Power Plant | VJRurbex

The Market Street Power Plant, or to be exact, the New Orleans Public Service Incorporated Power Plant, is a massive brick building with two smokestacks that tower over the low houses of the New Orleans Garden District. Built in 1905 to serve a city growing in both population and industry, the power plant served for almost 70 years, until it was finally abandoned in 1973.

Right after entering the power plant
The first thing i found inside was troubling: the whole bottom floor area was strung up with lit up lamps, all of which looked new and maintained. Maybe this place isn’t as abandoned as you’d think.

Why is this here???

The power plant is huge, yet fairly easy to explore, as it is mostly made up of massive, breathtaking rooms.

Looking down into the plant’s main room

This is the largest room in the whole power plant, spanning from basement to roof, and jam packed with machines, dials, and pipes. One really does feel small standing here.

Main room from its middle floor

Dials and controls in the main room

Looking down to a pool of foul water at the bottom of the main room

After climbing multiple sets of treacherous stairs, some that showed evidence of previous collapse, i managed to reach the roof.

Best view in the city!

The roof here is directly over the main room. If it was to collapse, the fall would take you to the basement floor. Ouch.

The famous double smokestacks

The wind kept these two fans spinning as if they were still on

Coming down from the roof, i set out to explore the rest of the power plant. There are multiple other big, open rooms.

A big room on the upper floor

This room had multiple plastic kiddie pools in it. I have no idea why.

Another huge room, with windows easily recognizable form outside

From higher up

After going down a staircase in this room, i noticed a modern looking piece of technology that proudly claimed to be a motion activated camera. Uh oh! Time to beat a hasty retreat!

A cargo ship passes by on the Mississippi

Escape! The way to the door out

If you choose to explore the Market Street Power Station, know that there are motion cameras, brittle floors/stairs, barbed wire, and a host of other dangers, as well as that its not fully abandoned for whatever reason and there are lights still on. Explore at your own risk, but know its truly breathtaking on the inside.

“Keep your eyes peeled for tall red brick smokestacks, as there’s often something quite wonderful at the bottom. . .”
-Jeff Chapman

The Wyman-Gordon Power Plant once powered the massive Ingalls-Shepard Forging Company, which started out manufacturing parts for the auto and railroad industries. Built in 1910, the massive factory was sold to the Wyman-Gordon Company in 1920. During World War One and World War Two, what they now called the Ingalls-Shepard Division Factory turned its industrial might to the war effort, and was in turn given dismantled German technology. The company claims to have produced more parts for the war than any of its competitors. In 1986, economic hardship forced the Wyman-Gordon Company to shut the factory down. Only two buildings of the once sprawling factory remain, the power plant and an occupied building across the street.

It would be an overstatement to call what surrounds the Wyman-Gordon Power Plant a “fence”. The tattered, rusty, chain link is filled with holes and embarrassingly easy to walk right through. The building is mostly void of windows, but there were a few leading to the offices, and after a short climb, i was in.

After climbing up the ledge, it wasn’t all that hard finding a way in

The offices were still in decent condition, with paperwork, binders, and ledgers rotting away on the crumbling desks. Reading a few of these papers helped me see what it was like back when this was still a hub of industry. One detailed a deal between a loading crane manufacturer and the Wyman-Gordon company, and a binder in the center of the room held inventory of replacement parts.

The offices had seen better days, but there were still legible records all around.

Leaving the offices, i entered the heart of the Wyman-Gordon Power Plant .The main rooms were wet from a recent storm, and well ventilated, but the floors of some of the side rooms and hallways had a dry asbestos insulation piled a foot deep in some places. After pointing my camera into the dark, taking a photo with flash on, and examining it, i found out the stuff i was walking on wasn’t the normal abandoned building mud and grime. Yuck!

Still water in one of the main rooms of the power plant

Machinery rusts away in the dark

I could have explored the Wyman-Gordon Power Plant all day if given the chance. However, a man on a bike circling the building made me cautious, and i decided to beat a hasty retreat in case he decided to call up some friends and score himself a new (and free!) camera.

The inside of the power plant is a mess of rusted machinery

The Wyman-Gordon Power Plant is a EPA Brownfields site. Although the main rooms are ventilated, open, and probably safe, anyone going to the Wyman-Gordon Power Plant without a respirator should be careful and avoid areas with clear signs of asbestos. The metal walkways have been taken for scrap, and I fear that it is only a matter of time before the last remnants of the once proud Ingalls-Shepard Division Factory are gone forever.

Thanks for the read!