Tenn-Tucky Ham |
This little jewel had taunted me every time I went to visit my brother in Atlanta, GA. I must have drove passed it 4 times and just admired it in all it's glory. I wanted it so bad, almost as bad as I wanted that Radio Flyer when I was 5. Well, now it was time to claim what was mine.....it was my reckoning day..
Anyways, we set out for and adventure. One which would result in one of the greatest finds ever. One that would find a building that we couldn't find on the internet.....and one which would be the most daunting of all buildings to find a way in. It was the Tenn-Tucky meat packing facility. This building was incredible. I can't say it enough. It was enormous and I'm not even sure we went through every little room.
We hit this building late last July '06 but for some reason I was too lazy to put it on the website due to it's enormousness. That and we thought we would go back so I waited for better pictures. That, of course, didn't happen so I decided it was time. I'm going to arrange these pictures similar to the way I had with the Evansville State Hospital. There are just too many pictures and I'm not sure what they were. I will do my best.
Oh, and btw...you may notice this building. It is somewhat famous. Well, not really. However, it was feature in the Country music band Little Big Town's video "Bring it on Home." Funny story, if you are interested. The same night I came home from this place I saw that video for the first time and freaked out. I HAD JUST BEEN THERE!!! Anyways...enjoy.
How awesome looking. I can't even tell you how impressive it is to see from a distance. |
I really wish I could give history about this place, but I really could find nothings about it so this is pretty much just about the adventure. There was really only one way to organize this pictures....I decided to kinda lump them all together by genre instead of a true walkthrough. Now this place is difficult to explain so I'll do the best I can. It mainly consisted of a huge cattle ramp, a few slaughter rooms, several refrigerator rooms, and some cooking rooms. I'll try my best to organize by that.
Exteriors and surrounding buildings
This building was beyond amazing. Just see for yourself.
A far shot. | An even farther shot to show it's on a river. | A shot from the back of the factory. Awesome. It took several minutes of walking and a climb under a gate to get this so I hope you enjoy it. |
A side view of the cattle ramp and back of the place. | A distant shot of the back. | What's left of the boiler room. |
A dangerous climb over a caved in building to show inside the boiler room. | The back of the boiler room. | The smokestack of the boiler room. |
Inside the smokestack. | A smaller side building. | In said side building. What are these? |
A small building behind the place. | A side building in front. | The closed to a front angle I could get from the place. |
Two lonely barges sit with trees growing in them awaiting their shipment. |
Summit
Now, this place is huge. Please excuse the 123,230 picture I took. This is the summer, or cattle ramp, that many cows took to get up the the slaughter rooms where they lost that thing called life for you and me to eat.
Looking down the mammoth cattle ramp. | Down the side to see the building. | The top room of the ramp. You can see where cows lived their last. |
Different angle of the same room. |
Slaughter Rooms
At the end of the ramp was also a way to the main slaughter rooms. We think there were two levels, but mainly one room. This room was the only room to have a tiled floor with drains in it so it was pretty obvious what it's use was.
In the middle of the ramp was a level to access the slaughter rooms. | Just inside a destroyed wall. The Slaughter Room!!! | A wall. |
Same room from a the opposite wall. | Same room from a higher level. | Same room, different angle. |
Something left behind. | A small room in the middle. Probably were the foreman was. |
Turn the corner from the big room and was this room with racks and holes into the ground. Probably used for bleeding cattle. | Down the hole. | Same room with the flash. Creepy. |
Restrooms
Strangely enough, this floors was the only room we could find restrooms. Enjoy!
Just inside. Notice the toilets. I think this was the women's. | Men's stalls. | Same room different angle. |
Hallways and Doorways
This place had more halls. It almost seemed like it had hallways just to have them. I suppose is it was for ease of transport of meat. Who knows. But, I can't recall where any of it led to so here are all of them.
A giant hallway. I actually think I remember this one. It was in the kiln room, where they cooked the meat. | Somewhere upstairs | Not sure why this was knocked out. |
Ahh yes. One of the first hallways we went through. What a great shot. | This was on the lower level if I'm right. Pretty creepy down there. | No idea. |
A door to one of the cooler rooms. | Another room on the lower level. | I remember this one. This was the blasted out wall that made for our way in. |
This was the biggest hallway of them all. It was somewhere between the main slaughter room and all the cooler rooms of the same floor. Very creepy. | Same room, different angle. | This led to the basement. No flashlight...no thanks. |
Cooler Rooms
These rooms actually took up about 2/3s of the whole place. With that much meat, it is obvious that they had to keep it all cold. There were so many of these rooms, in fact, that we got tired of going through them. They were big, wet, and empty.
The first of many. This was actually on the same floor as the main slaughter room. | Same room. They must have thrown stuff in there later. | Same room. |
Interestingly enough, that creepy hallway shot led into this room. It connected a couple cooler rooms. Not sure what it's function was, but it was clean and had some stuff set up. It looks like now it was being used for photography. | Same room. | Same room looking back. |
A very large, very creepy cooler room. This one had a huge pipe hanging and was threatening to crush us. | The huge pipe. | Another room. This one was flooded. It was actually the cooler room used for non-conforming. No surprise it looks so bad. |
Same room, I think. | Another cooler room. | Same room. |
Now this was cool. A cooler room/processing room with a gut chute. How awesome. BTW, there was no light in this room so my flash was all I had. | A closeup! | Ahhh yes. This was ground floor. It also looked much more modern than the rest of the building suggesting it was used the most recently. |
Kiln Rooms
This was a factory so it is no surprise that they cooked the meat here. We found the room in which they did this, but surprisingly there weren't many. They were all contained on 2 floors.
The main hallway of kilns. | The elevator to the kiln. | One of the many kilns. |
Some room by the kilns. |
Upper Rooms and Roof
No trip would be complete without a trip to the roof. By far the most amazing roof ever. I won't even attempt to explain. See for yourself. Oh, and btw..the whole roof was not connected so it really sucked ass to access the whole thing. I hope you appreciate it.
Something out of an MC Esther work? Not sure, but it sucked climbing that many stairs. | I wish this thing would have worked. It would have saved us the trip. Btw, it's ironic that the picture was the 1776th picture my camera took. There was no freedom here!!!!! | Ahhh!! At last. Fresh air! Too bad it was over 100 degrees that day. |
A look at the back to show everything. | More of the roof. | Geeeerrrraaaaaahhhh!!!!! |
The end of this part of the room. |
Now, this place was so huge it was like several buildings connected. So to get to the rest of the roof, we had to go through some more rooms, which was cool by us.
The rooms up at the top were almost immaculate. How strange. No idea what this could have been used for. | Hallway. | Top of another non-liberating elevator. |
Elevator. | Room. | ANother freight elevator. |
More of the roof. | Rooms on the roof. |
Another "clean" room. | Same room. |
This portion deserved it's own section. It was pretty much at the beginning of the roof, but it was so overgrown it was very impressive.
Moss has grown. This room has been vacant for a long, long time. | Same room. | Looking out the window. A vent has collapsed. |
My closing argument will be brief. I shall give it a rating.
1. Finding 9/10
2. Difficulty in entrance 9/10 (making it the most difficult we've faced, but not too bad)
3. Style 8.5/10
4. Abandonment 8/10
5. Degradation 9.3/10
6. Overall Awesomeness 8.5/10 (not an estimate)
Anyways, up to the date we visited, it was the most incredible thing we'd seen. It was rare on the internet, beautiful on the outside and inside, and just plain awesome. The only industrial building that even competes with this is the Armour, which will be posted at a later date. We hope you enjoyed this, we sure did.