While spending a rainy day at a library, I managed to find some information on the now closed American Car and Foundry Company manufacturing company in Huntington, West Virginia, that dated back to November 1, 1872 when it was issued a charter as the Ensign Manufacturing Company. It is nearly as old as the city itself!
Tag Archives: Industry
Photograph of the Week: Packard Motors
The Packard Motor Company on East Grand Boulevard in Detroit, Michigan was constructed in 1903 and closed in 1958. With just the exception of a brief reuse in several locations, the entire complex – 3.5 million square feet over 35 acres, produced 1.5 million vehicles. Designed by Albert Kahn, the industrial complex used reinforced concrete [...]
Coloradan Cavity
Longmont Sugar was a sugar processing facility located in Longmont, Colorado that operated between 1903 and 1977. The new white plant was built against one wall of the old brick one, a weather-stained collection of wrecked windows, framed in a brick gallery for private audiences only. Its many obvious additions created a space of change [...]
Inter-Urban Jawbreaker
Brach’s Confections was a candy manufacturing company located in Chicago, Illinois that operated between 1904 and 2003. In economics, one hand doesn’t wash the other; it chops the other right off. The previous summer I explored the history, technology and architecture behind the United States’ domestic sugar industry and now I found myself in the empty shell [...]
The Death of Glass
Much like the dying coal industry, the glass industry has seen an equal upheaval brought about by either mismanagement, poor finances or overseas competition. In comparing the glass factories to the coal mines, the similarities can be studied to the relationship each industry had upon its community. In the case of Glen Rogers, West Virginia, the Wyoming County [...]
Conversations
It was a slightly chilly morning in downtown Cumberland, Maryland when I awoke to my alarm and the passing locomotives chugging along the former Western Maryland rail line through the heart of the city. I enjoyed listening to the trains throughout the night as it had a calming effect upon me, something that I recalled during my tenure at my parents house which was next to the massive Russell, Kentucky railyards. Feeling refreshed, I packed my gear and headed to my car and pointed my compass westward to Frostburg and then south to Lonaconing.
A Year of Little Change at the Ammunition Plant
It has been a year of little change at the Indiana Army Ammunition Plant. A few buildings have now be emptied of their contents, cleaned and prepped for eventual burning and subsequent demolition, and some more ground has been cleared of vegetation, but all in all, not much has changed. This is the second post [...]
Photograph of the Week: Jeannette Glass
Rusting dryers lie dormant in a collapsing section of Jeannette Glass.
Exploring rural Indiana
Despite the overarching theme of Abandoned to explore an abandonment in urbanized areas, there is a lot to be said for getting lost through the rural, blank landscape of the Midwest.
Photograph of the Week: Spindles
Spindles stacked away at the Lonaconing Silk Mill. Look for more photographs from this industrial relic soon!
Random Photos
