Even from the outside, the roof over the cavernous turbine is amazing in its scale and engineering. It has held up so much weight for so long, and in some way it must be a reprieve for the skeletal steel framework to be sloughing off the concrete it has bore the burden of for nearly a century. Up close it is also easier to see just how damaging even a fist-sized chunk of concrete could be if dropped onto one's head from 130 feet. In my previous visit I saw an enormous piece fall silently from the ceiling while I was in the turbine hall. It tumbled end over end for what seemed like forever, then smashed onto the railing at ground level and broke, part of it then falling even further into the basement - a good reminder never to get too comfortable, and always to keep one eye on the heavens.
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Portside Power Plant (a pseudonym), 2009. Photograph and text by Matthew Christopher of Abandoned America