Me, Filthy and Snatch are determined. We were here just an hour ago trying to pry our way into the old Nelson Galvanizing warehouse, all to no avail. We left, hopped in the ride and went to a construction site, combing the building in search of tools. Nothing. So we stop by my place again, get what we need, and come back 5 minutes later. As Snatch would later say ‘it’s open like your mom’s bedroom!’.
Open indeed. both me and Filthy had wanted to come in here for quite some time. She always saw it around the hood, and I saw it ever since childhood when the place was active. Back then, LIC was still just barely clinging to it’s industrial past. This was one of several steel fabrication shops in the area. It’s also a superfund site, and is listed as one of the area’s highest contaminated plots of land
Today though, the space has been taken over by a taxi repair shop. They leave their junk, stripped of parts taxis in this warehouse while they keep mechanics on duty in another building maintaining the rest of the fleet. You see, NYC taxi’s are owned by many different companies, just aboutt all of whom maintain a large fleet of cabs with several crashed or worn out cabs kept at their base as a part supply for those that they keep running. Taxi garages have always found the LIC area home, right along side the manufacturing shops and steel fabrication shops, thus the progression of this lcoation, from steel to taxi, keeps the location ‘in the LIC family’. To me, this is much better than had the place become condos…
Besides, there are still plenty of remains from the old steel shop. It is as if they locked the door and walked away. An ancient truck sits rusting in the back of the warehouse, along with piles of bricks and debris. Towards the front are stairs up to a second level, where the offices once were. The floors have sagged and appear ready for collapse. Nevertheless we carefully made our way in to the corner office, where piles of paperwork and unopened mail sad on old wooden desks. There was no graffiti, and no signs that anyone had been up here in at least 20 years.
It was a better bargain than we had wagered for, and well worth the effort.
Update: 2013: The Nelson Galvanizing building was bulldozed last year. All of the wrecked vehicles were removed. Today (March 2013) the land is nothing but an empty lot. No soil remediation has taken place so far as we know. It joins a long list of former industrial sites across NYC that are no more.
