The Armour Meat Plant was once at the center of a large conglomeration of stockyards and slaughterhouses in East Saint Louis Illinois. Farmers from all around would visit the stockyards for the buying and selling of cattle and other livestock. In the first half of the 20th century, this was one of the busiest such locations in the United States.
The East Saint Louis stockyards were devised to compete with the larger firms already well established in Chicago. The first shipment of cattle had arrived at the stockyards in 1873. By the turn of the 20th century, the stockyards were processing 50,000 animals a week and reaching annual sales of million.
In 1903, the Armour Meat Plant was constructed here. According to some sources, Armour employed some 4,500 people to process the animals from the nearby stockyards. Tours of the facility and its operations were made available to visitors.
Philip Armour had already been established as a baron of meats. By 1883, he had established his own refrigerated fleet of rail cars. His plants were renowned for his large-scale pioneering efforts. Armour & Co. became one of the largest meatpacking companies in America by the 1890s, generating 0 million dollars in revenue in 1893.
Armour & Co. were also one of the first to take advantage of the byproducts of the slaughtering process and make use of what had otherwise been waste products. They sold every kind of product made from animals, from glue to oil, fertilizer, hairbrushes, buttons, and drugs. Armour famously declared that he made use of ‘everything but the squeal’.
In 1948, Armour & Co. developed a deodorant soap by adding the germicidal agent AT-7 to their soap. This reduced bacteria on the skin and thereby limited body-odor. The new soap was named “Dial” due to its round the clock protection against odor.
The stockyards continued to thrive during two world wars, eventually peaking production in 1947. The following decade, however, would see the decline of not only Armour but the stockyards in general. Primarily, the advent of the automobile, the interstate and rising labor costs all combined to bring about the decline of the out-dated stockyard operations and facilities. Meat was now being sold at terminal markets and the stockyards were swiftly becoming obsolete. The industry had shifted from its dependance on the railroads to interstate truck deliveries. Industrial farming had taken over much of the demand as individual farming was on steep decline as well.
Armour, despite being owned by a major national firm with many other plants across the country, closed operations in East Saint Louis in 1959, laying off some 1,400 employees.
-source: wikipedia
Unfortunately, just days after this video was taken, The venerable Armour Meat Plant was demolished in a controlled implosion, a video of which exists on youtube. In my video you can already see the holes drilled in the walls where the explosives were to be placed days later. This was one of the best locations I’ve ever visited and I did so many times over the years. RIP Armour..
Video Rating: / 5
I recently went to the Swift Armour plant in Fort Worth, it's all torn down now =(
How do you find out about these places? Let alone find a way in. And how often do you run into trouble when you're in more high security places? Also do you have any advice for safer exploring?
so sad to see those engines and compressors just rotting away :(, and pillaged for copper by theives. the open frame motors are well worth collecting if they are intact, which these ones arent.
Amazing bit of heavy industry there. It's interesting how some of the older machinery had a bit of art to it, even the details like the pin striping. I think thoughts about machines have changed, and people don;t put as much pride or effort into some of this equipment that we use.
That open frame electric motor in the beginning is really neat. That is one big ass refrigeration system. @ 9:35 I think is the condenser coils for it. Thanks for sharing.