From Excelsior Needle Co. to Timken: The Rise and Fall of Torrington's Standard Plant

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The Standard Plant and a Century of Making Things It was a hot May week in 2023, and J and I were already sweating through our shirts before we even made it to the entrance. We turned into the driveway off North Elm Street and passed a large Caterpillar backhoe holding up the red, white, and blue at the top of the arm. Patriotic machinery. Only in Connecticut. We moved toward the back of the complex with our eyes open, scanning for any sign of people or activity. We found cameras instead. A few of them, well-positioned across one of the buildings and up on an electrical pole, covering angles that made our original entry plan useless. We backed off, found a Plan B, and stepped into a dark room washed in tinted green light, then took the stairs down to ground level. The former Standard Plant sits along North Elm Street at a sunken grade, one story, with another building rising over the roadway to the far right when you're standing in front of it from North Street. It's the kind o...
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Cloudy With Chance of City Rain



Headed down to the Brooklyn Bridge Park Pier to cop some night photos of the lower Manhattan buildings and I was not disappointed. Some nice cloud cover was coming in as I was taking photos. That cloud cover began to envelop the World Trade Center building but I could not dip over due to that same cloud cover bringing the rain with it. It looks like some wet days ahead.

Loving the blue touch of the NYPD Coast Guard cruising relentlessly back and forth. 

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