and was torn down and sanitized of any historical value so that we can have a outlet mall that looks like everywhere usa!!!
You might be right about that, but I think the Pullman Standard plant (in Michigan City, Indiana, for the uninitiated), was a bit closer to the MC (now Amtrak) tracks. I can no longer remember how or where the Monon came in, if that line figured into the equation.
But don’t blame the mall. Pullman Standard bailed on that plant in about 1970, and the mall was a good 10-15 years later, if memory recalls. Even if the buildings lasted, years of neglect by anything except animals could render them undesirable at best and useless at worst.
P.S. I’ve seen a number of outlet (and other) shopping malls made out of old factories. Some work, some don’t. Hey, if you want a factory to convert into a mall after being neglected for a decade or so, check out the Brach’s Candy Company plant next to the UP and BRC tracks in Chicago. Plenty of parking, and floor upon floor of opportunity. They may offer you a sweet deal.
If we tried to save every old building, pretty soon we would have nothing but old buildings. Any building that was built in the Pullman years and has been empty for decades is not going to be economically salvageable.
I’ve seen the shell of the Brach plant several times from the C&NW West Line and one that it doesn’t have is location. It’s also in pretty bad shape and it appears that either demolition or rehab is going to take a lot of money.
Many of these old factories are today “brownfield” sites - loaded with the remnants of the hazardous materiels used freely at the time.
A small factory which manufactured snowplows near me was eventually torn down, and even then, it took several years to remediate the site for other uses.
On of Henry Ford’s “Village Industry” factories in my old hometown took a similar path, although it did house a second manufacturing company for a time. The building is down, but the site is still vacant.
Nostalgia is fine - but as has been mentioned, sometimes the structures aren’t sound, or are manifestly inappropriate for any current day use.
That’s not to say that many older buildings haven’t been repurposed, but sometimes it’s just easier overall to tear them down and start over.
The mall was built on the site of the plant, however most of the “historical value” was burned to the ground in the plant’s 1973 fire.
The Works building in the SE corner is still in use by stores and has pictures and related decor and was part of the complex. To the best of my knowledge you are in error to say the mall builders destroyed any portion of the facility. How dare Michigan City attract development and jobs to the area at a run down area. The mall is a vast improvement and my family’s favorite place to shop until we left the area.
There is nothing worse to view than a abandoned heavy industry facility. It’s continued existance in it’s area shouts economic depression to all that live near it and all that pass by it. It is a drag on any and all efforts for the locality to ‘reinvent’ its self and become economically viable again. Rust Belt is a much to apt discription. The continued existance of a deteriorating heavy industry facility is a continuing reminder to the community of the communities failure and a continuing reminder to all the former employees of the life they used to enjoy.
Yeah. Why can’t they just preserve stuff the right way??? [:'(] What used to be Pennsylvania Engineering Corporation was just torn down too. PECorp made the furnaces, train cars, ladles, etc for steel mills, and for a while the building had been turned into a steel industry museum. Now it’s torn down to make room for a scrap metal processing facility AKA a recycling center. PECorp was a really neat building too.
S&S
The loss of the industry and the jobs it created (a story in and of itself and not germaine to this discussion) notwithstanding, tearing that snowplow factory down was actually a good thing, as it sat on some prime waterfront property.
A large hotel, which is sure to attract numerous tourists, in addition to creating the jobs that tourism requires, is going up right now where the factory stood.
Architecturally, the factory was rather ho-hum. No great loss.
That outlet mall attracts a number of shoppers daily and employees hundreds of young men and women of Michigan City who needs jobs. The Pullman factory served it’s purpose, as does the Outlet Mall.
Union Tank Car’s facility in East Chicago was a similar old factory which closed in 2007. Gone, but not forgotten. Over 500 highly skilled welders and machine operators gone. Progress. It hurts sometimes.
Ed
The Pullman headquarters and town have been preserved. The museum is open daily with an excellent history film. In October home residents open them for viewing. Tours of the hotel and plant can be arranged. An effort is under way to make all of Pullmwn a national historic area. The Hammond indiana plant that produced the Superliners still exists. Another historic building near Pullman is the original EMD plant in Chicago visible from I 94.
Awww, c’mon, Paul–near da corner of Chicago an’ Cicero, dat’s a perfect location, wit’ street names like dose! We just need da right politicians ta get da bus rollin’ an’ t’row da right people unner it!
Seriously, I went by the plant hulk this evening, and there are a couple of tall cranes and other construction equipment in the parking lot. I kind of prefer the movie-set demolition that has claimed portions of the complex, but would like to see it gone before anybody gets the idea of repurposing it.
And thanks, N012 (if I may call you by your first name), for the story of the fire there. I don’t know why I didn’t remember that; we probably drove by there on U.S. 12 often in succeeding years.
Old Warehouses and Factorys have flavor…Quaker Sqaure in Akron Oh was reporposed into a hotel and mall. Warehouse are in demand by Guppies (Gay Urban Profesionals) who love the old factortys and the art they can creat there. Station Sqaure in Pittsburgh is a prime example of repurposing…I am tired of the look alike walmarts and strip malls…Why Travel if everything and everyplace looks like everywhere else?[:'(][banghead]
You’ve made your point by listing some of the good ones, a fact that I acknowledged in my first response. But you cost yourself a whole lot of credibility by taking aim at a mall, and a situation, where the end result was a win for everyone, including the people who lived in the neighborhood.
Speaking of the flavors that the old warehouses and factories have, I’m wondering how interested you’d be in this factory that was one of the largest employers in my home town until a few years ago. Nice riverfront property, over a quarter-mile of street frontage, two stories, good, solid brick structure that looked like a factory, plenty of parking. My old home town is a mecca for tourists, anyway, and the nearest outlet mall is twenty miles or so away, in another tourist community.
You missed your chance; they’ve leveled most of the place.
P.S. I mentioned the “flavor”: this was a tannery.
Having gone through all of that, we often travel looking for names and places that are familiar, so we know what to expect. There is still plenty of opportunity for adventure with the unexpected and the unfamiliar, and I’ve never been anyplace that completely reminds me of any other place.