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Posted by: GMACK24

Here is the Building I explored on Sunday. 9A - 1P

Offices

Abandoned Chair

Destroyers

Looking Down from the Roof

Goliath Crane

Kotex

Actaully I have added all the photos here.
please let me know what you think.
Thanks! ! !
Cheers and Beers.
Greg
http://s85.photobucket.com/albums/k7...cy%20Shipyard/

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Posted by: kwflatbed

It brings back a lot of memories

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Posted by: Delta784

I was with GMACK24 and had a blast.

Just a disclaimer....we had full permission from the owner of the property to be there; anyone who's thinking of doing this on their own WILL be caught, and WILL be arrested (notice the absence of graffiti/damage inside....no one goes in these buildings).

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Posted by: KozmoKramer

Awesome pics Greg! Really, really interesting...
Good job!

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Posted by: andy0921

Nice, GMACK.

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Posted by: j809

I like the Spruance Class book. Interesting though, that not one Spruance Class was built there, maybe just servicing and upgrades.

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Posted by: CJIS

Found this on the net figured I would add it to this thread

7 Abandoned Wonders of the Former Soviet Union

weburbanist.com — Dawai! Dawai! People move out - History stays in. Welcome to the Ghost Towns!

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Posted by: Delta784

Quote:

Originally Posted by j809 I like the Spruance Class book. Interesting though, that not one Spruance Class was built there, maybe just servicing and upgrades.

Everything in the manual was dated 1968/69, it was a proposal from General Dynamics to build some of the ships. Must not have been a very good proposal if they didn't build a single one.

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Posted by: Irish Wampanoag

Thats the new building for Quincy College~

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Posted by: Officer Dunngeon

Were you checking the tampon machine to see if there were any left?

It looks like there are barnacles growing on that thing! There also appears to be a human femur on the windowsill.

Nice pics though.

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Posted by: Delta784

Quote:

Originally Posted by Officer Dunngeon Were you checking the tampon machine to see if there were any left?

There actually were a few maxi pads on the floor underneath it, circa 1984.

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Posted by: Officer Dunngeon

You checked the expiration date?

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Posted by: rg1283

Its sad how that place closed down. I heard so many proposals about the place, also that they were going to move that huge crane to Korea or something?

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Posted by: Delta784

Quote:

Originally Posted by Officer Dunngeon You checked the expiration date?

Of course....I even took a picture, I haven't downloaded them yet so I don't know if it came out.

Quote:

Originally Posted by rg1283 Its sad how that place closed down. I heard so many proposals about the place, also that they were going to move that huge crane to Korea or something?

Korean company, the crane is actually going to a shipyard in Romania. It's hard to picture how big that thing is until you stand at the base of it and look up.

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Posted by: GMACK24

heck the Kotex Were Cheap back then.

10 Cents such a deal. ha ha ha

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Posted by: KEVDEMT

Quote:

Originally Posted by Delta784 It's hard to picture how big that thing is until you stand at the base of it and look up.

better still, climb to the top and look down. i had occasion to do so several years ago. awe inspiring...

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Posted by: rg1283

It was the 2nd biggest crane in the world. Its amazing how many people probably worked there during WWII. Is quirk still planning to convert the Administration Building to apartments?

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Posted by: Delta784

Quote:

Originally Posted by rg1283 It was the 2nd biggest crane in the world. Its amazing how many people probably worked there during WWII.

During the war, the yard employed over 30,000 people working 24/7/365.

My grandfather (my father's father) worked there before, during, and after WWII except for a short stint during the war when he was loaned to the Hingham Shipyard. My granddad was the foreman of a crew which helped to install the engines in the USS Massachusetts. We actually got to go down into the drydock (which is still surprisingly dry) where the Massachusetts was built, and it's incredible how big it is.

Quote:

Originally Posted by rg1283 Is quirk still planning to convert the Administration Building to apartments?

I don't know, but space for parking would be a real bitch. One thing GMACK and I commented on was how good a shape the buildings are in, considering they've been abandoned for 25+ years. They even still have heat, power & water....it wouldn't take much to bring them back to life for a renovation.

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Posted by: kwflatbed

Landmark crane at Quincy’s Fore River Shipyard will soon be gone

File photo
Ralph Farina, 16, of North Weymouth swings under the Fore River Bridge, in front of the Goliath Crane, in 1983. Once the largest such crane in the Western Hemisphere, it is the last monument to an industry that once defined Quincy.

GREG DERR/The Patriot Ledger
Operator Vincent Chaupetta, 66, said “It was an honor and privilege” to work on Goliath.

File photo
Goliath was as tall as a small skyscraper and long as a football field.

File photo
The Goliath crane appears to straddle an LNG hull and sphere at the General Dynamics shipyard on the Fore River, while pleasure craft nest beneath at Continental Marina in this 1980 photo taken from the Germantown section of Quincy.


By Lane Lambert
The Patriot Ledger
Posted May 17, 2008 @ 04:00 AM

QUINCY —
Quincy has its share of icons, from the stately Adams family home and the Church of the Presidents to the architectural grace of the Thomas Crane Public Library. But one landmark stands above all the rest – and soon it will be a memory, when the Goliath crane at the old Fore River shipyard is dismantled and taken away to a Romanian shipyard.
Tall as a small skyscraper, long as a football field and massive as many of the ships that were once built there, Goliath’s gray steel frame captures the eye from the air, road and almost any hilltop with a clear view. Once the largest such cranes in the Western Hemisphere, it is also the last monument to an industry that defined Quincy for 70 years.
Goliath’s removal inspires sighs of nostalgia from former shipyard workers or anyone who has grown up or grown old seeing it. Still, no one seems to have tried to save it.
Preserving the crane would have been a long shot at best. Industrial structures rarely qualify for historic registers, and any application would have needed the support of the shipyard’s current owner, Quincy auto dealer Daniel Quirk.
In any event, Quirk’s planning director John Dobie said the issue of Goliath’s preservation was never raised in community meetings in 2005 about Quirk’s redevelopment plan.
“A few people said, it’s too bad you couldn’t save it,” Dobie said. “But I think most people realized its time had come.”

‘Special and sad’
Former shipyard workers and other local residents who’ve grown up and grown old with Goliath have about a month to view the crane as they’ve seen it since it went up in 1975, when General Dynamics owned the yard.
Noticeable removal will be underway by mid-June. By mid-July, it will be in pieces and on a barge heading across the Atlantic. This comes five years after Quirk bought the yard at auction and five months after he sold the crane to Daewoo Mangalia Heavy Industries, a Romanian subsidiary of South Korea’s Daewoo Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering.
Greg Nordholm, the president of Norsar, the Seattle company that’s supervising the move, said heavy equipment for the takedown will arrive by barge around May 20. Lift towers will be erected to hold Goliath’s massive crossbeam in place. Concrete foundations and pilings to anchor those towers have already been laid.
Once the towers are in place, the A-frame legs will then be cut apart – a 20-foot section first, from the bottom up, then 80-foot pieces.
As that’s done, the lift towers will gradually lower the crossbeam until it’s on the ground. The beam will stay in one piece for delivery to the Romanian shipyard.
Having built and dismantled scores of shipyard and construction cranes, Nordholm said the Goliath project is “a bit special and sad.”
“I’ve met so many people whose brother or father worked for the shipyard,” he said.

Heading back to work
As monuments go, Goliath isn’t even old.
General Dynamics built the crane to lift 120-foot-diameter spheres for liquefied natural gas into tanker hulls. It was in use barely a decade before the company surrendered to overseas competition and closed the yard for good in 1986.
Greek shipbuilder Sotirios Emmanouil stirred hopes for a revival in the late 1990s, when he modernized the site and repaired Goliath for the oil tanker construction he envisioned. Then he defaulted on federal loans before a single keel was ever laid, and Goliath has gathered fresh rust ever since.
Quirk has proposed a “live, work and play” development for the 110-acre property, with a mix of apartments and condos, retail stores and other business. He hasn’t been able to start, though, because the site is zoned for maritime use. A bill to eliminate that zoning is now in committee study in the Legislature.
Whatever Quincy residents’ wishes for Goliath might be, the Massachusetts Historical Commission says the structure probably couldn’t have been preserved as a historic landmark.
Industrial property can be listed on the National Register of Historic Places, though they usually must be at least 50 years old. Some of the 19th century locks and canals at Lowell’s old textile mills are on the register, as is a steam engine at an MWRA water works in Brighton.
There are exceptions, but a structure like Goliath can’t be nominated if the owner objects. And Dobie said Quirk had no interest in pursuing the historical designation. Even if there was a community campaign, Dobie said Goliath’s size would have posed a financial daunting obstacle.
“It’s big, metal and rusting,” Dobie said. “The maintenance cost would be astronomical.”
But he said there is one consolation: At least Goliath now will be put back in use, even if it’s some 4,500 miles from Quincy.
“It’s going to be in a real shipyard,” Dobie said. “We’re happy it’s finding a good home.”

Goliath lives up to name

- 3,000 tons, weight of Goliath crane. The central girder weighs 1,200 tons.
- 30 stories high, or 328 feet, the crane’s height. The two legs are 300-feet high.
- 390 feet, Goliath’s length, or span.
- 1,200 tons, how much it can lift.
- 1986 was the last year the crane was used in the Fore River shipyard.

Big money in shipbuilding

- $40 million the cost to build a new crane like Goliath, according to Perfection Machinery.
- $10 billion sales in 2008 for Daewoo Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering.
- $1 billion in pending orders at the Mangalia shipyard, where Goliath is headed, reports the Rompress Romanian news agency.


http://www.patriotledger.com/busines...l-soon-be-gone


Erecting Goliath was a tall order

File photo
A 125-ton service crane sits on top of the girder of the Goliath crane under construction in May 1975.


By Lane Lambert
The Patriot Ledger
Posted May 17, 2008 @ 04:00 AM
QUINCY —
Seasoned industrial rigger that he was, Jack Shaughnessy knew that erecting the Goliath crane at the Fore River shipyard would be the most challenging job the three-generation family firm had ever taken on.
It was, in more ways than the Quincy native anticipated.
His engineers and the general contractor from Europe had to figure out new ways to handle the massive segments of the legs and girder. They pumped hundreds of tons of water into the girder shell, to test the hydraulic jacks to make sure they could support the weight of the lift.
And then the cracks opened in the girder steel.
“It was challenging from A through Z,” said Shaughnessy, who now lives in Milton and still runs the Shaughnessy and Ahern rigging and trucking firm in South Boston.
Designed by the Swiss-Portuguese consortium Vevey-Mague and manufactured at numerous overseas plants, Goliath’s parts were fitted and welded by ironworker and shipbuilding workers’ unions and contractor employees. Shaughnessy’s crew maneuvered them all into place.
With 300-foot legs and a 390-foot crossbeam, the sheer size was sobering.
“I was on a World War II destroyer that was 300 feet long,” Shaughnessy said.
Shaughnessy won the bid for the work in 1973. The crane’s parts arrived by barge in June 1974. By the fall, assembly was under way.
All went well until the following summer, when Shaughnessy’s crews began slowly jacking the 2,200-ton central girder aloft for placement atop the legs. Thirty feet off the ground, they saw dozens of cracks.
Work halted immediately, and former MIT engineers were brought in to examine the damage. Shaughnessy said General Dynamics’ then-manager Takis Veliotis blamed him for the problem, and threatened to bankrupt him.
Analysis showed the cracks were probably caused by defects from the steel’s fabrication. Shipyard crews cut out the bad steel and welded good sections into place.
The lift resumed. The girder was set atop the legs on July 21, 1975. The project had no serious worker injuries.
Shaughnessy has no plans to take a farewell visit to Goliath. After his conflict with Veliotis, it won’t bother him to see his once-in-a-lifetime project removed.
“I wish the people taking it down good luck,” he said.


http://www.patriotledger.com/busines...s-a-tall-order

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