[Jim Gillette]

I'm currently in the States visiting a friend I met in Manchester through exploring. This is the building that got her interested in exploring so she wanted to take me to visit.

Thanks to Google for this pic.

Opened in 1948, the art deco Chesterfield building was the headquarters for Liggett & Myers, in downtown Durham, right in the middle of tobacco country. The company moved out of town in 2000 and the six storey, 360,000 sq ft building has been empty ever since.

The whole downtown area around it (all old tobacco buildings) have been renovated and gentrified recently. This is the last building to be turned into shops and apartments. Apparently this is because of red tape involved in the hopeful renovators' attempts to buy the building.

To describe this building as "huge" would be an understatement. We spent 2 and a half hours there and probably still missed a lot of things.

We had to wait for nightfall to make our entrance and happily spent a few hours at a nearby bar sipping whisky outdoors in the sticky midnight heat to waste time. However tonight the police were looking for a mugger and had swamped the area. One cop car was even sat directly opposite our entry point for nearly an hour. Oh well, more whisky anyone?!

After using an entrance a diamond thief would be proud of, we were in. The first two floors were filled with generally the same kind of stuff you'd find in any other abandoned building with offices.

Though moving further up the building through the muggy, humid stairwells we came across wide open spaces. Similar to Manchester's mills, I thought.

I only had my headtorch and an eight second exposure, so lighting these huge spaces was going to be somewhat tricky. Luckily there was a load of massive old machinery to catch my light though. Sadly my camera couldn't capture the smell of the place for you.

Struggling for air on these hot floors, we decided to head to the roof where there was a huge assortment of things to climb!

As is always the case it seems when I'm out exploring, my batteries died halfway through my time in this building. A couple of the shots posted here were taken with my phone. I think I need to stop being such a cheapskate and actually buy some good batteries!

Anyway, that's my holiday so far. More to come, I assure you!