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Posts Tagged ‘NoWhere’

(Not) for Sale: Get Paid $5K to Haul Away ‘Skyway to Nowhere’

25 Feb

[ By WebUrbanist in Abandoned Places & Architecture. ]

skyway as lake superior retreat

280,000 pounds of glass, steel and concrete spanning over 80 feet, this remarkable structure was built to span city streets and sidewalks in Minneapolis but has storied history that goes well beyond its original usage. Today, this historic wonder can be yours for a remarkable sum of negative $ 5,000 – indeed, its owners will pay you to take it away (and hopefully put it to good use).

skyway to nowhere

skyway current condition wheels

buy a skyway

An incredibly robust work of engineering, the structure originally connected two downtown buildings in Minnesota’s biggest city, but when one of the pair it bridged was demolished it became a kind of “skyway to nowhere” that was more liability than asset. Ideas to turn it into a bridge or use it again as a skyway in another location all failed to materialize, but many others have been dreamed up since – a mobile nightclub, kiosk for Nicollet Mall and so forth.

skyway on nicolet mall

skyway interior cabin design

skyway floor plan design

skyway as walkway

It was subsequently listed for sale and bought for $ 1 by the University of Minnesota, which then sold it at blind auction by CityDeskStudio for $ 5,000. Plans to turn it into a modern cabin overlooking Lake Superior have since fallen through, hence its being once again up for grabs. CDS originally relisted the bridge in the early 2000s for close to $ 100,000 – the price was dropped repeatedly before the company decided to not only give away the behemoth but to pay for its relocation.

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Stairs to Nowhere: Half-Finished Fire Escape Inside a Church

08 Jul

[ By Steph in Art & Installation & Sound. ]

Fire Escape Church Sambre 1

A mass of reclaimed, weathered wood of all shapes and sizes rises up to the cathedral ceiling of the Church of St. Peter the Puellier in Mairie d’Orleans – but don’t expect these stairs to go anywhere. Built by French artist Sambre, ‘Escalier de Secours’ (Fire Escape) brings a sense of chaos and disproportion into a space typically considered sacred.

Fire Escape Church Sambre 2

Fire Escape Church Sambre 3

Installed in the heart of the church, the staircase consists of a framework covered in randomly applied wooden slats, nailed on with no apparent rhyme or reason. Intentionally oversized, the stairs are much to large for any human to walk up, requiring a hands-and-knees climb to ascend.

Fire Escape Church Sambre 6

Fire Escape Church Sambre 9

The work invites visitors to discover the twelfth-century church, which is the oldest remaining intact in Orleans, in an entirely new and self-guided way. Looking up through the nest-like wooden mass from the ground floor, you catch only glimpses of the church’s vaults. Visitors can choose from a variety of paths to make their way through the space, metaphorically exploring the many options available in life.

Fire Escape Church Sambre 8

Fire Escape Church Sambre 7

Sambre is known for large-scale, seemingly haphazard sculptures and architectural installations made of reclaimed wood, including spheres and labyrinths built inside gallery spaces and warehouses.

 

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Pointing Nowhere: Mysterious Arrows in Remote Places

31 Dec

[ By Steph in Global & Travel & Places. ]

Mysterious Concrete Arrows Airmail 1

The remains of large concrete arrows can be found in patches of dirt and grass across the United States from New York to San Francisco. Many locals have wondered what they’re for, seemingly pointing nowhere at all and often located in fairly remote places. They were installed in the 1920s, each accompanied by a fifty-foot tower and a tiny hut, and became obsolete within a decade.

Mysterious Concrete Arrows Airmail 2

So what were they for? Getting mail delivered in the time period just after the birth of the airplane, but before the wide use of radar and radio communications. The arrows helped guide airmail pilots at night, when flights would otherwise be grounded due to inability to properly navigate. The ability to deliver mail by plane represented a huge step in the evolution of U.S. mail delivery, vastly speeding up a system that had previously relied on stagecoach lines.

Mysterious Concrete Arrows Airmail 3

Mysterious Concrete Arrows Airmail 4

The system used fifty-foot beacon towers with rotating lights placed on top of concrete foundations shaped like arrows, usually between 50-70 feet in length. A small hut offered a place to stay for the people who maintained the generators and lights. The beacons were only visible from a distance of about 10 miles.

Mysterious Concrete Arrows Airmail 5

By the end of the first year of the program, the airmail service had 18 terminal airfields and more than 500 beacon lights in operation along the main mail delivery route, and continued to expand throughout the 1920s. But by 1933, new technology and the high cost of operation during the depression shut the program down. The towers were disassembled for their steel during World War II. A few have been preserved, like the one pictured above at the Western New Mexico Aviation Heritage Museum.

Mysterious Concrete Arrows Airmail 6

While many of the arrows have since been lost to development, those further afield still offer a (sometimes mystifying) glimpse of the past. The blog Sometimes Interesting has compiled a list with map links to arrows that still remain in New Mexico, Wyoming, Idaho, Nevada and other states.

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[ By Steph in Global & Travel & Places. ]

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NJ Ghost Towns – The Bridge To NoWhere ! – Flatbrook River, Delaware Water Gap NJ

21 Dec

New Jersey Ghost Towns: Along the Delaware River are entire towns where the people were forced out by the government in the 60s because they were going to flood the towns and build a huge reservoir. This was known as the ‘Tocks River Project’ (there are numerous books on the subject). After this ‘forced evacuation’ two problems came up. The first was the Vietnam War which caused all funding to be diverted toward the war effort. The second, although not widely publicized, was the fact that the mountain that was supposed to support the proposed dam, didn’t have the right foundation to hold the water back as previously thought. As the genius of government decisions go, they tried to raise funds for the project by putting an ad in the local newspapers and renting out the abandoned houses. Well, you can imagine how those people felt who were forced out of their homes and lost everything to see ‘migrating hippies’ from New York City descending down on the area in droves. Hundreds squatted in these homes getting government checks to live there. One night, again, the government had the National Guard and State Police Agencies descend down upon the area to chase the squatters. Now, years later, you can see the remnants of these deserted houses and towns, now in the Federal Domain, but since the government is pretty much fund-less, what’s left of the houses, the towns and the surrounding land lie in limbo in a bunch of government red tape. In this video, check out the Bridge To
Video Rating: 3 / 5