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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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Beth Hamedrash Hagadol: The Abandoned Synagogue of the Lower East Side
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🏗️ Development Update — 64 Norfolk Street Senior Housing
The site of the former Beth Hamedrash Hagadol synagogue, destroyed by a three-alarm fire on May 14, 2017, has been transformed into 64 Norfolk Street — a new affordable housing development on the Lower East Side. What was once a 167-year-old Gothic Revival sanctuary is now a modern residential building, part of the neighborhood's ongoing evolution.
Beth Hamedrash as seen from within a New York Housing Authority playground.
The back parking lot of the church. The cut fence can be seen on the left.
It is with great sadness upon learning that the Saint Pigeon of Urbanais no longer a part of this world. In a three-alarm fire, the church succumbed to a fiery blaze Sunday afternoon. Smoke from the blaze was reported to have been seen all the way in Brooklyn. It seemed Beth Hamedrash Hagadol synagogue was getting too "hot" per se as everyone soon started to learn about its location. It may come to others surprising that Manhattan of all places would have an abandoned spot within its locality. A secret well-kept by those who explored the synagogue early on before its location became well-known in the Lower East Side.
Beth Hamedrash Hagadol was a 167-year-old church that was formerly known as Norfolk Street Baptist church. Built in 1850, a Methodist church at one time and purchased by the synagogue in 1885, the Gothic revival synagogue was landmarked in 1967 before closing in 2007 due to expensive maintenance the 15 congregants could no longer afford. In 2011, the property was given a vacate order. The owner and community ever since have been in a tussle over its preservation. The owner wants to demolish the building to sell to developers for the next Manhattan highrise and the Friends of Lower East Side fighting for its preservation.
Location: 60-64 Norfolk St, New York, NY
Status: Destroyed by blaze May 14, 2017. Demolished!
Update: Beth Hamedrash Hagadol was tragically destroyed by a three-alarm fire on May 14, 2017, and subsequently demolished. This post serves as one of the few remaining visual records of this irreplaceable landmark.
🕍 More NYC Sacred Spaces & Lost Landmarks
From synagogues and churches to abandoned hospitals and hidden infrastructure — explore the layers of history buried throughout New York City.
Update : A full research write-up of International Silver Company's former Factory H boiler house . This abandoned northeastern factory sits in the back of a quiet residential street surrounded by nature. Next to this two-story building remains another abandoned medical complex boarded up to the gills. Stay tuned for upcoming flicks. Getting into this building was quite hard. We hopped a perimeter fence in the middle of the morning just before a police car was sitting taking a quiet break or making their due diligence check on the property. This property is down the road at a current asbestos abatement medical hospital by the local town/state agency. Once on the property, it offers a mix of old machinery and pipework from this little factory which was probably much larger before residential developers took over. In addition, the building was free of graffiti and its brick-walled facade still looked like the day it was constructed. The only giveaway is the wide-open away roof...
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...
When I arrived at the former Aerosol Techniques factory, I was filled with a mix of anticipation and curiosity. Meeting a group of new friends for a day of urban exploration in Connecticut, we had a lineup of intriguing abandoned sites on our agenda. Our itinerary included the hauntingly beautiful Seaside Sanatorium, a former hospital, along with a few other potential spots that we were less certain about. We chose the factory as our starting point, mainly because it offered easy access and was conveniently situated next to a Lowe's hardware store. Walking along a well-trodden path, our group made a seamless transition onto the property. The sense of camaraderie was palpable as we embarked on our adventure with eager enthusiasm. The factory grounds, long deserted, were a canvas for countless graffiti artists. Every inch of the building was adorned with vibrant and eclectic street art, each piece telling its own story. This rich color and creativity set the perfect stage for our imp...
For weeks, I had been orbiting the perimeter of the impending demolition of the Church of St. Michael and St. Edward, a once revered church in the heart of Fort Greene, like a moth drawn to a flame. The neighborhood, a patchwork of tight project housing, seemed indifferent to the fate of this historic edifice. The intel I had received suggested that entry was as simple as scaling a wooden fence, yet the timing had never felt right. Until one day, it did. With a mission in New Jersey looming, I knew it was now or never. The demolition was advancing at a startling pace, the church's twin steeples already reduced to rubble. The skeletal remains of timber beams and rusted steel frames peeked out from the ruins, a testament to the relentless march of progress. Summoning a surge of courage, I seized a moment of quiet in the bustling housing project and vaulted over the fence. My heart pounded in my chest as I slipped unnoticed into the church grounds. The once grand entrance now stood as...
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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