Gloversville Continental Mills

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After the Fire: What Remains of Gloversville Continental Mills A Field of Bricks The bricks were everywhere. Not stacked, not standing. Just scattered across the ground like something vast had simply let go. What used to be Mill No. 3 of the former Gloversville-Continental Mills now spread out before me like a field of rubble, stretching from Beaver Street all the way back to the Cayadutta Creek bank. Thousands of bricks, the same ones that had held this building upright through more than a century of American manufacturing history, lay in random heaps with nowhere left to go. In one corner, pressed against a sealed-off wall, sat what remained of steel beams, HVAC machinery, and other miscellaneous load-bearing beams and the remains of 40 historical knitting machines. The fire had taken everything soft about them. What was left were twisted red-brown skeletons of rust and charred metal, piled on top of each other like they had tried to hold on and failed. Standing there in the ...
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Bayside Fuel Oil Depot Corporation (Part 2)

between two large heating oil tanks


large abandoned heating oil tanks






Before the Bayside Company was fully known as the Bayside Fuel Oil Corporation. It was transferred by Standard Oil, its previous owner, in the 1940s. Its primary use before that time was mainly for storage and refinery purposes. Later on, it became a wholesale distributor of heating oil. Founded by Charles Pratt, it was one of about fifty refineries operating in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. During the 19th century, Williamsburg was the center of oil refining along the East River & Newton Creek. Fun facts, "some of the largest industrial firms in the nation were started in this area (inland & along Newtown Creek), including Pfizer Pharmaceutical Corporation (1849); Brooklyn Flint Glass (later Corning Glassware); and the Havemeyers and Elder Sugar Refinery in Williamsburg (later Amstar and then Domino), once the largest establishment in the world."



side of an abandoned building with open windows



huge abandoned industrial building in front of two oil tanks



damaged industrial oil terminal panels



four graffiti covered oil tanks



silver industrial machinery mechanism inside a fence




In the early 2000s, Bayside Oil was proposed to be demolished by a company called Clean Point Energy which proposed demolishing everything except three tanks. It wanted to build a 1000 to 1500-megawatt natural gas power plant facility. At the time Bayside Oil was only made up of 11 oil tanks, a warehouse building containing state-of-the-art recording facilities and artist studios, a parking lot, office buildings, and storage sheds. That plan never went through due to numerous factors spelled out in a preliminary report that would negatively have affected the surrounding community.



old street view of bayside fuel oil depot







Bayside Fuel Oil Corporation was owned and operated by Alfred & Victor Allegretti. Alfred reshaped his father's oil business located on the Gowanus Canal into one of the largest private home heating oil companies. At this time it was a retail distributor of heating oil. It had its roots from the very beginning as an ice-carting business, to a coal company to finally being a one-truck oil company with the displacement of coal. In 1965, father and son initiated a terminal purchase on the canal and later included more in Williamsburg, Bensonhurst, and Greenpoint. At that time it became a wholesale oil terminal operator. The company went from one truck to one hundred trucks with its expansion selling as much as 300 million gallons of heating oil yearly. In the 1990s, the company was associated with an employee, a salesman, and a capo of the Gambino mob family, Joseph Corraro, who pleaded guilty to federal racketeering charges. This unseemly association and conviction led to being barred by the city from bidding to city agencies to sell oil. The terminal along the Gowanus Canal was sold in 2015 and is currently in the Brownfield Clean-Up Program. Currently, the company is still being run by Vincent Allegretti, the grandson of founder Sergio Allegretti.







mosquito water inside a 50 foot fuel oil tank
Inside one of the remaining 50-foot tanks.





Oh, look! An open door.









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