A Look Inside the Perry K Steam Plant
If you’ve been in downtown Indianapolis you’ve surely noticed the billowing steam that emanates from the Perry K Steam Plant.
It’s also known as the Perry K. Generating Station. This cloud factory provides steam heating to over 200 commercial buildings and industries in downtown Indy. It’s the second largest central district steam heating system in the United States.
The History
The Perry K. Steam Plant is near Lucas Oil Stadium at the corner of West Street and Kentucky Avenue in downtown Indianapolis.
Formerly Indianapolis Light & Power’s Kentucky Avenue Station, The Perry K Steam Plant was finished in 1893 and began supplying electricity to Indianapolis that same year. In 1905, the plant was converted to a steam production facility. Citizens Energy acquired the plant in 2000.
The plant was coal-fired from its founding until 2014 when it was fully converted to a natural gas facility.
Steam Plant Photo Tour
I had the opportunity to tour the facility with Caldwell VanRiper, the ad agency for Citizens Energy Group. Giant industrial plants are my kind of thing, so this was a great opportunity to get some really cool photos.
Above is our tour guide. These spaces were so large, it’s helpful to have people in frame to give a sense of the size and scale of the environment.
It takes very large boilers and a lot of fire to make this steam, so as you can imagine, it’s exceedingly hot in there. That’s why I made the portrait above right. We were all sweating and I wanted a record of it. Ha!
In some spaces there were large windows with soft light coming in from the north. The quality of the light combined with the geometry of the space made me think of the aesthetics of an Edward Weston factory photo.
The highlight for me was climbing the 240-ft towers for a panoramic view of downtown Indianapolis! It was a great vantage point and gave me some views of the city that very few people get to see.
The photo below is one of my favorites. I like the linear nature of the image and I framed it so the base of the tower is visible in the photo and it continues downward turning into shadow. You can basically see the full tower this way.
More Photo Stories
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Below are links to some other cool industrial work that I’ve done.
