[NorthMancBeds]

Well, today I found out just how helpful and friendly the people of Seattle are.

On day 1 of this trip we spotted a cluster of huge grain elevators and exercised rule no.1 - if you don't ask you don't get - met a nice chap called Gino who ran an export business from the site, but wasn't the owner or occupier of the buildings we were interested in. He was however tenant of the oldest building on Harbour Island, from 1908, the land was reclaimed mud flats.

Gino told me that the buildings were called Fisher Flour Mills and had closed in 1996 and if I wanted to get in I should ring an agreeable Estates Manager at the local council. A likely story I thought; an agreeable council estates man! My Manc skepticism was eclipsed when the fella basically said 'yes, see you Friday 10.30'. With my brother driving and me scarcely able to contain my excitement we headed to the docks.

The guy spent 2 hours taking us around about two-thirds of the site and giving us historical and practical facts about the buildings, the company and Seattle. When we were finished he said I could come and visit some of the other industrial sites he has in his portfolio! Absolutely unbelievable, I simply can't imagine this happening at home - totally unexpected. We did leave with a souvenir though, a negative of a polaroid from the room above the smaller rack of silos - we asked...I think the chap would have let us carry as much as we could away as far as he was concerned!

We popped back to see Gino to say thanks and he lead us into an old store room where we collected a 1970 brochure, shots of which I'll open with.


front cover


photo contemporary to brochure (1970)


souvenir polaroid neg


between the silo racks, trains still use the yard, but not the building. the bridge runs between the two silo stacks at high level.


view up from unloading docks, the central tower is the elevators for the grain, to the left are the silos themselves and to the right was actually a flour mill.


steam power room, once powered the whole factory


outside steam power building looking toward third (unvisited) silo cluster


this, believe it or not is a man lift! hop and a moving shelf grab a plastic hold and surfs up! if you don't get off at the top, you get thrown off as the belt returns.


rules of the man lift


top of man lift - 'get off'


rear of main room at head of main silo cluster


looking back through main room


interior of high level bridge


main sorting room at head of smaller silo cluster


view from roof of mill building to rear of elevator tower, we didn't even go into this third section


view of smaller cluster from roof of mill building


flour sorting machinery


sifters


milling machine


don't know what this one does


but it looks good


and then basically the fella helped us out with some light painting

There's obviously more shots, but these are the best to tell the story with. You could clearly spend days and days in here, a kind of Fletcher's in Seattle, we barely stopped moving for the two hours we were there, but the photos did suffer for not having enough time. Since we got back I have found other great images of people visiting using alternative methods of entry here >> http://www.flickr.com/photos/jdizzle/

Peace
NMB