Inside the Abandoned National Silk Dyeing Co.: Paterson, NJ's Forgotten Textile Mill (Photos)

Image
  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...
Post a Comment

Vanishing Point X Brooklyn




Based this post and composition on the bewildering and mysterious Westworld Season 2 Episode 9 of HBO's critically acclaimed sci-fi drama. As I was aligning the busy road below I saw the leading line and knew I had a good shot at hand and pulled the trigger.


"Do I have a choice? Were any of these choices ever truly mine to begin with?"

Jun 22, 2018

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Inside the Abandoned St. Michael and St. Edward Church in Brooklyn (Photos & History)

Image
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...
Read more

The Lost Artworks & Graffiti of Bayside Oil Depot

Image
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...
Read more

United States Naval Air Propulsion Center (NAPC)

Image
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...
Read more

Abandoned Mystery Hotel

Image
A curious case of no found history. Today I present the 'Mystery Hotel' because the only relevant real estate information that could be found for this property all points to the category listed as hotels and classed as a miscellaneous hotel for land use pertaining to commercial & office buildings. Nothing could be found either in the Department of Buildings database using two known addresses for this property. I searched and searched for property records pertaining to the past uses and occupants of this commercial building but came up empty. Hopefully, in the future when development comes to this property I can write up a new update. But for now, enjoy these exterior shots I shot a few weeks ago. Former Hotel Entrance Cross Street View Now just used to store local school buses. About a month ago, there was a visible entrance inside the driveway. Someone had broken through the cinder blocked doorway and made their way inside probably to scrap for meta...
Read more