Cayadutta Tanning Company: The Abandoned Gloversville Factory Where Fish Swim

If you ever went inside this boiler room, this was where the school of fish lived. I'm fairly sure there were more on the right-hand side of the cutout.

Fish in the Boiler Room: An Unexpected Discovery

🎥 Watch: fish swimming in the flooded boiler room of the abandoned Cayadutta tannery.

The news came on a Monday. An article by the Daily Gazette, a bureaucratic death sentence for a place I thought had more time. On March 30, 2026, the Gloversville City Council gave the green light. The long-abandoned Cayadutta Tanning site was coming down.

A state grant of $1.5 million had been secured to clean up the city's industrial scars. Bronze Contracting would handle the demolition for a price of $255,032. The tannery was just one name on a list of historic and blighted properties, including the old Fownes building and the Gloversville Knitting Company. It was progress, the city said. A renewal.

But my heart sank. It wasn't just about the loss of another piece of industrial history. It was about a secret I had been keeping. It was about the fish.

I had found them by accident. It was September 2023, and I was deep inside the tannery's boiler room, painting the brick walls with light from a flashlight for a long-exposure photograph. The air was still and heavy with the smell of rust and damp earth. In the quiet, I noticed something move in a narrow channel of water cut into the concrete floor.

At first, I thought it was just a water spider, or maybe tadpoles. I leaned in closer. My flashlight beam cut through the darkness and hit the water. They were fish. Not just one or two, but a whole community, living and thriving in this forgotten place. They were breeding.

How did they get here? The question baffled me. The building was sealed, a tomb of brick and steel. There was no stream or pipe that I could see connecting this isolated channel to the outside world. The Cayadutta Creek was a good 500 feet away, and there was no record of the property ever flooding in a way that could have washed them in. It felt like a miracle, a pocket of impossible life in a toxic tomb.

The water itself was another mystery. In a derelict tannery, you'd expect stagnant, chemical-laced sludge. But this water was crystal clear. I later found old photos of the same boiler room on Flickr, some going back as far as 2009, and other sources. Even then, the water was clean, the fish already a secret world waiting to be noticed. It had to be fed by some hidden spring or clean offshoot from the creek, a secret artery of life.

I thought back to another exploration, years ago, at the Neponsit Beach Hospital in Queens. Demolition crews were already at work when someone discovered a school of goldfish living in the flooded basement. Word got out on social media, a small outcry was raised, and they were saved. It was a small victory, a moment of grace.

I never gave the tannery fish that chance. I documented the building, took my photos, and left. I never told anyone about them. I kept the secret. I always meant to go back, especially after the winter of 2023. It was a mild one, and I wondered if they had survived. But I never made the trip.

Now, it's too late. The news of the demolition hangs over that memory, turning a strange and beautiful discovery into a source of regret. I don't know what species of fish they were. I don't know if they survived that last winter. And now I know they won't survive the spring. The city's plan for renewal will erase this small, secret world. The fish of Cayadutta Tanning, whatever they were, will be gone, their story known only to a few who stumbled upon them in the dark.

📋 Reader Records

🐟 Did You See the Fish — or Can You Tell Me What They Were?

I am still trying to answer two questions about that boiler room. What species were they, and how did they get into a sealed channel 500 feet from the Cayadutta Creek? If you explored this building between 2009 and 2026 and saw them, photographed them, or know the spring or culvert that kept that water clear, I would like to hear it. I am also looking for anyone who worked at Cayadutta Tanning while it was running, or who remembers the Fownes and Gloversville Knitting buildings before the grant money took them down. The fish are gone. The answer does not have to be.

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⬇️ Keep Reading

🗽 More Abandoned New York State Landmarks

Tanneries, mills, hospitals and power stations across New York — documented before the grant money and the wrecking crews arrived.

🏭 Cayadutta Tanning Company: Inside Gloversville's Dead Tannery The full walkthrough of the building itself — the rest of what was lost when the demolition crews arrived. › 🏥 Neponsit Beach Hospital, Queens An abandoned sanatorium by the sea — and the goldfish in its flooded basement that people actually managed to save. › 🧵 Gloversville Continental Mills Another survivor of the same city's long industrial decline, a few streets from the tannery. › 🏭 Albany Central Warehouse A massive abandoned industrial giant in New York's capital region, an hour down the Mohawk. › ⚡ Yonkers Glenwood Power Plant A cathedral-like power station on the Hudson River, now silent. › 👗 Miller Corset Factory, Canandaigua From lingerie to Labelon — another upstate factory with more lives than its paperwork admits. ›

🐟 The Cayadutta Tanning Company site in Gloversville, New York, was approved for demolition by the city council on March 30, 2026, with Bronze Contracting awarded a $255,032 contract under a $1.5 million state cleanup grant. A school of fish had been living and breeding in a clear water channel in its boiler room, photographed there as early as 2009 and again in September 2023.

Source(s):

1. McAdam, T. (2026, March 27). Former Fownes buildings demolished in Gloversville, Cayadutta Tanning up next. Daily Gazette.
2. Leather factory in Gloversville. (2009, August 4). All Over Albany.
3. Cayadutta Tanning Company [Photo album]. Flickr. flickr.com