Abandoned Playground Victoreen

Abandoned Playground
Victoreen Instrument Company owner John A. “Jack” Victoreen (1902-1986) started out as a Cleveland, Ohio radio and radio parts manufacturer. By the late 1920s (Victoreen Radio Co. later became George A. Walker Co.). Later, the Victoreen Instrument Co. was founded in 1928 to manufacture and market radiation measurement instrumentation. Victoreen provided much of the radiation equipment for the secret Manhattan Project which would develop the nuclear bombs that were dropped on Japan. Victoreen provided 95% of the instrumentation for the Bikini atomic bomb tests after World War II where over 250 atomic bombs were detonated in the USA air space that caused thousands of American cancer deaths. The instrument division would grow to be a major supplier of civil defense radiation survey meters in the 1960’s, and a supplier of instruments to every branch of industry and medicine involving radiation. Furthermore, dectors were sold thousands of civilians because of nuclear threats during the cold war. Victoreen was sold and broken up into small companies. By 1980, Sheller-Globe which owned Victoreen disposed of some additional units which were not as profitable as desired. Some remnants of the Victoreen Company are still in business today including the resistor division now owned by Ohmite and the radiation monitoring business that is now part of Fluke Biomedical. Soon after the sale of Victoreen, the building on South Woodland Cleveland Ohio would go vacant. The Victoreen corporate children’s playground would also go vacant. The abandoned property now is visited by looters, scrap dealer and polluters. The property is completer contained with asbestos, lead paint, possible radiation, and other environmental hazards.

Abandoned Playground