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The text message from my friend J was simple: a list of addresses in Newark and Paterson. An invitation. An urban treasure map with Xs marking forgotten places. I picked the one on Piercy Street. Pulling up, I saw the building wasn’t exactly hiding. It was a behemoth of brick and colorful lettered graffiti, a whole city block of decay. A door gaped open next to an old loading dock, but the scene gave me pause. Mounds of illegally dumped trash lay along the floor of the loading bay. This part of Paterson has a tough reputation, and the open doors felt less like an invitation and more like a dare. I took a deep breath and stepped inside. The air was thick with the smell of dust and damp. I found myself in a vast, open space littered with plastic containers and skeletal metal shelving. I moved deeper, drawn toward the old boiler house section. Before I reached it, I walked into a room that stopped me cold. Everything was stained a deep, blood red. A fine crimson powder coated the fl...
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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 open driveway we located the mill's two smokestacks. The boiler house has seen better days. Inside the open space, we found three different car manufacturer brands forlornly sitting side by side. A Pontiac, a Chevrolet pickup, and an unknown truck. It is not unusual to find cars stowed in former mills like these throughout the eastern seaboard. I have found my share of cars in mills and former power plants. It's only recently I found three cars at one site. At most, I find one car and usually, it's either wrecked or as these cars here still contain most of their parts intact.
Chevrolet pickup
Pontiac Firebird?
Custom Graffiti License Plate
Interior of Chevy
Next, A and I ventured inside one of the smokestacks and I attempted to climb to the top. It was only until the 13th rung of the pigeon shit-encrusted ladder rungs that one bent backward under the weight of my foot and I immediately headed back down defeated. It would have been a great climb to sit atop a smokestack and take in the oncoming sunset in all its glory minus the mother pigeon watching me faithfully from the 2nd rung. A lone solitary egg sat against the cold inner ledge. I don't think I've seen someone climb a smokestack before in the never-ending exploration chase going on numerous social media platforms. It would have been a great notch on my risk-taking climbs since last year when I climbed a major bridge linking Manhattan and Brooklyn.
Boiler House
Collapsed room of boiler house
Driveway
P.S.
A close detailed look at cars inside the boiler house.
The top of a smokestack would have been a hell of a place to get stuck had the ladder collapsed beneath you. But like you said, the opportunity was absolutely worth giving a try. I'm assuming the other smokestack was in even worse condition or you would have tried to climb it too? I'm new to urban exploration so the most interesting thing I've climbed so far was a large water tank at a power plant. Goals! http://brandtwilliamsphotography.weebly.com/blog
We only climbed the second one on the right. I would have loved to get to the top without incident. But getting stuck on top of a smokestack wouldn't have been a good idea. I didn't even check the status of the first smokestack. Perhaps in the future another smokestack would be climbable. I also have climbed oil tanks too. So far not a water tank. I may in the next few weeks. Found two on one site! Hopeful!
I was driving towards what used to be the Consumers Park Brewery when something caught my eye—the wooden gate doors of the old auto parts store were wide open. Someone had broken in. The building had been vacant for years, even as new construction surged all around it. Right next door, a fresh, modern structure had risen, but this place remained untouched—a relic of the past hollowed out and forgotten. I pulled over without hesitation. These moments don’t come often. A while back, another shuttered dealership had been left open for months, its entrance exposed. Graffiti artists had made their mark on the metal gates, turning the abandoned space into an urban canvas. I had thought about exploring it, but before I could, the gates were suddenly chained shut overnight. The opportunity was gone. Not this time. This time, I wasn’t letting the moment slip away. I stepped inside, finally getting a look at what had been hidden behind those rolled-down gates and green plywood barriers. An...
Within the imposing walls of the Bayside Fuel Depot , also known as the Bushwick Inlet Refinery, eclectic art pieces and vibrant graffiti adorned every available surface, creating a sensory overload that was both chaotic and mesmerizing. The cavernous oil tanks and sprawling rooms of the main building played host to a lethal dose of creativity, transforming the depot into an unlikely graffiti wonderland. I arrived intending to document the refinery’s industrial history but found myself captivated by the dizzying array of colorful art pieces that had claimed the depot as their canvas. Every inch of the immense white walls inside and out was covered in a smorgasbord of rainbow colors, shapes, lettering, and characters. Playful figures from Disney classics stood shoulder-to-shoulder with the abstract, the surreal, and the subversive, forming a visual tapestry that mirrored the diversity of the city itself. In my opinion, the Bayside Fuel Depot was on par with the legendary 5 Pointz graff...
This place holds a special meaning for me. I’ve visited several times, determined to explore every corner and uncover its secrets. But no matter how hard I tried, I never quite managed to see it all. The main front building, the one closest to the road? Never got inside. The massive cooling building in the back with its giant fans and smaller outbuildings? Missed that, too. And then there was the tank farm—a cluster of 22 rusty tanks tucked away in the upper right corner of the property. For some reason, no one ever took pictures of those tanks, even though they sat quietly in the shadows. I only noticed them recently, flipping through my old research notes. That’s when it hit me: I’d never taken the path that led there, too hesitant to get close to the Trenton-Mercer Airport’s fence line. I wasn’t here to get in trouble. I was here for the peaceful, empty buildings, not to risk getting caught wandering near airport grounds. Still, being there felt like stepping back in time. Walking t...
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 top of a smokestack would have been a hell of a place to get stuck had the ladder collapsed beneath you. But like you said, the opportunity was absolutely worth giving a try. I'm assuming the other smokestack was in even worse condition or you would have tried to climb it too? I'm new to urban exploration so the most interesting thing I've climbed so far was a large water tank at a power plant. Goals!
ReplyDeletehttp://brandtwilliamsphotography.weebly.com/blog
We only climbed the second one on the right. I would have loved to get to the top without incident. But getting stuck on top of a smokestack wouldn't have been a good idea. I didn't even check the status of the first smokestack. Perhaps in the future another smokestack would be climbable. I also have climbed oil tanks too. So far not a water tank. I may in the next few weeks. Found two on one site! Hopeful!
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