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Showing posts from August, 2017

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 Cotton Mill (Baltic Mills Complex)

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A rotten-out four-story mill.  In before the wrecking balls. This mill surely did not need an interior demolition of its own because inside the wooden floors had already sagged and caved in from years of decay and neglect. The solid stone walls stay true to the craftsmanship and mortar the bricklayers hundreds of years ago laid down with expertise and solid workmanship. Now the structure awaits the fateful day when the demolition crew rides in and delivers its final blow into forgotten history. The ground floor was mostly dark and decayed.  A plethora of rotting wood littered the ground. The stairs leading to the first floor revealed there won't be any venturing upstairs. The flooring was completely rotten and caved in. From the steps of the staircase, you could look straight up and see the clouds in the sky. There was no way up without falling right back down to the ground floor. Ground Floor Interior Boiler House Smokestacks Venturing to an...
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Harrison Ford Island

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Explored a few tiny islands in a local park on my recent weekend adventures. These islands sit off in the distance from the parking lot just a few nautical miles away from the boating dock and canoeing rental services. Took Mad Dog One up with relative ease and headed straight for my target. Lined a few shots and some interesting perspectives and returned the bird. Today was a day I wanted to explore 10 abandoned properties within one day from sunrise to sunset and time was of the essence.
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Abandoned Camp Rock

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When one spot is a failure you move on to the next. I had my sights on this spot for a long while. It wasn't until Sunday that I was in the area after exploring a previous spot to check out its theater and bowling alley. After pulling away from another spot that was quite open and risky to access and explore I ventured here. Pulling through the back I butted up on a deer who just stood to stare at us chewing on its cud before a loud CSX train passed by with the loudest sound I've ever heard from a train as it dashed away into the bushes. Pablo the Deer Building One Exterior  Building One Interior Squeezing through a gap in the fence we came upon four boarded-up buildings lined up neatly surrounded by heavy vegetation. Nothing special or of note was found inside any of the buildings. One building to the far left looked like a stable for cows. The center building was locked and seemed to hold unknown items in storage and the first building ...
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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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Dennings Point Brickwork - The Abandoned Ruins

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  Located halfway between Albany and New York City lies Beacon. Located in the state hiking park is Denning's Point Brickworks which turned out clay bricks before exhausting the resource by producing as much as 400,000 bricks for New York City's flourishing building boom in the early 20th century. Manufacturing the very bricks that make up the iconic Empire State Building and the Rockefeller Center. Since its initial operation in 1885, it has also produced other products such as concrete, paper clips, and composite wood before coming to end in 1980. Second-floor landing. Intricate graffiti. Currently, the building is being slated for renovation by Clarkson University's Beacon Institute for Rivers and Estuaries for use as an environmental education facility. Titusville Two-Story Boiler. Unknown condition. View from the roof. đŸ§± Did You Work at Dennings Point Brickworks? Were you or a family member employed at this legendary Beacon brickw...
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Diner Dreams and Declines: The Kullman Dining Car Company

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  While exploring the area for a different site, I stumbled upon this abandoned property, marked by a large pile of household refuse and debris from commercial demolitions, improperly discarded. As night began to fall, I hesitated to venture inside alone. This caution might have been fortuitous, for on a subsequent visit to Newark, New Jersey, I discovered a makeshift bed crafted from an oversized couch. It seemed someone might be using this as a makeshift sleeping area, unwittingly inhaling potentially lethal chemicals not meant for human respiration. The entry to this forsaken place was through a semi-open truck loading dock, obstructed by a concrete barrier, presumably to halt further looting of the structure or to deter unethical contractors from dumping their illegal waste under the veil of night. Once an industrial site, this property was marred by environmental pollutants such as metals, paint, and polyaromatic hydrocarbons. Ninety-one years ago, it was operational before fa...
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Exploring the Abandoned Aerosol Techniques Factory in Milford, CT (Photos)

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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...
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Ball & Socket Manufacturing Co. | From Civil War Buttons to an Arts Complex

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This one stings a little. Not every location hands you a story worth telling and then slams the door before you can photograph it, but the Ball & Socket factory had other plans for J and me that day. The cold was the first thing I remember. A sharp Connecticut chill that had absolutely no interest in our ambitions. We worked our way into the inner courtyard, feeling reasonably optimistic, and then hit a wall literally. Locked doors on every side. No entry points that weren't either sealed or watched. The only building we managed to get inside looked less like a historic factory and more like a very long parking garage that had given up on itself. Even the boiler house was off the table. We circled, debated, and eventually made the call that every explorer has to make when a site is still secured and possibly still monitored: we walked. Some days you document. Some days the building wins. We never went back, and before we got a second crack at it, word came down that the complex...
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