Posted for FWW56. He'll put in the story.

Are those sheets of asbestos lining the faces of the studs???
Is the blob at the bottom of the "enclosure" a cord connector? Can you HAVE a cord-connected panelboard???

"Is the blob at the bottom of the "enclosure" a cord connector?"

Could be. It looks like a mil-spec circular power connector. They are available in in high current levels (150 amp) so they would work. I doubt it is legal, code wise.

Is anything legal on this? (It looks like the wire colors are correct, and they may be sized correctly, but other than that ...)

Two options here:
1) Rip it all out and start over
2) Run away screaming.

I am truly impressed. If nothing else, the 1936 date on the paperwork suggests this sparky's work has stod the test of time.

That very well could be asbestos sheeting lining the wood box. Good catch.

The 'blob' at the bottom is an old service entrance fitting - something we use a weatherhead for these days. You'll find this sort of thing in knob & tube installs.

The paperwork also shows fuses. I suspect that the fuse blocks were removed, and replaced with the innards from another panel.

So somebody upgraded to THIS????

C'mon, give the guy a break, he used ty-wraps!

My apartment in Richmond had a setup very similar to this: Wooden cabinet with asbestos sheets tacked inside it, knob-and-tube coming through to a set of edison-base fuses. The service was upgraded at one point and they disconnected the fuses, tied into the K&T with some Romex and ran it to the new fuse panel. So what was left was just a very large, old fashioned junction box.

The inexcusable thing here is that somebody has worked on this recently and yet couldn't do anything to improve it other than throwing in some panel guts.

-John

Looks good with the door shut!.