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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Archives #1: Chemistry

Inside an industrial facility, a large cylindrical chemical apparatus stands encased within a complex framework of weathered metal pipes and scaffolding. The infrastructure exhibits signs of wear and corrosion, indicative of a long-standing operation. The background reveals additional tanks and machinery, part of a broader chemical processing setup, with dim lighting casting an eerie glow over the scene.


Starting off hopefully with a series of archive posts from today. For now, it will contain either one or several photographs of various decay and abandonment that will be posted in a full write-up, an undiscovered location, or something from the past, present, or future located in my two-year Lightroom catalog. Or it may never be written up or shared as a full album set.

I currently have written up a post from this place but still debating whether to publish it or not. The only first time I have ever been caught exploring abandoned buildings. The pictures from here definitely carry significant emotional and mental weight. One, because I could have been asked to delete my pictures. Two, I could have had a criminal record or not based on a judge's leniency, or lastly having a gun-toting security officer pointing a gun at me.

You definitely don't find intact glass in abandoned places and this place certainly had a lot of it. 

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