Ansonia Copper & Brass / American Brass — Photographed Monday

Once again photos from Monday — lingering puddles and barely a breeze reflect the shell of the powerhouse that ran Ansonia Copper & Brass. Outside it’s been shorn of its stacks, cable guides and associated jewelry, just as inside it was gutted of its machine muscle. Five hulking masonry furnaces at the center sit stone cold and still. How many rains does it take for puddles to wash this riverbank clean? I wasn’t sure I’d find anything here I hadn’t already photographed, but, although it looked the same, it was for me a very different place.

We didn’t enter the Powerhouse but visited three other sheds. Clustered around the Powerhouse are the manufacturing sheds of the brassworks. The Casting Shop where alloys were mixed and poured into billets and the shops where billets were turned into tubes, rods and wire.  

The Casting Shop Offices

 

Rod Mill Offices

The Rod Mill

 

 

Maintenance Department

Rail Corridor as Viewed from Metal Storage Area

 

 

 

Powerhouse RIP

The two links below should open two photos of the Benedict & Burnham powerhouse in Waterbury when it was standing. When operating it powered one of the oldest and largest of the original brass mills of the region people called Brass Valley. On Monday when I walked by the site the only thing left of the powerhouse the giant stack.

https://rothphotos.blogspot.com/2022/06/benedict-burnham.html

https://rothphotos.blogspot.com/2014/10/autumn-in-brass-valley.html

 

Brass Valley: The Fall of an American Industry

 

The extrusion press above was in use in Waterbury, until 2012. It turned heated blocks of metal, like the one in this picture, into high quality, metal tubes used in nuclear facilities and elsewhere. It was the last major brass manufacturing in the Naugatuck Valley, once known as "Brass Valley." The metal was poured in the casting shop in Ansonia beside an even larger press that had not run since the 1970s. The story of Brass Valley and the last brass production is told in words and photographs in my book, Brass Valley: The Fall of an American Industry, published by Schiffer Books. Available also at book stores and at some local historical societies and museums.

 

Another from 9/9/22, at the site of the extrusion press at the Ansonia Brass Mills

 

Extrusion Press Demolition

American Brass Extrusion Shed, Ansonia, September 9, 2022 and August 17, 2016

The top photo shows the pit, now filled with rain water, in which sat a giant extrusion press, the largest ever operated in America. The bottom photo shows progress on demolition of that extrusion press in 2016

 

Farrel Machine Shop, Sept 9. 2022 and March 14, 2016

 

Today, 9/9/22, After Rains, Ansonia Brass Mill

 

Ducks in a Row — Maine, 2022

 

Maine Fog 2022