New Jersey is often associated with huge ridiculous chemical factories. This place falls directly into that category. Abandoned for several years now, this massive factory and laboratory have since been taken over by nature. The company that built it is still in business - only they've modernized their operation and built a huge new facility elsewhere on their expansive property - leaving this one behind to decay. it would probably cost more to clean it up and scrap it out than to leave is rusting away in it's present day state.

Somewhere in an urban part of New Jersey, an entire set of city blocks laid abandoned.

Sitting empty for years on end, this motley collection of abandoned buildings were soon to become the victim of the bulldozer. This 'mixed use' area contained small homes, emptied small apartments, and light industrial buildings. The city they were located in had made the vain, probably corrupt decision to use eminent domain to lay claim to all of these properties (along with many more), and to force residents and businesses out of the area. Their goal, of course, being to hand the property over to 'developers' (i.e. politically connected cronies) and create a new tax base to perpetuate their own perceived awesomeness for decades to come.

Thus far, their political dream has become a civic nightmare for the residents of this city. Services have been cut as the tax base dried up. The stalled development project has not moved one inch forward in years. Meanwhile, addicts and squatters have taken to breaking into these buildings repeatedly. The fire department is sent over to lock them up, and a week later someone else has broken in.

While one might assume this nightmare will end 'when the economy gets better', that could still be years off.

Jersey is a great place if you're a foamer (i.e. railroad enthusiast).



Aside from being a major hub for several large railroads, NJ also has its share of 'short lines', and some of them keep a lot of old equipment sitting around rusting into the soil.

These photos are from yet another tour of one of our favorites.

History
This building is the only one left inactive on a campus that was the first abandoned hospital I had ever visited, nearly 12 years ago as of this writing. At that time, we visited a set of 3 attached buildings which were long abandoned (seemingly since at least the 1970s). These buildings were bulldozed sometime between 2001 and 2008, with crappy little apartment buildings built in their place.

Present:
There isn't a huge amount to say about this hospital. The majority of the building is active, though this rear wing has been abandoned for at least 2 decades now. It makes for strange neighbors: an active, maintained building attached to a completely abandoned, neglected one.

Entering this place is tricky. After all, it IS surrounded by houses now.

Once you're finally inside, you begin to wonder if it was worth the trip. This is very much unlike the previously explored buildings - which were straight up awesome. Inside here, there's not much to look at. Many many empty rooms with little furniture left over. A huge kitchen space, completely trashed - and a basement that is both creepy from it's darkness and boring from it's emptiness. At least there's some delightfully ridiculous old graffiti in here to keep things interesting.

I'm not sure what the future holds for this place. Clearly at least part of it could be cleaned up and reused as a healthcare facility - or it could be gut-renovated into more apartments.

Only time will tell.

This was the very first abandoned hospital I ever visited. Located in lovely downtown Blankenfuck, New Jersey, this set of buildings was located behind a rather huge main building which was in use at the time. Today, not one trace of these buildings exists. They were bulldozed half a dozen years ago and replaced with crappy little garden apartment buildings. Quite the unfitting demise for a structure that dated back to 1905 and was still quite structurally sturdy.

Besides the sheer awesome of being in my first abandoned hospital, this place was full of leftover stuff. One room would be full of shoes, another would be full of beds, wheelchairs, and my favorite: PILLS. There were more old pills in this place than I've ever seen.

Everyone loves 'Environmental Investigations'. it's government speak for when an abandoned factory is potentially so toxic and beyond superfund status that no one really knows how many toxic chemicals and crap are in the soil of the property.

This building has been left abandoned since as long as I can recall. Located on a dead end street in the middle of nowhere industrial NJ, this real estate is basically worthless.

There are no clues as to what this industry used to produce, though the solid concrete floors and thick wire meshed windows suggest it was once full of heavy machinery. Situated on a river and near rail sidings, it's clear some products were made here in bulk and shipped long distances.

Today, there's not much left to see. The walls have become a canvas to an intrepid few of the NYC area's most daring graffiti writers. In one corner of the building is a room of huge iron drums that once stored chemicals of unknown origin. In another corner, a homeless person has created a bunker at the core of the building. Full of canned foods and concrete walls, this man will survive the apocalypse if the radiation doesn't get him first.

In short, this is my kind of abandonment. Industrial. Hardy. Devoid of the law and society. Here, there is only survival and death. Life in it's rawest form, Death in stark light.

So I'm driving all over notfarNJ all day with a former felon, and we're on a spree. Every big abandoned building we see, we barge right into. This is the sort of broad daylight exploring blitz I live for.

Lately, I've been striving to include some more historic and adventural context to everything that gets posted on this site. This location though, is a clear exception. There's little known about it, and not a thread of information to use to research it. The front of the building appears to have been an auto garage just before it's untimely death. The rear contained massive fuel tanks, suggesting a former life as a small fuel depo.

At present time, it's a shithole. Squatters abound, the parts of the building that are not a burned out mess are filled with trash. Here lay the possessions of heroin addicted squatters, who have cobbled together piles of shoes, clothing and pure crap - strewn across the floor in random piles.

Completely unimpressed, we leave within minutes. There's absolute nothing to paint, or loot, and nothing that would clarify its past uses.

Welcome to the real, gritty Jersey. Home of pure shit locations such as this one.

The Stella Doro cookie factory was a longstanding source of good paying jobs in The Bronx - that is, until a private equity company got involved.


History:
The Stella Doro bakery started in and was a privately held company until 1992, at which time the owners sold to Nabisco. Nabisco soon became a part of Kraft Foods.

Kraft sold the Stella D brand to a private equity company called Brynwood Partners. Before this happened, Kraft managed to alienate their Jewish customer base by removing the pareve designation (A select group of Kosher foods).

Private equity companies are the devil, so it's not surprising that the company went straight to hell. They refused to negotiate a fair contract with their workers - who went out on strike. After 11 months of striking, courts ruled in the workers favor and ordered Brynwood to give back pay. Brynwood took them back, and they immediately announced that the factory would close within weeks.

The NY Times basically repeated Brynwood Partners press release word for word without verifying facts. The article they published stated that workers had and were demanding 9 weeks vacation. This 'large' amount of vacation time was designed to make the workers look greedy - a strategy that worked when you read the comments in the Times article. The reality though was that most workers only received 3-4 weeks vacation. The Times has yet to correct this fact, of course. So much for journalism these days.

That the family grew this business to employ 575 people, and that the corporations and private equity ran the business into the ground (134 employees at the end - with the company in debt. It posted sales of $65 Million before it was sold to Nabisco), shows what happens when the suits get involved. Decent paying jobs are lost. The area politicians and Mayor Money Bloombag refused to get involved. None of these politicians care about keeping working class jobs in the Bronx.

Adventure:
A year or two back, I only got to make one recon run to this location. At that time, it seemed like entry would be really easy via a rear window - though we'd need a ladder to get someone inside via a second floor window, and maybe let others in via any door since that would be way more discrete. It was a slightly brazen plan given that this building is located a mere block from an NYPD station house, but that hasn't stopped us before. This plan sat on the shelf a few months while significantly cooler, more pressing locations were hit up. By time time I got back around to doing a renewed recon of this location, it was clear this building was not long for this world.

Driving by on the highway, you could see all the windows had been removed. I parked around the block and walked around to the rear of the building - everything was wide open. Doors, windows, everything. The old loading dock was already bulldozed. i wasn't planning on going in, but circumstances had clearly changed. This place might not last another week.

Inside, the rear of the building contained offices. Those offices were already molding over. Water damage was rather extensive for a building that had only been abandoned for 3 years.

Most of the place was cleared out, but there was plenty of lootables. Old computer gear mostly. Low retail value, high 'throw it out the window and smash it' value.

The production and packing floors were basically clear - all old factory equipment already removed. Water poured through the building, with large puddles everywhere.

I had really hoped for more out of this place in terms of adventure, but there wasn't a whole lot to see, and I had parked at a metered spot. Thus my visit was short, yet still satisfying - for I had gotten in and gotten over once again - in broad daylight. When you can't stop, you won't stop. That's what exploring is. It's getting in. No matter when where or what surrounds the area.

An old Brick Factory lays in ruins on the Hudson river, awaiting an unknown future.



History:
The Hutton Brick Co. was founded in 1865 and operated until at least 1979. this large operation featured a small narrow-gauge railway which hauled carloads of clay from an open strip-mine site west of the factory, across the now closed Steep Rocks Road just east of the factory buildings. This track crossed the old NYC Hudson Cement branch at a diamond crossing.

Current:
The property today is completely abandoned. Steep Rocks Road is fenced off from vehicular access, though your free to walk through an opening and up the road into the old factory area off to the right. (to the left is where the mine was located - it has basically returned to nature).

Most of the buildings here have been gutted of equipment. Anything metal was looted long ago by scrappers. Curiously, a building towards the river was re-purposed as a restaurant, which later failed. Here is where local kids have set up skateboard and dirtbike ramps. Several were building a new obstacle coarse as we wandered through - not bothered at all by our presence.

Further back were the drying sheds, and large (brick, of course) ovens were the clay was heated and molded. Several of the old narrow gauge tracks are still embedded in the concrete here. these are some of the only traces of the railway here. There doesn't seem to be any record online as to what happened to the 2 old locomotives and the clay hauling cars, though I did find this photo of what looks like one outside an abandoned restaurant in Oneonta. (This restaurant is currently listed as for sale).

Future:
the future of this old historic site is very much in question today. Apparently it has been marked for redevelopment:
To the south, another 300+ unit development known as Sailor's Cove threatens the Hutton Company Brick works, one of only two intact brick yards along the Hudson River. In response, Scenic Hudson, local citizens and New York Times editorials have questioned the rationale for building so many units on such relatively small sites along the river, raising the larger question of "whose riverfront is it?" - only those who can afford the new condos or the community at large?
Source: http://www.hudsonvalleyruins.org/yasinsac/ulster/ekingston.html

I of course think it'd be more of a benefit to the community at large to turn a location like this into a museum of Hudson Valley industry. That of course would take a huge amount of time and effort. Apparently in the early 1990s there was a plan to do just this, though clearly it never happened. Despite this, Kingston is surprisingly a town that is able to muster some good volunteer activity. The CMRR is rebuilding what would today be considered a 'rail line to nowhere' - from Kingston westword into the mountains. The Trolley Museum of New York still operates a short trolley ride (and has some ex NYCTA cars on the property to boot). Restaurants have moved into many of the old buildings at the 'Roundout' area.

There's not a whole lot to talk about with this place. It's a rather huge warehouse once operated by a furniture retailer. When they went bankrupt, they left this place to gather dust. Huge warehouse space, combined with a smaller office area that was molded over from water damage, and a computer server room that was sadly already looted by the time we arrived.

Ah well, you can't win them all.