The Secret Rooms at School (& maybe other places) I want to discuss!

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The Elementary school in our town was built in 1939 (it was formerly a high school and middle school), it has two main floors however there is a 3rd floor, it's not sectioned off you can walk right up the main staircase to get to it. The thing is no one ever goes up there. It's just janitorial storage but it always seems strange that you never see anyone gomup there. The other thing that I don't think anyone has seen the fallout shelter in ages.
 
In a department store

Pogue's was one of Cincinnati's classiest stores, founded in the 1860's and closing over a century later in 1987. The downtown store was located in at least six separate buildings; three or four of these dated from the mid-late 1800's, one (the largest) from 1916, and two from 1930 (one that is part of the Carew Tower, the other a service building connecting the 1916 area to it).

In the Spring of 1988, a liquidation sale was held to clear out the store fixtures, and in the areas due for demolition, parts of the building such as doors, light fixture, elevators, etc. I was going to school downtown at that time, so would run over there fairly often. Sale customers could go anywhere in the complex, from the sub-basements to the top floors - the highest being the 9th.

What I most remember was how different that areas not on the public selling floor were from what the store customers saw. Since the buildings had windows, there were false walls about 4' out from the exterior walls, creating a passageway that in many cases joined the stockrooms. There were cracked windows, peeling paint, missing plaster and wires hanging down in there. There were old steam radiators in there in some areas. Some of the stockrooms had old glass schoolhouse lights that hung on chains.

I went up one stairwell, and through a door into a hallway. I opened a door leading into a room that had been an office - part of the tile ceiling had sagged down so far in one area that it was being held up by a couple desks. There were typewriters on the desks; some with paper in them. One had an unfinished letter dated 1964! Pen & pencils and other office supplies in drawers. The place just abandoned that day in 1964 for some reason - like the world had come to an end.

Another day I went up to the 9th floor of the 1930 service building, and into an area that had been the electrical maintenance dept. Just like the office mentioned above, it too had been abandoned abruptly in 1962. All sorts of electrical items on shelves, some of them much older than the 60's. I bought a lot that day, including old trade magazines, and a 1939 Westinghouse catalog. For unknown reasons, that department had been relocated to the basement.

I also visited the basement, sub-basement, and in one part the sub-sub-basement. These were storage, display workrooms, and maintenance depts. A couple areas of the basements were electrical rooms, full of large circuit breaker and fuse panels. One was so old it was fenced in due to having exposed live parts - that was in the 1916 bldg., and was still in use. In the sub-sub I found some of the boilers and chillers, along with several big pumps. An area next to this had one of the diesel emergency gen-sets (they had more than one).

In one of the 1800's bldgs. I found a very old elevator. It had a very ornate plate around the call buttons on the wall. I wanted it, but didn't have my tools that day. In the Carew Tower section, I found an elevator bank that was original to the bldg., with beautiful etched Art Deco stainless steel or Monel doors. This was back in a stock area, but had obviously been a selling floor area at one time. The elevators were no longer in use.

While in the sub-basement one day, I went through a door that led to 3 or 4 steps which went down to a wide hallway. The door locked behind me, so I had to go down this hall about 150', past several sets of steps leading to doors that had various business names on them. I came to a stairwell, went up it, and came out next to the main elevators in the Carew Tower. I found out this hallway was under the lower arcade.

I had always wondered about a set of small doors in various areas of the 1916 bldg. One had the bottom at floor level, and the top about 5' high. Next to this was a smaller door, the bottom about 3' off the floor, and the top lined up with the larger. So I pushed them open, and found that each was connected to a spiral chute. The larger had been fire escapes, and the smaller were package chutes to send things down to the shipping dept. I soon found that people were trying out the fire chutes, so I went up to the top floor and went down it, and came out on the 1st. floor near one of the entrances. Needless to say, my clothes were pretty dirty when I got down.

Among many of my purchases were some blueprints of the Carew Tower section of the store. Included in these were the original drawings for the design of the elevator doors I mentioned above. I also bought 2 chrome frame chairs, which were designed by Gilbert Rohde for the Troy Sunshade Co. I paid $20 each, and found they are worth several hundred each. I think I spent a little over $100 altogether, but got well over $1000 of various items.
 
Tolivac et al

Old school organ specs.

Sorry if this bores most people ;-)

2M + P Built by a local firm (Stringers) around the 1880s, initially installed in a small church, and bought by the school in 1942, the casework being added in 1946 in memory of the Old Boys of the school who lost their lives in WW2
The instrument was rebuilt with only minor modifications in 1981.
Manuals tracker action. Pedals electric action

Great

Open Diapason 8
Stopped Flute 8
Stopped Bass 8
Principal 4
Flute 4
Fifteenth 2
Sesquialtera II (12,17)
Mixture II (19,22)

Swell

Open Diapason 8
Viol D'Amore 8
Geigen Principal 4
Piccolo 2
Hautboy 8
Cornopean 8

Pedal

Open Diapason 16 (wood)
Bourdon 16
Flute 8
Fifteenth 4

Reading that surprises me.... I could have sworn it had a twelfth!!

It's a pleasant sounding instrument. If I ever become 'upgraded' I may post a .mp3 file of a (sadly rather obscure) piece being played upon it.

All best

Dave T
P.S. Sadly, the system has absorbed all 'superfluous' spaces, and thereby removed the formatting of the specs... :-(
 
"Who's the man who sets his work aside 'cause he finds a place to hide? (Dave!)"

--Yes, ELEVATOR SHAFTS! --At the hospital I worked at, one wing going up to only three stories was operated by the machinery & pulleys in a small Elevator Equipment room, while the other wing had seven stories with a larger room containing even more greater machinery and the pulleys channeled in these large horizontally laid vessels that our A/C-Refrigeration maintenance man (who promised me the GE Americana fridge to be saved so that I may save the Temp. control/light cover of & pry the name-plate from, after he'd sucked out all the refrigerant from it) said that room was his shop--and surprisingly that room housing a set of stairs leading to that loft WAS UNLOCKED!

--Also I drove around that elementary school (you know WHICH ONE!) to view that raised roof over the gymnasium to get the long-overdue view of the set of vents in the back of which below it are--THE FAN ROOM!!!!

Hey, here's where an elevator shaft was consensually employed--Hal Blaine's drumming, on Simon & Garfunkel's "The Boxer", along with all a number of other gaffes & gimmicks in the makings of:

-- Dave

 
Going on the mission to discard the broken/unwanted/unused/obsolete A/V equipment at the janitor's office led me to make a funny story about it to a fellow-classmate, that the janitor wanted to call the equipment "Mother-F#$*!'ers, though left the word "Mothers", whereas I told the fellow-young lad that he used the "F-Word", to the over-hearing teacher's disbelief, and luckily my own body & soul having been spared by getting away with only "Fffff-finish the rest", rather than the whole word--the door knob didn't turn right, so at least a CLEAN funny story of how the maintenance room could have a door knob you can't get into it through, and I think I could at least get easily out of...

The place I work at now, I was deadly curious about the meat room, particularly the band saw, unlike the big oval-headed one in wood shop class, it is a smaller square-shaped one, with as little of the blade exposed (I was not that brave that I could walk closer to it, even with it turned off as this was after-hours there) which is where I'd first seen such a saw, actually at a small butcher shop (meat-cutters use these/those, the shop teacher explained, thirty-five years ago, a seventh grader w/ an unfortunately SECOND grade mentality, and that being the only year--semester actually,--I'd taken that course & pulled a "C", mostly making candle holders, a pac man as was trendy to do back then, a spice rack (w/ the back unevenly put on, the teacher cut off the overlapping w/ his table saw, whereas my sister's teacher graded her on a curve for sloppy work, (her spice rack, & mostly other work was similarly sub-par) my teacher dinged me everywhere for stuff slightly slip-shod) and even my own miniature table saw (w/ a cardboard blade, and a future metal or plastic one, and maybe a motor to run it--God knows what I was thinking--maybe I needed to make a GUITAR as a classmate/friend of mine suggested--never materialized)...

I think what was mostly disturbing besides the hazardous equipment, (even the wrapping system is motorized & its use requires great coordination, skill, consciousness and care!) was the smell of the meat heavily in the air--the produce & bakery areas, heavy enough to cut with a knife (yes, I will be courageous enough to survey that room another time, some more, and check out the cleavers, knives & other cutting & carving equipment) could also be just as bad...

(Should I add something gory, in that sort of a scenario, to my short-story novel as well?)

I had a friend who's father was a meat-cutter, too... He had a whole life-long career of working at butchers, warehouses, supermarkets, packing plants & although of Chaldean-Catholic descent he had even worked in many Kosher-Orthodox Jewish facilities as well...

-- Dave
 
I loved secret rooms. Most of the ones at my elementary school were pretty boring, with nothing more than book cases, desks and textbooks, but one of them had interesting relics. Old/broken PCs from the 1980s, those ancient Buhl overhead projectors, a couple of Eureka (not Sanitaire) F&G vacuums, old box fans, an old 1980s copier (Mita, I think?) and tons of other stuff.

The janitors room fascinated me. Aside from the pair of Sanitaires, thats where the HUGE forced-air furnace was housed, original to the building (early 1960s). It was about four feet wide, and you could see and hear the NG burners in full force.

I would have loved to have seen that "Fan Room" in your school, Dave. A room dedicated just for fans seems so ominous, a product of nightmares. At that age I was fascinated with fans, but the large, metal ones spooked me. Still, I'd have to get a peek if I were a student in that school. The only large fans I knew of were in the gym, way up high on the wall towards the ceiling.
 
Yes, the Fan Room, I could only make out a big machine with the set up steps to the side of it, while louvers are on a portion of the raised wall high above it sit over it on the roof top, so a quickly swinging door shutting on it hardly gives me a good, lasting view--and surely other schools in my district and a world of others got me reeling with curiosity...

Numerous typo-'s on my details on my wood shop class: "meat cutters use these " explains the shop teacher about the band saw, an oval-top one vs. the square-top a butcher shop I'd been in had, and seen other oval-tops at supermarket ones doing more cutting, and was shocked at the cheapness the one at Kroger that I now work at uses, and again, the raw meat-smell in the air got too intolerable to take in more of this prep-area, with a few other annexes (unseen) upstairs over the actual dept. (meat and seafood) below, via an elevator, of which one other is used by the bakery, deli and produce...

Like I said, the teacher was the only one who could use the table saw, High School, I'm sure the students and teach could use everything, but as a seventh-grader with a SECOND grade mentality, just took the course for a semester, and I believe that's how long my sis two years/grades younger than me even had, having a better teacher grading her work on a curve, I just accepted my "C" and "making good effort" vs. this one gal who was his "pet" making stuff on the lathe...

-- Dave
 
Toledo meat cutter band saws are favored by some woodworkers-they convert them to cut wood!!!I have always wanted a Wellsaw 400-these have reciprocating blades mounted on a backing that resembles a handsaw.Now these are used by meat cutters.They used to be sold for woodworking.The woodworking blades ranged from 3 TPI to 8 TPI.
Blower and fan rooms-have PLENTY here for the transmitters.Each GE transmitter and each Continental transmitter has its own 15 Hp blower room.Squirrel cage for the GE's and Axial for the CEMCO's.The old CEMCO's here are slated for replacement with CEMCO t5ransmitters from another VOA site that has closed down.Also the building HVAC system has blowers,boilers ,and chillers just like in some schools.
 
I've seen so many different meat saws at even whatever few butcher shops (when they were up front & visible) or through windows of what little supermarket meat counters I'd been to, long ago when I was a kid...

Which that long ago, at one butcher place we'd frequented, I would put my hands over my ears, whenever the saw was turned on (I was bothered by the noise, than the more volatile cutting purpose it served)... (I can recall my mom answering, when probably asked by the worker there, "He doesn't like the noise of the saw"...)

So brands I vividly remember, are Toledo, (orange lettering going down vertically) Biro, Butcher Boy, and of course, Hobart...

Now as for the couple meat rooms at another Kroger (the one by my dad's, which I occasionally shop at) I was "band saw stalking around", there... One room had aprons, and jackets & other wearable-gear having on hooks, I was staring dead at, through the door windows to them windows (that my store just may have in the other rooms and annexes in the actual room I had been in and out of a couple times that I didn't stay in long enough to get any sort of view of, as they were off to the side) just for a few people (the workers and my fellow-customers and shoppers) around me, STARING DEAD at ME, thinking I was "needing to be put-away somewhere" WEIRD!!!!)... So there was probably the wrapping & preparation room (a conveyor belt leads to) which my store has, and surely a good corner of the machine sticking out--like I said, we have a cheap plastic no-brand square w/ just enough blade sticking out to do whatever cutting required, and hopefully somehow claim the fewest accidents and injuries, compared to other hazardous equipment & situations typically abound...

Think I'll look through the window at the Kosher place next (a supermarket w/ a meat counter) and there is also an actual butcher shop, too--though at a lot of those, the saws have been moved to the back...

-- Dave
 
Believe it or not the "Custodian's Office" was one of the first rooms I was ever in at my first elementary school. One of our neighbors worked in the kitchen, and one day I went with mom and visited her at work, naturally since the back door to the kitchen opened into the storage area of the janitor's room, which had doors that opened to the area where the dumpster was, and where delivery trucks would back up, I ended up walking through there. Thats when I saw something so magical that I still get a warm and fuzzy feeling thinking about it... Wasn't a boiler, as this school had package units on the roof, it was the NSS M-1! And several of them! I honestly didn't see a boiler room until middle school as both elementary schools I went to had the package units on the roof. 

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The high school building that I taught in for 30 years had all kinds of places to hide etc. In the hallway downstairs, there were doors that were set in the walls. Those doors led to pipe chases etc. for maintenance purposes. The building was built in 1928 and was torn down a year ago.
The boiler room contained two huge Kewanee steam boilers in it, which were fired by NG. When the boilers called for heat, a huge flame, probably 6 feet long shot into the boilers. The whole place shook. Talk about scary but fun too. Gary
 

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