Nearpara Rubber Company: From Tire Reclaiming to Toxic Brownfield

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The Last Days of Nearpara Rubber I smelled it before I saw anything worth photographing. That warm, faintly sweet bite of old rubber, the kind that hits you somewhere between a tire shop and a summer highway, drifted through the first building the moment I stepped inside. The structure was burned out, charred and broken, rubble underfoot. But the smell was alive. And then I saw the pile. In the corner of the room, faded brown and heaped maybe two feet high, was a mound of baby bottle nipples. Dozens, maybe hundreds, of the small rubber tips, just sitting on the floor of a collapsed industrial building in Trenton, New Jersey. I stood there for a moment, genuinely confused, and then kept moving. Nothing like the smell of warmed-over rubber. Twenty minutes later, I understood even less. Through another door passage, I found the main source of the smell: six open metal trailer containers, still loaded with bagged baby bottle nipples, sitting in open air. Bags of them, mountains of bagged n...
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Abandoned Home Goods Manufacturer (Bilco Co.)

🏗️ Development Update — The Former Bilco Company Site

This site was the former Bilco Company, which manufactured basement hatchways, garage doors, sidewalk doors, and roof hatches on Water Street in West Haven, Connecticut. The factory was demolished as of July 31, 2022. Surrounding residential houses were fenced and boarded in preparation for future demolition and the planned Haven Mall Outlet project.

By April 13, 2023, houses north of Richards Street and east of First Avenue had been demolished. However, The Haven Mall Outlet project has since been scuttled. The vacant lot now languishes, waiting for a new vision that has yet to arrive.



Milling about with gleeful abandon.

I finally checked out this complex from a depressing neighborhood where houses are boarded and vehicular traffic is always substantially busy. I was astonished at how easy it was to access the complex. I had previously seen kids hanging around by the water playing around on a previous visit whilst using my DJI Phantom 4 drone.



















Upon entering the property I feared the worst. Local kids may have already trashed the property based on the numerous windows busted out. Entering inside my fears were appeased. Inside was comfortably clean and unblemished from graffiti and shitty craft. It seemed the complex could be cleaned up and put to use with a little TLC and back into a hub of commerce. The offices on the other hand needed substantial renovation. A shame the previous owners left to move to another part of the state. The property provided a substantial view out to the water. Standing inside a side doorway. I could see many previous employees taking a smoke break and taking in the calming water lapping against the property.
















I had the entire place to myself. I milled about to my heart's content until I finally got all the shots I required. A prime location for a model photoshoot if I shot models. 💁
































































🏭 Did You Work at the Bilco Company?

Were you or a family member employed at the Bilco Company on Water Street in West Haven? Did you build basement hatchways, garage doors, or roof hatches in this factory? Do you have photos from inside when the plant was still humming, old product catalogs, or memories of this Connecticut manufacturer? With the factory demolished in 2022 and the outlet mall project abandoned, your firsthand accounts are the primary record of this vanished industrial site.

Drop a comment below or contact me directly. Full credit given to all contributors.

🏭 More Connecticut Industrial History
From basement hatchways and hairpins to brass buttons and paper mills — explore the factories that once powered Connecticut's manufacturing towns.
🏭 The Bilco Company manufactured basement hatchways and roof hatches on Water Street in West Haven. The factory was demolished in 2022, and the planned Haven Mall Outlet project has been abandoned.

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