Virjune Manufacturing Co: Inside Waterbury's Vacant Factory

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J and I were already having a rough day. We'd just driven across town to check out an old industrial site he hadn't visited in a while, only to find it erased. Nothing left but a slab of concrete and chain-link fence. So we took a detour. Sometimes you salvage a disappointing afternoon with a backup plan, even if you're just ticking a box. The former Virjune plant hides in plain sight off Thomaston Avenue. If you drive past in summer, you'll miss it completely. Trees and shrubs swallow the building whole, nature reclaiming what industry left behind. Come winter, though, when the branches go bare and the world turns gray, the red brick skeleton reveals itself. Even then, you have to know where to look. I pulled up old Sanborn maps to trace the building's history. The earliest tenant was an auto body shop in 1922. By February 1950, something bigger had moved in. The map labels it simply "Stamping Wks." No company name. No flourish. Just function. That namele...
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Empty Drum and Barrel






Am I too late?




When the exploration party is over.






Front side view




Peep that taxi?




Just waiting over here to crush stuff.



See my mess?





On my first arrival at the site, it was becoming dark, and vehicular traffic was heavy up and down. On my second visit, construction crews were digging into the roadway just meters away from the open entrance. On the third and lucky visit, I found the site had been cleaned up and a partial demo of the interior and exterior had occurred. Feeling defeated I headed straight in past the many waiting TLC Uber/Lyft/et al drivers waiting for riders to summon them. Inside was leveled front to back. Nothing remained inside except for dirt and loose piping. At the back of the property, a small back room had been leveled and piled in a heap of rusted metal and building debris.






Back of property interior




Side rooms or what is left of them.




Cleared a path from front to back.





One room inside had a lone busted boiler forlornly waiting to be crushed and carted away for metal scrapping.  No machinery or any existence of industrial usage was present anymore. I had come too late to explore this last holdout in an awkward space surrounded by so many long-term parking businesses. Although, next door another industrial business hums along with abandon.










Boiler




















Location: 133 Haynes Ave #135, Newark, NJ 07114, USA

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