Category: NYC ruins
NYC specific explorations
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Greenpoint Terminal Market: The Night Raid
The guard that was usually on duty had finally disappeared… so you know what happened next. I’ll just let the photos say it all.
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Greenpoint Terminal Warehouse Collapse Zone
I remember 2004. It was springtime, and A & P were in town once again. These guys are a little more on the daring side, and they hadn’t seen the insanity that was the Greenpoint Terminal Warehouses just yet, so off we went.
We started on the south side of the facility and worked our way northward and upward, climbing the most deformed stairs, skywalks and rooftops we could find. Along the way we ran into Ra, the squatter who’s turf these buildings was. We ended the night hanging out with him at the top of a building which had just about entirely collapsed. The only way to get to this spot was to go through a different building and come out on a rusted fire escape to walk into the next door where you could stand and stare down at oblivion itself.
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Flushing Light Industry Center
History
The massive Flushing Light Industry Center warehouse was located right between the LIRR Port Washington branch, and the NYC Subway 7 line, just east of Flushing Creek. It was originally owned by Con Edison, and likely used as a storage facility for cables and light poles. It featured a massive warehouse building, along with a shed by the creek and security booths at two gates. There were also 2 railroad sidings on the property, diverging from a single switch off the westbound Port Washington track.Con Ed sold the property to a group that used it for warehousing goods imported from Asia and perhaps even some sweat shops. By 2003 all of the businesses located in the Flushing Light Industry Center kicked out.
The Flushing Light Industry Center was perhaps best known to graffiti artists, who bombed the rooftops facing the 7 Train just before the subway enters the tunnel into Main street terminal.
Adventure
Sneaking in here was generally easy. There was one guard at the front gate, but he was a lazy bastard, as most minimum wage security people are. It was a big property, so sliding through a broken gate at the rear always worked.The buildings were big, but there wasn’t much to see. The best find in this whole place was a pile of leftover boxes containing fake designer bags. We poured through them and looted the passable ones to regift to girls.
Update 2013:
This building didn’t last long. It was bulldozed soon after these photos were taken. The entire plot of land was turned into high rise condo apartments with big box retail stores on the first floor. Target and BJs moved in. With it’s destruction, NYC lost one more piece of it’s storied industrial history. -
Sucrose/Revere Sugar Refinery in Brooklyn
Intro:
The Sucrose/Revere Sugar Refinery was Brooklyn’s ‘Other’ abandoned sugar mill. Located in Red Hook, it was bulldozed out of existence by 2006. Secured up until the very end, very few ‘explorers’ and next to no graffiti artists ever breached it’s walls. We did though. Of course we did. Because it’s expected.
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The Eagle: Former Eagle Electric Factory
Exploration in NYC at the moment is basically a red hot moving target – if you want to hit it hard you just got to keep moving and keep on punching the damned thing – elsewise you’re likely to miss a lot of the old spots being redeveloped… That was the case with this former Eagle Electric Factory.
When a well respected cat told me it was accessible, we went immediately. Inside this huge warehouse had already been more or less gutted, but the remains of course proved plenty photogentic. On a second visit we came across some couple in the middle of a photoshoot.
Before you know it though, this spot will be high priced apartments (because rich people just can’t get enough apartments around town, or so it seems), and the next 5 buildings that could ahve been explored will have already been converted…
There’s no time to dwell if you want it all.
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Vulture Capitalists: Auntie Louise
So the Chef calls me up with a lead on this old house being taken down. I smell cash in the air, so we meet up with another old school mo fo and go right in that side second floor window.
Once inside it’s apparently that the place is so money. A stack of big coins makes it worth the trip, loads of free old stuff ices the cake.
It’s not too hard to tell just what happened here: the owners of this house, Louise and her husband, were very old. X rays found on location testify to this fact. One can guess that the husband, apparently ex military and a city gov employee, died first, eventually followed by his wife.
In fact, that is the sad part of this story. Here was this couple who lived a long good life, apparently raised at least one child, and here is there house, sold to a developer bent on bulldozing it. Everything it seems was left behind. old furniture, books dating towards the early 1900s, a refrigerator with some tasty cold treats. One can only wonder if their sibling or siblings died an early death or just plain sold the house as is.
Whatever the case may be, Louise or her husband were pack rats, saving everything right down to the ancient baby carriage.
Sadly, it is all going into a dumpster. The house ready to be bulldozed.
It is a sad fate that is humbling, yet as a vulture capitalist, one can only pay tribute and divide up that stack of silver coins and alcohol..
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Waterside Generating Station, Manhattan, NYC
The minute that 383Fury pointed out the Waterside Generating Station was being shut down, I knew it was ON.Getting in was far from simple. This spot was well secured. That never stops us though. Not when you have a power plant this huge just sitting shut down. It took some doing, but we quickly found our way around security and into the buildings.
Inside? It was LTV time. Everything was intact. Nothing broken, Nothing stolen. Most explorers never get to see buildings in this pristine state. You could hardly tell it was this buildings final hours.
I only got around to visiting here 2 or 3 times before demolition began. If I had it to do over again, I would have went in there every night for a month. There was just that much to see in there. Nevertheless, it was an honor to be amongst the only explorers to ever break into this facility.
History
The Waterside Generating Station located at 1st avenue and 40th street, just south of the U.N. It was a Beaux-Arts style industrial structure designed by C. Wellesley Smith. It was massive in size – covering 9.5 acres of prime Manhattan real estate.Completed in 1900, the Waterside Generating Station produced both electricity and steam. Steam was, and continues to be, a vital energy source within NYC’s older buildings. Grand Central Terminal, for example, is heated with Steam provided by Con Ed, and also cooled by this steam via a chemical reaction between the steam and lithium bromide within a conversion plant located under the main floor of the terminal.
During a typical year, the Waterside Generating Station could produce over 2.4 million pounds of steam and 160 megawatts of electricity.
Today, there is no trace of this facility. It joins the long list of former industrial sites around NYC that have been wiped clean from the maps.
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GTW: Old School Graffiti Room
While exploring, it is not uncommon to come across old graffiti. however, it is uncommon to come across graffiti inside of a building that is at least 20 years old.
Witness the photos above, and get an education in handstyle circa 1985 – to find a room that is still decorated like this in the year 2005 is utterly baffling.
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Nelson Galvanizing, L.I.C. NY – aka NYC Taxi Hell
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.
