Red, White and Blue Freedom






The symbol of freedom, pride and perseverance.

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Custom Marine Inc of Old Saybrook

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  Some places pull you in not because they demand attention, but because they quietly dare you to remember. One sweltering afternoon, under the kind of heat that turns asphalt into tar and makes you rethink your footwear, J and I found ourselves wandering the overgrown path that led to Building #1 off Boston Post Road. We'd been here before, not this exact structure, but to others like it. Long-forgotten corners of America, where time has folded in on itself and memory clings to dust-covered rafters. The grass brushed against our jeans as we trudged toward the building, the humidity so thick it felt like a second skin. Outside, the world was summer in full throttle. Inside, we stepped into a different kind of atmosphere, dark, silent, cool in a way that wasn’t refreshing, just... dead. The kind of dead that had settled in long ago and made peace with itself. This building, like so many others we've explored over the years, had slipped through the cracks of time. It wasn’t aband...
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Former Bedford Chevrolet Sales Corp

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  If you’ve ever found yourself crawling down Brooklyn’s Bedford Avenue, trying to get to the BQE highway, you know the building. It’s the long, grey brick one that looks like it’s been holding its breath for decades. For years, its walls have been a rotating canvas of graffiti, each layer a new, temporary skin. Most people see an eyesore, a relic of a forgotten time. But that building has stories to tell. It’s hard to imagine now, looking at its sealed-up windows, but this was once a place of gleaming new Chevrolets. Back in 1918, the architect Henry Nurick designed it to be a modern, fireproof automobile showroom. The cost? About $1.2 million in today’s money. For a car dealership. Photo courtesy of the New York City Municipal Archives That’s because from the 1910s to the 1950s, this stretch of Bedford Avenue was known as “Automobile Row.” Before the “Big Three” car companies swallowed up the competition, dozens of car brands had showrooms here. It was a bustling corridor of chro...
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Waterbury’s Forgotten Factories: The Story of Bristol Babcock

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  For nearly a century, the city was known as the “Brass Capital of the World,” with a thriving industrial and manufacturing sector. But when the American brass industry declined in the 1970s, the city was hit hard by a series of economic challenges. Factories closed, jobs disappeared, and in their wake, large areas of land were left contaminated and abandoned. These brownfield sites, once bustling hubs of production, became symbols of the city’s struggle to adapt to a changing economy. By 2019, the city had made significant progress in cleaning up these sites, having remediated over 178 acres of land. Still, 140 acres of brownfields remained, with efforts underway to return them to productive use, offering hope for a new chapter of growth and development. One notable site is the former Bristol Babcock Facility, which operated from 1889 to 1989. The 6.6-acre property, with four buildings dating from 1895 to 1954, straddles the border between Waterbury and Naugatuck. The Bristol Bab...
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Former West Hartford Holo-Krome Factory

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Inside the old Holo-Krome building, made up of about eleven connected blocks at the far end of Brook Street along the west side of the rail line running between New Haven and Hartford, Connecticut, there wasn’t much left. After the company’s move to Wallingford, the place was pretty much empty. Most of the old machines had already been packed up and sent to the new facility. All that remained were piles of scrap metal scattered around the floor. The building was demolished in 2018. The building itself was something to see. Its sawtooth roof, complete with skylights, was a rare sight in today’s world of modern warehouses and factories. But this building wasn’t part of the sale. Environmental concerns and the high cost of upkeep kept it off the market. What stands out in this story is what happened next. Fastenal, the company that bought Holo-Krome’s machinery and inventory, had planned to ship everything to their big factory in Minnesota. But once they got a good look at who was still w...
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Acme Cotton Company Mill

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  It was one of those dusky afternoons when the sky fades to the color of old denim that J and I once again found ourselves standing outside Acme Mill, a relic of industry, timeworn and nearly cartoonish in name, conjuring images of Looney Tunes contraptions and Saturday morning chaos. The irony wasn’t lost on us. But beneath that whimsical name was a place brimming with real history, the kind that clings to the walls and lingers in the dust. We slipped in through what can only be described as a makeshift rabbit hole, a gap near a boarded-up garage door barely large enough to squeeze through. Unknown to us, there were several open doors around the property that we failed to see. We went the hard way. Inside, the air was still, stale with the scent of decaying fiber and damp timber. Light was running out fast, and shadows began creeping in with intent. The interior unfolded like the final act of a forgotten play. Piles of old product labels, some spilling from the corners, others st...
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