Me and hoist foundations go way back. I can still remember my first – it was a rather small red-brick beauty hiding away in brush along Tecumseh Road. Her name was Osceola No. 4, and her signature “H” figure is something I’ll never be able to forget. From that point on I thought all hoist foundations were the same, and I hunted tirelessly through brush and forest for that “H” shape I came to know and love. Things were all fine and dandy until the day I met a foundation that was completely different. Here name was Gratiot, and here curves were something else all together. The “H” shape was gone, replaced by something much younger and modern. From that point on I would find plenty more “H” shaped hoists on my travels, but I would never look at them the same way again. I was in love with something new, something that I hadn’t been able to find ever since. Until the day I found the Mesnard that is.

Here she was in all her glory, yet again. The hoist at Mesnard was almost an exact duplicate of what we had found years earlier at Gratiot. The only major difference being that the hoist at Gratiot was in much better shape, which the majority of its concrete floors still intact. Here at Mesnard most of the floors had collapsed into the maintenance corridors, leaving only the thick concrete foundation standing. But even without its floors, I could tell I was looking at Gratiot once again. See for yourself with the PANORAMIC IMAGE, or take a look at the diagram below:

A Gratiot style hoist consists of two long parallel concrete mandibles which once supported the hoist engine’s piston and crankshaft assemblies. In between the forward part of the mandibles is a sunken pit, which was where the hoist drum once spun. A pair of concrete stairs steps up from the pit, onto a raised center platform. This center platform sports a centralized iron “bracket”, who’s purpose I’m not sure of. Finishing off the look is a pair of rear mandibles, shorter then their front counterparts. On the diagram above I marked the parts I’m familiar with. Besides those, are a long list of other details that I have very little clue about. We’ll take a look one by one.

Sitting in front of the hoist drum pit is a slightly raised concrete platform on top of which sit a pair of these metal brackets seen in the first photo above. At first I thought these supported the bearings on which the drum spun, but their position forwards of the drum seems odd. (I would think they would sit directly under the drum) The second photo above is a closer look at one of the “knuckles” at the end of the bracket. These “knuckles” are found on both ends of the brackets.

What does sit directly under the hoist drum are these brackets, one of which is seen above. These sit along each of the forward mandibles of the hoist foundation, sitting at the base of the hoist drum pit. They are about half the length of the brackets I discussed earlier.

Another weird metal bracket, this one sits in the center of the foundation. Flanking it are the two sets of stairs with drop down into the drum pit. Parts of the bracket are missing. I can only think that this had something to do with either the drum’s breaking system, or the steam manifold which directed steam into the cylinders. Just not sure, except for the fact that this bracket was very evident at the Gratiot hoist as well.

Speaking of steam, here is what I believe is the steam intake into the hoist building. Here as Mesnard the boiler house sat just to the rear of the hoist building, seperated only by a narrow set of coal bins. This looks very much like the circular holes found at Champion hoists as well, where I know a steam pipe entered the building. But since the boiler house is technically attached to this hoist, it seems odd to send the steam outside and back into the building from the side, when they could have just as easily sent the pipe right between the connecting walls between the boiler and hoist buildings.

Like at all hoist ruins (H shaped or otherwise), there area a generous amounts of mounting bolts protruding out of the concrete. Here is an interesting detail of one, which I believe once held down one of the cylinders.

Another one, but this one was used to tie down the building’s walls to the foundation. There are several more sitting along the center wall between the compressor and hoist buildings.

Here’s another odd one. I have no idea what this was for or what it did. It sits atop a notch on one of the rear mandibles of the foundation.

One of the only pipes we found scattered along the ruins was this one, which appeared to be sitting in its original position along one of the rear mandibles. Since it isn’t jacketed, I’m thinking it isn’t a steam pipe. It could have been used to deliver coolant to parts of the hoist, though I’m not sure if hoists even used coolant.

Lastly a few beams that look to have been cut off for some reason. They might have been structural, but since they would have sat under the floor (which has since collapsed), I’m thinking they were just there to hold that up.

While it was nice to take a trip down memory lane and remember a past love, it was time to move on. We had a boiler house to find…