Sublunar Photography

The Train Station was constructed in 1907 as a combination passenger and freight depot. Passenger service was available 5 days per week with stops at 6am, 7:30am, noon and 6pm. Freight and mail service was available twice daily. The ticket booth is in the center of the building with men's and women's passenger waiting areas on either side. In the waiting room to the left of the ticket booth is an old floor-integrated Fairbanks platform scale. The express mail room is through the next door past the scale on the far end of the building. Across from the scale, stairs lead down to a basement made of stone and brick and an earth floor running the length of the building.

The increased ownership of automobiles in the United States, which was most notable from the 1950's through the 1970's, correlated to an 80% decline in the use of commuter trains across the country. Passenger service at this rural location was subsequently discontinued in April 1967. Freight service was terminated shortly thereafter and with it, this depot's 60 years of service came to an end. The building was later briefly used as a residence but it has otherwise been abandoned and mostly unchanged since it closed back in 1967. This means that for the ~120 years of its existence thus far, this station has now been sitting empty for nearly the same amount of time that it was operational. The tracks that run right past its doors, however, have kept humming all this time. And so, at the same regular daily intervals to which it has long been accusomed, the old bones of this depot still shake to the scheduled rhythm of passing trains which rumble and hiss and stir up ghosts in their wake to dance among the cobwebs and the shadows until the last locomotive disappears down the tracks as quickly as it arrived and the dust settles once more where riders no longer disembark and from where no travelers depart.

Note: This post is #2 in a series of 4 loosely related upcoming blog posts which will culminate with the juiciest location/post ever*. Stay tuned..

*This claim has not been verified.

The old Vernon County Jail in Nevada, Missouri was originally constructed as the new U.S. Post Office in 1909 and now, over 100 years later, it stands out as one of the more beautifully designed structures in this part of the state. This is explained by the fact that it was designed by notable architect James Knox Taylor who, at the turn of the 20th Century, was Supervising Architect of the United States Department of the Treasury. Taylor is listed as Supervising Architect of hundreds of Federal buildings during his time. Some of these buildings include the Ellis Island Immigrant Hospital (1908), The Denver Mint (1897) and a variety of other federal buildings and post offices across the country. Sharing many architectural elements and design cues of other work attributed to Taylor, this building which is located in the little middle-of-nowhere town of Nevada, Missouri, is nearly identical to the Post Office credited to him in Niagra Falls, New York as can be seen on his Wikipedia page here.

After 52 years of service, a new post office of an objectively uglier but probably more efficient design was being constructed in 1961 and by 1963 the old post office was taken over by the local Sherrif's department to serve as their new offices and county jail. In order to facilitate the new county jail, a $50,000 renovation was undertaken which seems to have included some interior demolition of the pension and postal inspection offices located on the second floor. Today, there is almost no second floor to speak of aside from a kitchen area/meeting rooms on one end and some maintenance/access areas on the opposite side with a wide open two story center section. How much of this may have been changed for construction of the jail, I can't say for certain. The middle portion is now home to a chunky and overall incongruent cellblock in the center of the floor. There is what appears to be a juvenile cell on one of the perimeter walls and a separate cellblock on the opposite side of the building. Overall, the construction of the cells appears to have been a low-budget half-assed design featuring a mess of an HVAC system strewn across the top. The only real evidence left of the grand interior design is located in the main Sherrif's office and the staircaise to the upstairs kitchen and meeting rooms. Worthy of note among the current interior details are the multiple gun ports running along the new second floor interior perimeter walls. These gun ports are accessed by a ladder to a very tight hallway with a couple of small window-sized frames inside of which are rectangular metal openings with horizontal slits that are aimed directly at the cell doors/hall below. These were designed so that guards would have a safe vantage point from which to observe and shoot, if necessary, any rioting inmates below. I haven't seen any record of riots here, however there were numerous escapes throughout the years which contributed to the justification of a new jail being built reougly 50 years following the establishment of this one.

In May of 2009, the new Vernon County jail was completed at the cost of $8,000,000. The new jail can house 86 inmates versus the comparatively small 24-person capacity of this now obsolete facility. Upon completion, local residents were invited to participate in a $25 fundraiser "lock-in" at the new jail which was presumably "fun".

Since the closure of this jail in 2009, it was left abandoned and has since changed hands several times. Currently, it appears to be owned and inhabited by someone who is working to stabilize/renovate the building.

The Morrison Observatory was originaly constructed in 1875 by Pritchett College, a small local institution in Glasgow, Missouri. It was named after the benefactor Bernice Morrison who, in 1874, pledged $100,000 to build a world-class observatory at the college. Within a year, the college delivered on her stated goals.

The observatory was outfitted with the best instruments available at the time which consisted of a beautifully crafted 12.25" Clark Refracting Telescope housed beneath a hand-cranked rotating dome that was modeled after the one found at Harvard's Observatory. Clark Telescopes, made by the legendary Alvan Clark company were the centerpieces of all of the top observatories of the day such as Harvard, Lowell, and Yerkes. One year later, in 1876, a 6" Meridian Telescope, built by Troughton & Sims was installed in a separate part of the building. With this addition, the observatory was able to generate income by selling the accurate time to local railroads and other institutions throughout Missouri. The Meridian Telescope is a large single axis transit telescope whose primary function was "to accurately mark the position of a star as it crossed the zenith at the observatory's 39 Degrees North Latitude". There was a lounge chair built for the comfort of the observer who would send a telegraph to the railway signalling devices to accurately mark the time. The position of the telescope was accurately determined through the use of large dials on the side whose marks were illuminated by a complex series of glass prisms which directed the light from attached lamps. There is also a closet directly behind the telescope which was built to house the clock on which the time was locally recorded. This clock was built by notable horologist Charles Frodsham, clockmaker to the Queen of England, who started the Charles Frodsham & Co in London, which "remains in existence as the longest continuously trading firm of chronometer manufacturers in the world". Notable among the oservations made at the Morrison Observatory is that of Jupiter's Great Red Spot which was documented by Dr. Henry Pritchett in 1878. By 1907, however, the Morrison Observatory was no longer in use.

Pritchett College failed financially in 1922 but nearby Central Methodist College gained possession of the observatory in order to preserve and restore it. Central Methodist, however, was 12 miles away which was not exactly convenient so in 1935 the observatory itself was moved to an ideal spot where it was re-constructed within a 10 minute walk from campus where it still stands today.

NOTE: This trip occurred during the time period to which my future biographers will refer as "the broken collarbone era". As such it is not my greatest work behind the camera and I fully intend to revisit someday to do the place justice using both of my arms.

NOTE 2: This observatory is not abandoned and multiple people live here at any given time. It is often open to the public so I highly recommend that you go and you slip them some cash donations while you're at it. As was the case with my previous post, this location features gratuitous amounts of "cool old stuff" and therefore qualifies as "blog worthy" due to its absurd level of awesomeness. This is now one of my favorite places ever.

Source(s): 1, 2, 3

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Here I am attempting to capture Saturn (which was clearly visible and crystal clear in the eyepiece) with my phone.. with only one usable arm while precariously balanced on the movable stair/platform that provides observers access to the eyepiece.