05.16.24
Fairview Heights Public Library

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Richard Sprengeler is a fine art photographer, who produced a body of work at Cementland in 2022. He has showcased his series Cementland: Bob Cassilly's Unfinished Masterpiece locally at the High Low and at the Central Library in 2023, along with a presentation informed by his conversations with Bob Cassilly's collaborators Bill Christman and Kurt Knickmeyer. Richard spoke to us about some of the pieces he discussed in those original presentations.

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This one shows the massive mounds that Bob Cassilly built. It’s the largest mound in North America, purposely taller than Monks Mound in Cahokia. He was able to do that by charging construction companies to be able to dump their excess dirt on the property. Whenever a building is built, dirt is excavated, especially if there's basements. And construction companies are always looking for a place to take their dirt. 

He made arrangements with construction companies in the area, so that they could come here, dump their dirt and pay him a fee for every truckload. At times, 100 trucks a day were arriving. And I would think that some of his 20 employees were supervising the trucks going up the mound and telling them where to dump the dirt. 

I did some math. Just kind of guessing: 100 trucks a day times $100 a truckload, maybe. And it comes out to more than a million dollars a year Cassilly was making from construction companies dumping their stuff here. Bill Chrisman said that Cassilly was the best artist-businessman he ever knew. 

And this also shows where there used to be a suspension bridge, across the foreground left, that almost collapsed once with Cassilly on it. And this round circular structure on the right caught on fire when they were welding, and they had to flee because the flames shot way up into the air. 

This was taken after Beelman purchased the area. The first month I was there, I didn't even know the mound was there, because it was just a mass of trees. And then after they came in, the first thing they did was bulldoze down all the trees on the site, almost all of them. I walked on and I saw that, and I thought, "Holy smokes. Thing's huge.” There is a pond on top with water and a beach. 

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This is taken from the top of the mound. It shows a series of eight silos that were part of Cementland and the in-use silos behind them that are not on the property. But significantly, right behind these eight silos is a railroad track. So I believe one of the reasons the cement factory was there, which according to one source on the internet was one of the largest cement producing facilities in the country at the time, was they had a railroad track right there for supplies to come in and out. They owned the property right on the Mississippi River with a barge pier, where material could be brought on and then shipped out. Interstate 70 was five miles to the north, and I believe there's a limestone quarry not too distant from here. So it was a perfect place to build this.

There's a big boiler up there. Cassilly put it there, but to what use we may never know, unless some of his workers can tell us what he planned for it. I see him putting it vertical, and then putting a circular staircase up to the top, and making an observation platform from the top of the mound with it. But who knows what Cassilly was up to. 

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This one shows the interior of the huge processing plant. And it shows the scale of the site. Kurt Knickmeyer told me that he bulldozed this dirt in the foreground and filled up the whole third of the building, behind where this photograph was taken. And he built tunnels through the dirt. 

It's hard for me to imagine how this could be open to the public for safety reasons, because here's an I-beam that's supporting three cement floors above it. And it's split right there. I guess Cassilly could have put another I-beam in there if that's what it took. I think Bob went full speed ahead with blinders on, and he didn't get distracted by technical stuff. Like, can this ever be open? Is this safe?

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This is in the basement of the same processing plant. In #24, you see these open spaces. And that's these spaces right here, going down into the basement. A lot of the salvage materials that were brought into the property were kept here in the basement. In the distance, you can see concrete forms that were brought in.

And unfortunately, according to Kurt Knickmeyer, the site did not have all the graffiti while Cassilly was alive. It was only after it was abandoned that all this graffiti showed up. Most of it is trash. But occasionally, there was some pretty creative graffiti, like in this case. 

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This is part of the castle complex. And the photo shows the 200 foot plus smokestack in the distance, taken from inside of this structure that Bob Cassilly built with the gothic windows. According to Kurt Knickmeyer, he got these gothic windows out of an abandoned church somewhere in St. Louis. 

Cassilly was going to build a staircase up the smokestack, going all the way up to where he wanted people to throw rocks off the top. Again, that's one of those creative ideas that didn't take into account that there's a lagoon beneath there, where he was planning on people canoeing. You can't have somebody on top of this thing, throwing rocks off of it, and there's people canoeing down there. But that's the mind of Bob Cassilly. 

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This is on top of one of the silo groups. Cassilly busted these holes so you could walk through the structures. I imagined Cassilly with one of those jackhammers, but Kurt Knickmeyer said no, he had a big piece of equipment on wheels with a big jackhammer on the front that could go vertically or horizontally. He used that to bust through a lot of these walls all through the property. And he busted through the silos so you could walk through, just to give visitors access.

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These are funnels. You can see where Cassilly cut the bottom of the funnel out with his welding torch. I guess so you could look up into it, or if you're on top, you could look down into it.

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This is a rather abstract graphic image, looking straight up to the top of one of those silos. There's safety issues here, because there's crusted concrete on the walls that falls off. He would have to do some work to make this safe for the people to be in, but I imagine he would have pulled it off. 

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This is the very first group of silos as you come into Cementland. And it shows the funnel that Bob Cassilly cut out. This whole top of the photograph was a funnel, and he cut it out right here. In the distance, you can see the metal funnel that's still there. And then there's a hole down here, where the material goes down the funnel into the basement, and there's room down there for trucks to pull up. So the finished cement could be loaded onto trucks underneath the floor here.

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This is one of my favorite photographs, with a Chinese pagoda. This was a funnel from the main processing building that he took out and used as a roof for the pagoda. And this is right in the midst of the lagoon. I don't know how many acres the lagoon was, but at least two or three. This was an island right in the middle, and in order to reach it, there were three bridges that went out to it. The bridges were actually the gangplanks to barges on the Mississippi River that he got a hold of. I don't think Cassilly paid for anything. This is all scrap material, salvage material. And you can see the building with the gothic windows in the distance.

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This is one of the few bridges left on the property, leading up to the building with the Gothic Windows. You can see the warehouses or the silos in the distance. I came across this the very first time and I thought, "What is that?" And Kurt Knickmeyer told me that's the chassis to Bob’s old bulldozer that bit the dust. He took it apart, and you know the mind of Bob Cassilly— he goes, "That's a doorway." So with his crane, he lifted this multitone piece of equipment 40 feet up from the ground. Has able to prop it up and build a building around it and put a bridge out to it. This originally was going to be two floors. There's a circular staircase in here that has fallen over. Kurt also told me that he hired a retired stonemason that did his stonework for the castle complex.

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This is taken on the ground. It shows the smokestack in the distance. And the lagoon would have been several feet deeper than this. He busted holes through these four silos, and he intended for people to rent canoes and to canoe around the lagoon and into the buildings. So imagine the canoe going in here and traversing all the way through the four silos and out again. It would have been a paradise for a 13 year old kid. I'd love to be there if I was an adult, heck. 

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This is a boiler that was put here after the property was sold. You could see it in #102, the photograph of the mound. This boiler was made into a bridge, and the bulldozers and trucks could go over the top of it.

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This is inside that building with the gothic windows from a church. You can see the circular staircase that was going up to the second floor. And there were three huge concrete panels that made up the ceiling, and this panel has fallen down. But there's two more still up there.

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This is inside one of the silos. You can see where he busted through into the next adjoining silo. And in each of the silos there's a large opening to go into the next one, but there are also openings in the sides to let light into the silo.

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This is in the building in between the eight silos next to the railroad tracks. And this is another rather abstract photograph. It shows a corkscrew device here, where the cement powder would be dumped down and be corkscrewed out of the building.

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Here's the same scene as #5 from another angle that shows that corkscrew. And there are silos down in the distance there. So you can imagine the funnel coming down and dumping the powder into the corkscrew, and it augers the material out of the building. And right behind this area are the railroad tracks. There is no packaging building there now that I saw, but I would imagine there might have been a packaging facility there to put the stuff into cement bags and put it right on the train. That's unsubstantiated, just my thoughts. 

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This is the other side of the main processing facility, and this is where Cassilly was going to put a forest of trees. And he was also going to have the lagoon come into here, so that you could canoe in between the trees. And he was gonna have waterfalls coming off the sides. Bill Christman said, "If Cassilly would have lived and finished this, it would have been one of the wonders of the world."

If you've been to the City Museum, behind the Whale there is a water tank up in the air—they call it the Puking Pig. It slowly fills with water and dumps over, dumping all the water down into a stream underneath. For Cementland, Bob Cassilly got a hold of the bed of a huge mining truck. If you’ve ever seen these dump trucks in open pit mines, the wheels are taller than a man, like ten feet tall. He got a hold of that monstrous bed, and he was going to do the same thing with it: install it up in the air and have it slowly filled with water. Just imagine, 5,000–10,000 gallons of water dumping over and flowing out of this building. And I imagine he would have built a concrete canal to funnel the water down into the lagoon. Taking the canoeists with it probably. You would have to figure that one out.

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This is up on the other side of the main processing plant, on the third or fourth floor. You can see in the foreground, he cut out this funnel; you can see the jagged line of the welding torch. And just imagine, this thing weighed tons. And here's Cassilly with a welding torch getting down to the last inch, and then it breaks, and the thing crashes on the floor. Incredibly dangerous, and I imagine Cassilly was addicted to the adrenaline rush of doing this. It would be dangerous, scary, and exhilarating all at the same time.

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This is in the distance of #25. I'm not sure what it was. Might have been limestone—it's the basic material of concrete, and they have to heat it in kilns. This on the right looks like something that rotated, and this to the left of it looks like it was maybe a heater with an exhaust. Maybe this was some type of kiln, or maybe it dried the limestone; I'm not sure. I would love to find somebody who had worked there. And they could tell us, "Oh yeah, I know what this was for."

One of the days I was there, I was done and I was going back to the parking lot across the street. I had my big view camera over my shoulder with a tripod, and a guy said, "What you up to?" I said, "Photographing Cementland." He goes, "Yeah, I had a friend who worked there his entire life." And I said, "You did? I'd love to talk to him." And he said, "He died." And I said, "Did he die from inhaling the concrete silica dust?" And he goes, "Yeah, lung cancer." When this place was built, the Environmental Protection Agency didn't have regulations about keeping this area clean, and people died.

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This is on the other half of the main processing plant where Cassilly was going to put the forest of trees. You can see all this light coming in over here, because he busted a hole in the side of the wall of the building to let light in. Actually, this is a smaller hole, and there's a larger one that's three times the size. When he did that, he took out the entire support of the ceiling. And if you look, in the distance you can see the concrete ceiling sagging where he took the support. And I can just imagine the building inspector saying, "You gotta fix that."

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This is a shot from the basement, looking through that hole you can see in #105. Cassilly busted that so people could walk through there. And it's an area with some of the more creative pieces of graffiti in the whole place.

Sometimes graffiti adds to the photograph. And sometimes it distracts. In the case of Cementland, I think it distracts. I'm a black and white photographer and a color photographer—I do both. And when I entered the site, I saw there was fluorescent graffiti. Not just spray painted colors, but fluorescent colors. It would have taken over the photographs. If I had done this project in color, it would be photographs about graffiti with a background. And that's the reason why I decided this was a black and white project. 

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Photograph #102, with the mound in the distance, was taken from the top of the silo group, and I got there by going up this ladder. I used to build tree houses when I was a kid, so I'm not afraid of heights. That being said, I was extremely careful. I tested every rung as I went up, and it was all solid. And I didn't take my big cameras with me; I didn't even take my 35 millimeter. I went up there with my iPhone and my point-and-shoot. But these were pedals for stirring whatever was in here, and there was probably machinery at the top that turns this whole thing.

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This was in the main processing facility, and there were funnels here for the finished product to dump down. And there was a conveyor belt to take the product out of the building. 

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This is one of my favorites. This shows part of the castle complex and the bridge to the little building with the bulldozer doors to the right. And you can see one of the funnels from the main processing facilities used as a roof. Kurt Knickmeyer said that on hot summer days, this was filled with water, and they would jump in there and cool off at the end of the day. You can still see a water hose inside there. 

You can't readily see it, but right there in the shadow there is a carjack. Apparently, when you put this cone for a roof on top of a building, it rocks a little bit. So Bob Cassilly stuck a carjack in there and expanded it until it got tight and didn't shake.

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