big fan of when they do infrastructure shit and it leaves weird bits leftover that aren't abandoned fully, but nobody's using them, and it'd be really annoying to demolish them, so they're just kinda there. Old stations on still active railway lines? hell yeah. Walled off bits of a place that are just hidden behind drywall? good shit. Highway ramps that peter out into empty grass because they never built the other half? ten stars. tunnel portals that don't go anyway? keep em coming.
I fucking love when the built history of a place leaves behind remnants that seem inscrutable but in reality will tell you tons of history about their environment!!1! It is my favorite activity!
Every now and then while traveling on highways or grid roads you'll come across abandoned infrastructure that used to be absolutely pivotal to the assured survival of the province, which now lay dormant and were made redundant by advances in modern technology and the restructuring of the province from a Western Frontier into what we have now.
One such type of abandoned infrastructure that feels innately Saskatchewan is grain elevators. These were used to store grains right beside railways, and fill train cars with the grain to transport elsewhere in the province for processing. A few different companies operated grain elevators across the province, but by far the most iconic to Saskatchewan residents is the Saskatchewan Wheat Pool. One such SWP elevator is seen here just outside Aneroid (pop: ~50) in Southwest Saskatchewan.
You can basically see how long the elevator has stood here by looking at the sheer level of decay on the paint to the main portion of the elevator. Many of these grain elevators have been disappearing lately, either due to demolition or structural failure from neglect. Some elevators across the province are being preserved as historical sites however, and I'm strongly in favor of preservation. Some elevators were actually renovated and turned into museums, preserving as much of the existing structure as safely possible. What can't be saved as part of the structure is then often used as a portion of the museum's exhibit.
If you ever find yourself in Saskatchewan, I strongly encourage tourists, visitors or those just traveling through to take pictures of the grain elevators. Our government that we have now couldn't care less about the rich history of the province and are letting a significant portion of our elevators deteriorate into unsaveable circumstances, and i don't know if the NDP will get into office in time to save what we have left.
The grain elevator is also a hugely popular subject in Saskatchewan art (so much so that it has become a bit of a tired trope), and I wish I had a newer one to show you, but here's a psychedelic one I painted in 2016
Architect (in training) here. I don't have any photos for NDA reasons but I once worked on a warehouse building that used to have a mezzanine level set of offices. The only evidence we had that there used to be a second story in the area is that the electrical panels serving the area were attached to a wooden structure dangling from the ceiling, where the 2nd floor would be. We ended up not doing a project in that building.
Another story - I worked on a warehouse building in Chicago that had a small office, attached warehouse, and a small garage. Fire code in Chicago (at the time, this was five years ago) dictated that because of the building's construction materials and the maximum allowed square footage for different categories of usage (it's complicated), we had to separate the warehouse from the garage with a 4 hour fire rated wall. In layman terms, metal studs with four layers of heavy duty drywall on one side. Our client did not plan on using the garage and fire rated doors are expensive, so we just covered the existing doorway with the wall.
