Digital Ink'd

  On paper, 275 Bay Road should have been an easy sell. Warren County put the 1.09-acre parcel on the market through a public tax auction, hired a professional firm, and set what seemed like a modest floor price. In reality, the numbers told a very different story. The Board of Supervisors brought in Auctions International Inc. to handle the sale, setting a minimum bid of 68,700 dollars. The auction company would collect a 6 percent fee from the winning bidder. If the county turned down all offers, it would still owe the firm a flat $2,000 fee for its work. The property itself had been vacant for years. The building that once stood there was demolished in early spring of 2021 after decades of decline. Before that, the state Department of Environmental Conservation had taken a hard look at the site. Inspectors found only small quantities of trimethylbenzene, a colorless liquid with a sharp odor that is used to produce dyes, pharmaceuticals, and antioxidants, as well as a solvent in ...

Sometimes, in the quiet race to document the past, you’re just a week too late. That was the story with the old garment factory on Lloyd Street. I had just pinned its location in MyMaps for a trip to Pennsylvania, a promising brick shell I hoped to explore, when the news broke. It was gone. In its place was a fresh scar on the landscape, a void where a piece of the city’s story once stood. The demolition was swift, a decisive act funded by half a million dollars in county and state money, taking with it a handful of long-abandoned row homes that had been its neighbors in decay. This wasn't just any building. The building was originally built as a meat packing facility for Armour & Company in the early 1900s, and was later acquired by Milton Sorin and his United Wiping Cloth Company. For decades, it was the United Wiping Cloth Company, a place of work and purpose. Over the years, it had supplied rags to many varied manufacturing concerns all over the eastern United States, until...

Photo Courtesy of 43 North Real Estate The story of this site begins with a simple set of numbers. It covers 1.63 acres. At its center stands a four-story, 80,000 square foot building. Around it sit a parking lot, two driveways, and a small strip of grass along the north side. To anyone driving by, it might look like an ordinary old industrial property, the kind you see in many towns. What you cannot see from the street is the long environmental story written into the ground beneath it. For years, this property was used in ways that left behind more than just history. It became a brownfield, a place where past industrial activity left pollution in the soil and groundwater. Today, the land has undergone a cleanup, focused on two serious “hot spots” of contamination tied to a chemical called trichloroethene, or TCE. TCE is a common industrial solvent. It is often used to remove grease from metal parts, a routine step in many factories and repair shops. The problem starts when TCE is spil...

Photo courtesy of LoopNet.com This marks the start of a new series I am calling “The Forgotten Ledger.” Think of it as a record of places that slipped through my fingers. These are the mills and foundries that came down before I could photograph them, the churches and farmhouses that vanished behind fences and “No Trespassing” signs, the offices, barns, factories, and odd little buildings that were gone before I had the chance to step inside. Over the years, I have built a long list of locations I meant to visit. Some were already abandoned and waiting. Others were still hanging on by a thread. Many of them are gone now. Demolished. Redesigned. Paved over. Erased from the map but not quite erased from memory. “The Forgotten Ledger” is where I go back to those missed chances. Each entry in this series will be a brief look at one of these places. You might see old notes, rough research, scraps of history, half-finished maps, or a single blurry photo taken from the road. Sometimes all tha...