Saturday, March 21, 2015

Farrel Corridor


This is a special edition of TODAY'S PHOTO. Click the "Emery Roth II" link below. You will be linked into my new Facebook Page as a visitor. You do not need to register to Facebook to see it all. However, I ask registered Facebook users to go to the top of the page and LIKE the whole page. Doing so will help spread the word about my new book: Brass Valley: The Fall of an American Industry. Then scroll down and click on the Farrel Corridor image to see the pictures and read the text. In the future, I will periodically offer other similar "special edition," TODAY'S in order to gather multiple pictures into mini exhibits.






PHOTOGRAPHER’S JOURNAL: Many years ago I was told that if I wanted to take better pictures, the secret was to show fewer of them. Therefore, when I began this blog I decided to select no more than one picture per day. I’m now in my ninth year of TODAY’S PHOTO, and I look back with some satisfaction at the record of this work, but more and more I’m feeling the need to let multiple pictures tell a story. Facebook will answer to that need for now, and at the same time they will help me bring my photographs and new book to the attention of a wider audience. Thank you to all those who have subscribed to TODAY’S PHOTO and for your regular comments. They never go unanswered, and they are always much appreciated.




People are surprised when I refer to, "the beautiful skyline of Ansonia, CT., and here is one of the best vantage points. Between the river and Main Street lie the properties where Ansonia began. The track passes through the flood gate on the far right and reaches the Ansonia platform and the back of the old Opera House. For a mile north the track passes through one of the rustiest canyons of industry left in Brass Valley.

In the middle of the picture, up on the hill, is the Ansonia Armory and further left a workshop of the Farrel Works. Maple Street Bridge was under construction when this was taken, and more of the red passageway is exposed that carries Farrel workers over the tracks that run through the middle of Farrel Works.

Almon Farrel was the millwright Anson Phelps hired in 1845 to build the Ansonia Canal that powered his industrial village. [His story is told in my book.] The Farrel Foundry and Machine Company has been here as long as the village and still operates in some of these buildings.

Grandly above it, and facing away toward North Cliff Street, is the Roman Catholic Church of the Assumption. The church, designed by Patrick Keely, opened in 1907. The story of its building is told here: http://www.assumptionansonia.org/history.html

But for the need to cross the Naugatuck frequently in Ansonia, one might almost forget it was a river town. However, it is still the hillscape and the river that open space for the beautiful skyline.