Reesink

Expedition Site 1, Expedition 1 - 2, August 3rd 2008 - October  5th 2008, Netherlands

My first ever urbex experience was in the Netherlands at a place near my in-laws. I was fascinated by this building and decided to have a look there...

Reesink was an old factory of all sorts... It was more a collection of buildings with various applications. There was a steelfactory, a cooling house, etc.
The cooling house was built in 1919 so that butter could be stored in cooling cells there that were made in the summer so that it could be sold in the winter at higher prices with factories that were joined in the Dutch Cooperative Dairy Association.  After the cells were erected however, the market wasn't quite ready for storage of butter. In the season of 1921 - 1922 all the cells were freightfully empty. In 1923 there were problems with that Association and it turned out into liquidations and plans were made to sell the cooling house in public. At that point the Overall Dutch Cooperative stepped in as they wanted to preserve the house and put in an tremendous amount of effort in it. More so because the latter cooperative wanted to expand and organize the whole dairy industry in that region. A letter was drafted and sent to surrounding farms and factories underlining the importance of the coolhouse. A plead to keep the housings in benefit of exporting their goods was sent and resulted in the forming of a coorporation called "De Landbouw" in 1923 in The Hague. The preservation was a fact. It began with 3000 square metres of cooling places but expanded to 18000 square metres of cooling cells that were able to maintain temperatures of -18 to -20 degrees celcius. Next to that another 3000 square metres were able to maintain temperatures of -30 degrees celcius. It was finally closed in the summer of 2005

I was fascinated by this building since I met my girlfriend (wife since 2005) Three years later when I was fully equipped with good photographic material and I saw that building again I figured it was about time I got in there and took some pictures. Since a big part was demolished (due to safety hazards) I only had the chance to visit the cooling house. It's a bit of an creepy place with all the dark rooms and corners, but all in all with a flashlight it's very manageable. My first Urbex expedition was a fact. Trough a forum I was on I met a person from the same town who was in to Urbex Photography. Since that day I was bitten with the bug! I went 2 times to that site as I was new in the whole urbex stuff and wanted to revisit to have a do-over with newly learned skills photography wise. Pretty straightforward. Have a look at the gallery.I have most in black and white and3 in color as those were grafitti and needed the color in order to work out nice on picture.
Enjoy!