Jon Crispin's Notebook

I was looking at some photographs that I took in 2010 of artifacts from the Attica Prison uprising, and came across these shots from a visit to a nearby New York State cold war bunker.  I first mentioned it in a post here.

When Craig Williams and I went down into the bunker, we were accompanied by a couple of local policemen who thought there might be people inside, as the gate had been forced open.  They checked it out and the space was empty, so we went in.  As you can see by the beads of water on the wall, it was really humid and musty.

There was electricity, so most of the fluorescent lights were still working.

Abandoned spaces have always fascinated me, and I’ve been lucky to get access to some amazing buildings.

The idea that the usefulness of a place can end abruptly, and that an organization like the State of New York can basically walk away from it is especially interesting.  I had the same feeling with my Silent Voices project (click on “asylums”).

It is amazing what gets left behind.  There is some pretty old technology in this shot.  My dad had a Wollensack tape recorder like the one above that I used to play with as a kid.

There are usually lots of keys in places like this.

I am not sure when New York State shut down these sites, but I believe there were 6 or 7 of them scattered around the state.

There must have been some permanent staff who worked here, but I would guess that it was a small crew that could have been expanded on during a crisis.

It must have been an interesting place to work.

I realized while writing this post that I knew very little about the history of these sites, so with a quick internet search, I found this great resource.

The U. S. Government logo for civil defense is a beautiful design; as I was growing up in the 60s it was everywhere.

As were these old rotary phones.

Both the Federal and State governments were active in distributing information about what to do in the case of an emergency situation, which seemed to always be about some sort of attack from the USSR.

This is a page from an old Ridgid Tool calendar.  There were a bunch of these scattered around the floor.

Here’s one last shot of the main room.  Thanks to Craig for setting me up to get into this place.  I’ll try to do something with the Attica artifacts sometime soon.

I finally figured out why I have so many new followers.  WordPress featured me on their main site, and I want to thank them for doing so.  I was going to try to explain to you recent followers what I am trying to do here, but it is kind of obvious if you just jump around through my previous posts.  So, welcome and thanks for following.