Abandoned Sun Microsystems building photo-tour

Abandoned But Not Forgotten has a beautiful photo-gallery of shots from an urban spelunking expedition into an abandoned Sun Microsystems building filled with haunted server rooms and rotting technology. Link (via Waxy)

[#1 posted by Simon Greenwood , December 20, 2007 2:30 AM]

Los Altos was closed in 1998 or '99 if my Sun history serves me. Sun had a massive jitter after riding high on the dotcom boom, with the next quarter's results some ridiculous amount down, which lead them to make staff take a month's unpaid vacation in July '99 and started them off on a rationalisation track which ended with most people working away from the office apart from when necessary. The same happened in the UK: they still hold onto their main campus in Camberley although it's mostly empty when you visit these days. I guess Los Altos was finally deemed to be surplus to requirements once that everyone was working from home. I wonder when the shooting was though...

[#2 posted by ikawnoclast , December 20, 2007 6:57 AM]

My first job out of college in 1997 was with Sun working in this building. It was known then as PAL01 and served as the company headquarters while I was there. (I once ran into Scott McNealy in the bathroom.)

I am shocked to see these pictures and the state of the building. My memories of it were that it was always clean and bright. It also had the best food of all the Sun cafeterias. Several of the pictures show the remains of the customer "showroom" datacenter. It was the most organized and clean datacenter I ever saw. No more.

When this building closed, the rumors were that it was donated to the city of Palo Alto. I am not sure if this is true or not.

[#3 posted by Halloween Jack , December 20, 2007 7:13 AM]

Remember when Sun was doing so well, and Apple so badly, that there was talk of the former buying the latter?

[#4 posted by mortis , December 20, 2007 9:01 AM]

It's also likely it was used as a location for law enforcement training once it was given to the city. i know of several similar buildings scheduled for demolition that were used by LE trainers prior to their destruction.

[#5 posted by theficus , December 20, 2007 9:44 AM]

Seeing those tiny offices with that white and purple furniture brings back a lot of memories.

Like with #2, I always remembered that as a very nice, clean, bright building. The customer showroom was very cool, and they had the first SPARC (serial #3 if I recall) on display there. The company store was there, too.

The last couple exterior shots, you can clearly see Scott McNealy's office (5th floor, "bay" part on the right side of the building -- Google Images for "Scott McNealy's Office").

Working at Sun in the mid 90s as a contractor, I spent a lot of time at that building. It's totally nuts to see how much it's declined since then.

[#6 posted by red flight , December 20, 2007 11:15 AM]

That building was demolished a month or two ago. Now there is a massive construction project on the site. They are building a large campus for Jewish housing and a community center.

[#7 posted by the Other michael , December 20, 2007 11:26 AM]

That's fascinating and depressing.

[#8 posted by jolon , December 20, 2007 8:52 PM]

Those are perfectly good racks! Wasteful for the photographer to leave them.