A Building Full of Ice

February 10, 2013 12:42 PM

Before thawing out their former cold-storage facility, Fulton Market Cold Storage (now Hasak Cold Storage) invited nature photographer Gary Jensen to document their abandoned building full of ice. (Via.)

More photos available at Jensen's website. Bonus: Top 10 Reasons to Store with Hasak.

Bonus bonus: Hasak forklift drivers dance in Chicago artist Erik Peterson's Square Dance.

Previously in frozen Chicago. Previously in ice. More ice.

posted by Snarl Furillo (12 comments total)

Ok, that's bizarre.
posted by wierdo at 12:58 PM on February 10, 2013

Neat! So they kept it running for 13 years, even though there wasn't anything in it?
posted by dunkadunc at 1:07 PM on February 10, 2013

I wonder how long it took to thaw?
posted by double bubble at 1:21 PM on February 10, 2013

Check out the time lapse video of the thawing, which took 11 days.

Although if you watch the video it was really only about 45 seconds.
posted by pupdog at 1:29 PM on February 10, 2013 [1 favorite]

Those are some nice photographs, but jeez are his comments banal.
posted by Ickster at 2:13 PM on February 10, 2013

Oh.
posted by double bubble at 2:14 PM on February 10, 2013

That first photo is like a Great Old One coming back. In a freezer, but, still, why not?
posted by GenjiandProust at 2:18 PM on February 10, 2013

"Neat! So they kept it running for 13 years, even though there wasn't anything in it?"

There was a Totino's pepperoni pizza, an almost-empty half-gallon container of Rocky Road, and a couple of Otter Pops.
posted by mr_crash_davis at 2:46 PM on February 10, 2013 [8 favorites]

So they kept it running for 13 years, even though there wasn't anything in it?

It was one floor, decommissioned for whatever reason, but it probably wasn't cost-efficient to have an unfrozen floor in a multi-story cold storage warehouse. Of course, it's also possible that it managed to stay this way without active refrigeration, but I suspect otherwise.
posted by dhartung at 6:10 PM on February 10, 2013

Concrete buildings can be incredibly good insulators. I once walked over several feet of solid ice in one of the basement mechanical rooms of the Buffalo Memorial Auditorium, in May, years after it had been closed.
posted by waterunderground at 11:06 PM on February 10, 2013 [1 favorite]

Those look like pictures of an alternate universe created by Dale Chihuly.
posted by slogger at 8:48 AM on February 11, 2013

well at least I now know the rest of the story behind that video. Someone had linked the "building thaw" video a month or two ago on facebook, but there was no context -- what was it ? It looked like a parking garage in Finland or something, and I couldn't find any other info on it.
posted by k5.user at 8:50 AM on February 11, 2013