and ad revenue forced many of their peers into collapse, this newspaper decided to spend roughly one gazillion dollars (nearly $300 Million USD adjusted for inflation) to build this giant 6-story printing press and its supporting infrastructure.

To the surprise of at least a small handful of people, it wasn't long before their financial outlook was, and I quote, "bleak". The time soon came when they could no longer justify keeping this monstrosity running. So now it sits empty... along with their historic 100+ year old former headquarters, which they abandoned when they decided to build this mega-facility. The company does still exist, surprisingly, but now they operate out of smaller offices and must resort to paying to have their papers printed hundreds of miles away and then shipped into town.

If you're equally bad at spotting trends, reading the room, etc, then you'll be delighted to know that this massive newspaper printing facility is currently on the market for about 1/10th the cost to originally build it. But wait. Hold the presses. Contact me right now and I'll give you a much better deal. I accept cash offers. As you can see, it's in mint condition and probably runs great.

"I'll tell you what, though.. Blogs. They aren't going anywhere. People love this shit!" the author insisted as he firmly but affectionately slapped his antique photography blog which caused the thick layer of dust to waft through the air. "This social media craze is just a shiny new thing. It's a trend that will fade out. I couldn't even tell you how many visitors I had to my blog this month". The statcounter plugin stopped working about 10 years ago. "But it was probably several. Several unique visitors." And then he hobbled off back to his peaceful retirement community while bitching to himself about some "dumb kids" on instagram.

I was pretty excited to see this complete Linotype machine here. One of my favorite locations from a decade or two ago (the Wright Arcade) had a newspaper office in it that was full of these, but in much worse condition.

NOTE 1: It's been over a year since this visit occurred and in the meantime they've auctioned off a lot of the more significant items in here. So a lot has changed here and this location has been deemed safe to post here.

NOTE 2: This blog post does not correlate to the "4 part series of loosely related posts" mentioned in the previous two updates. Consider this one a bonus. We will return to the 4-part series on the next post.