Sunday, February 28, 2010

The Vernon Manor (Lots of Pictures)



The Vernon Manor Hotel was built in 1924 by the Garber and Woodward firm "for wealthy Cincinnatians longing to get away from the hustle and bustle of downtown." Ever since then the hotel has been a landmark of Cincinnati. Over it's long tenure as a hotel it has seen such prominent figures as John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Bob Dylan, and the Beatles. The film "Rainman" even had a scene shot at the hotel.

Every door and window on the first 2 floors were covered with zombie apocalypse grade sheet metal.
Sadly, the Vernon Manor Hotel had to close March 2009, citing current market conditions as the reason. The building, having been sold to Childrens hospital now faces a future as an administration building, but not before liquidating all of its furniture. Myself and a few other people took the liquidation sale as one last chance to look around.


Everything on these tables, and the tables themselves were for sale.

A Tale of Two Doors



The majority of the hotel was open to the public, including the offices and kitchen area. All downstairs employee areas and machine rooms were of course off limits, but courtesy of a person who shall remain anonymous much of it was unlocked. Luckily for us, security was sparse at best, and non existent on the higher floors.

The former bar area.


Taps




Nothing left to sell in the executive conference room.

Plenty left to sell in the banquet hall.



The view from one of the 177 rooms

Chair in one of the rooms.

Hallway outside the banquet hall. The trash cans in the closet were $2.00

Kitchen Sinks



This was for sale.


The first goal was to see the roof. While looking for the access point up, an employee (who will remain anonymous) told us to take the elevator to R. We thanked him and made our way to the roof.


Looking south toward downtown

Looking east

Looking North

Broken door leading to a heating fan.

The attic.

Switches

These relays control the lobby elevators.

Stairway leading to the lobby elevator relays and motors.



The east elevator motor.

After we had seen enough of the upstairs areas, we made our way down to the ground floor hoping to catch a glimpse of the boiler room and employee areas before adjourning to Chipotle.


Pipe Dreams











Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Robinson Flats finally


Wow everybody it's been a month and I still haven't returned to Robinson Flats, or really anything lately. I've been waiting for the snow to melt as I'm not a big fan of leaving deep snow footprints to the entrance. I originally planned on going back to get some better pictures, and doing some snooping around to learn more about the site but they never materialized, and now I've made big plans to see some industrial sites over the next 4 days. Truth be told I've always found residential sites boring, so I likely won't find myself returning their for a while. So I'm just going to post what I have now. It seems I have alot more usable shots than i first imagined. Gordon Bombay has a very nice write up on his site here. http://queencitydiscovery.blogspot.com/2009/05/alishas-apartment.html