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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Crown Palace Hotel Razed For New Housing

 

About six years ago, I wrote a small piece on this mystery hotel building. At the time I could not find any history or a name associated with the three-story building that was built in 1931. The property was mostly fenced off and used mostly as storage for school buses and other private vehicles. The building entranceways were always bricked off but occasionally I would see someone had busted through the lower cinder-blocked doorway probably looking for scrap metal inside. However, recently I came upon an entry in "The Jewish Chronicle Guide" listing the Crown Palace Hotel under the address 570-600 Crown St, Brooklyn. I always knew the structure eerily resembled a hotel based on its architectural facade and the wide swath of open land that goes back decades in the 1940s and 1980s satellite imagery. It also matches the demographic makeup of the Crown Heights neighborhood to have a hotel for traveling Jews in the area.





Sadly, the building was demolished sometime earlier last year since the New York City Department of Buildings (DOB) application for it was submitted in May 2021 and signed off on December 22, 2021. The adjoining lot was also cleared of the wild-growing trees as seen above in Google Street View in July 2021. Making a way in its place will be a 75-foot-tall condo development with a combined square footage of 185,149. A community space is also allocated to the building as well as two loading berths. Currently, the lot is used as an off-street private parking lot.


Status: Demolished

Location: 600 Crown St & 630 Crown St, Brooklyn NY



Source:


1. "Two Buildings To Be Built On Empty Lot On Crown and Troy", October 24, 2021, CrownHeightsInfo

2. The Jewish Chronicle Travel Guide. (1997). United Kingdom: Jewish Chronicle Publications. [Page]

3. Londono, Vanessa, "Permits Filed For 600 Crown Street In Crown Heights, Brooklyn", NY Nimby, December 21, 2022


Location: 630 Crown St, Brooklyn, NY 11213, USA

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