Sunset

Canal Bridge

PHOTOGRAPHER’S JOURNAL: It has been called the first "industrial park" in Connecticut, a place designed and built, not for a particular company or manufacturer, but with the aim of offering for sale multiple factory sites with power to turn machinery, and transportation to move goods for visionary manufacturing entrepreneurs. At it’s center was a five-and-a-quarter mile canal that allowed barges heaped with goods for market to more easily pass the falls and shallows below Enfield on the Connecticut River. 

In 1827, when work was begun, hopes were buoyed by the transformative success of New York's Erie Canal, two years earlier. Unlike that canal, where barges were pulled by draft animals along a tow path, the new canal was structurally reinforced to withstand steam-driven tug boat traffic. The project would open the single greatest bottleneck in the passage of goods along the Connecticut River all the way into Vermont, and it would sustain the commercial viability of Hartford against the competing interests of New Haven which were then at work on the Farmington Canal. Canals were being planned everywhere. There were plans for a canal between Albany and Boston.

The new canal would be designed with locks to raise and lower boats thirty feet along its course. It required the building of a large dam on the river and an aqueduct to carry canal water 104 feet across Stony Brook to feed apertures with steady flow past mill wheels at five factory sites. The passion to move goods by canal boat faded quickly as the steam that had begun powering tug boats along the Connecticut River began powering locomotives at greater speed with fewer interruptions over evenly graded tracks through the same valleys where the rivers flowed. Did this bridge once swing to admit visitors from the railroad to the right over a canal becoming less busy? Though the canal’s value for transportation diminished, it’s value for power generated increased as mill wheels became turbines and later as turbines turned electrical generators. The Windsor locks were a monumental undertaking; the first time Connecticut River water had powered mill wheels, one of the largest construction projects ever attempted in the state, and it grew to be a community.

[The Montgomery Company, Windsor Locks, CT - July, 2016]

ref.
https://windsorlockshistorical.org/2015/01/24/the-montgomery-industrial-complex/
http://web.archive.org/web/20081012031821/http://www.americancanals.org/Connecticut/Enfield%20Falls%20Canal.pdf
http://www.yale.edu/ynhti/curriculum/units/1981/cthistory/81.ch.04.x.html
http://www.yale.edu/ynhti/curriculum/units/1981/cthistory/81.ch.04.x.html#f

Factory Light

Come to the slide-talk, see the exhibition
Dec. 10 @ 1 PM, 

Minor Memorial Library, Roxbury, CT (just off Rt. 67)

slide-talk and book signing

“Finding Brass Valley, a Place in Time that Has Almost Vanished”

exhibit

Brazen Grit: Images of Brass Valley

photographs by Emery Roth

exhibit runs thru Jan. 7, 2017

PHOTOGRAPHER’S JOURNAL (continuing the story of the Last Machine): At the opposite corner of this shed Art and Ben are disassembling the last machine. While they cut and scrap there, here their smoke filters through sunbeams that fall into a space built shortly after 1890. If we could slip between the decades to before the Civil War we’d find Anson Phelps old brass mill here, the one he built on the canal that brought power to the mill town he built and the town he created.

These mills have long been patchworks. I suppose it’s a measure of the vitality that kept them reconfiguring to meet changing demands. However, this shed, except for the back wall seemed uninterestingly new. I never paid attention to this shadowed corner, though I passed it daily. There is no sawtooth of rowed clerestories here, as elsewhere, to fill the aisle with light, and nothing ever happened here when I visited.

I try to imagine it in 1895 when it was the new casting shop for the company Anson Phelps had established here. There would have been furnaces, buggies full of coke and metal and radiating heat and danger. They built the new casting shop with a monitor roof beside the old one, closer to the tracks. The old one had been smack up against one side of the furnaces, and when the new Rolling Department shed was completed there would be space all around the furnaces. The 1895 tax map shows the new casting shop beside the old one which is labeled, “Vacant 16.” And the large muffle room beside the furnaces is labeled, “This building to be rebuilt at once.” By the 1900 map, the area that includes “vacant 16,” the furnaces, and the “Muffle Room” has been incorporated beneath a second monitor roof, long gone, that paralleled this one.  

The published maps let me travel back through one more layer of sooty shadows to 1884. No large furnaces are shown, but at the end of what I guess to be the old casting shop there is a single, small chimney. And on the spot of ground where these smokey sunbeams shine, Ansonia Brass & Copper had some sheds for storing lumber and coke beside the tracks.

The Last Machine: Cutting the Bottle

Going on NOW!

"Brazen Grit: Images of Brass Valley"

photographs of Emery Roth

through January 7 (check library hours)

at Minor Public Library, Roxbury, CT

(just off rt.67)

slide talk: “Finding Brass Valley, a Place in Time that Has Almost Vanished”

Dec. 10 @ 1 PM Minor Public Library, Roxbury, CT

“The Bottle,” so named on the parts list, is the thick-walled hydraulic cylinder into which the piston fits. The oil injected into this container exerts its immense force on every inch of the piston head to move it. It exerts an equal force on every square inch of the bottle’s wall which must not move. The bottle anchors the system. Nor is it meant to be removed, and it will take Ben and Art many days to chop it into pieces they can lift and transport.

A quick review of my photo shoots shows it took from the mid-July until nearly the end of September for Art and Ben to get the half-million pounds of metal that was Brass Valley’s last machine chopped and out. Two months to remove just the machine, not counting time to remove the conveyor beds, ovens, control consoles and to drop to the floor the great traveling cranes that spanned and traversed the factory aisles and then to cut the cranes apart and down the rails. We photographed Ben and Art attacking the cranes in December of 2015, and they had already been at it awhile. 

So much effort to remove the last machine and its component parts! How long did it take to install it and put it in operation? 

Until last month, I didn’t even know when it had been installed. At the opening of my Roxbury Library photo exhibit an engineer who had worked there remembered it all. I asked when it was put in operation, and he stopped to reflect and calculate and said with certainty, “1979.” Before I could question him on the difficulty of installation, he began describing to me the difficulty of bringing the trucks through town and the gate at the top of the brass mill and down the historic road that crosses through the mill property from Liberty Street to the River. I had surmised it had been brought in by rail.

However, the difficulties were ahead. It required two years spent adjusting, and learning and fine tuning its production to make a reliable product. It was the machine to save the industry. It was the last major piece of heavy machinery installed in Brass Valley, and the last to be removed.

Brazen Grit

Share refreshments at the opening of 

Brazen Grit: Images of Brass Valley

an exhibition of photographs by Emery Roth

November 12, 2016 from 2 PM to 4 PM @ Minor Library, Roxbury, CT

Exhibition runs Nov. 12 thru Jan. 7

Brazen Grit: Images of Brass Valley

We are Makers. After our time in the trees, our human minds freed our dexterous hands to do impossible things. Making stuff, handiwork, is in our DNA. At least it’s in mine, which is maybe why it feels like death when a manufacturing region vanishes and a culture of innovation is hollowed out. The earliest photographs in this exhibit were made in 2011 when my colleague and I were invited to photograph men using ancient machinery in the last brass mills in Brass Valley. The mills ceased operation in 2013, and I made the most recent images in this exhibit this summer and fall, as the last mills were being picked and detoxified prior to demolition. For six years I’ve sought to understand these mills and the men who ran them and those who demolish them. These photographs are the stories the men and the mills have given me.

They called the steep valley of Connecticut’s Naugatuck River "Brass Valley,” because from the time the world began running on steam and bearings, trolleys and soot, the Naugatuck Valley came to be where most of the world’s brass manufacturing happened. Beginning with the iron industry in the Northwest Hills, Connecticut became known for its metalworking and its machine innovations. New Britain was known as “Hardware City.” Meriden was the “Silver City.” Southington was the “Bell City.” But brass had a whole valley. From Bridgeport to Winsted was where brass was made and made into stuff from clips to clocks to the fittings for industry and the weapons of war. I was privileged to witness and photograph the final chapter in the story of Brass Valley.

Farrel Foundry "Sand Elevator"

TWO ROADS BREWERY SLIDE TALK: BEYOND SOLD OUT

Next Events:

Exhibit Opening: “Brazen Grit” @ Minor Library, Roxbury, Nov. 12, 2-4 PM

Slide-Talk: “Finding Brass Valley, A Place in Time,” @ Newtown Library, Nov. 14, 7:30 PM

PHOTOGRAPHER’S JOURNAL: I dislike the elitist aroma that haunts the word, “Art,” and the distortion it creates in the appreciation of a simple picture. And yet, I’m quick to assert that my photography is not intended as documentation. Because my photographs are sometimes valued for their documentary qualities, I’ve long looked for a way to distinguish between documentation and art without in any way leaving room to elevate one above the other. The pace of change has made more of us care about an accurate preserved record of the past. However, that’s not what many of us are trying to do.

I rather like Brooks Jensen’s formulation (“Looking at Images,” Lenswork Publishing). He distinguishes between photographs that show us what something looks like, and photographs that show us an experience. I wonder what others think?

I’ve been photographing this structure for seven years, but I keep walking by it and never tire of looking for photographs there. This one was taken two days ago and with the help of a new lens.

The Last Machine, Part 5: "Carrying a Torch"

I invite those who enjoy these photographs and want to hear about Brass Valley, to join me at Two Roads Brewery in a presentation sponsored by the Connecticut Trust for Historic Preservation. Below is the text of their invitation:

The Connecticut Trust for Historic Preservation 

Thursday, November 3rd

Cost: Free, Reservations Required, Space is limited

Location: Two Roads Brewery, 1700 Stratford Ave. Stratford, CT

Time: 6:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m.

Food and Drink: Light refreshments and cash bar, beer and soda only

RSVP now to join the Connecticut Trust for Historic Preservation at Two Roads Brewery in Stratford, Connecticut as we welcome award-winning author Ted Roth, presenting his book: Brass Valley: Fall of an American Industry.

Enjoy a variety of Two Roads beers while Mr. Roth recounts his years photographing the brass mills and communities of the Naugatuck Valley, and particularly the last days of Ansonia Copper & Brass before it closed in 2013.

The images are unforgettable of grimy men working with patient skill in shadowy spaces filled with ominous machinery and lit by flashes of fire and glowing red-hot metal.

Two Roads Brewery is the perfect setting for this talk as it is located in the former U.S. Baird Machinery factory and has been beautifully restored and rehabilitated to suit the needs of full-scale brewery operations. Tours of the facility will be provided before and after Mr. Roth's presentation at 6:10 p.m. and 8:15 p.m. 

CLICK HERE TO RSVP 

PHOTOGRAPHER’S JOURNAL: Art is mostly about work, but there are moments when it’s clear he enjoys explaining, and answering questions. And so I learn things like the difference between propane, propylene, and acetylene, and why he used propylene for one particular cut. However, every cut requires a bit of strategy. Gas and time are expensive. Freed metal chunks can kill. However, every cut will release liquid metal which will run down and harden as it goes, and a path must be planned so that he doesn’t have to cut the same metal more than once. One particularly tricky section required magnesium lances that were so long Ben had to light the lance end while Art adjusted the oxygen valve from the handle end of the lance.

Of course, what I like here is the fireworks, but it’s not just the show of it. It’s the way they call attention to Art and his torch and the old machines, and sometimes the factory shed around them. As Art cuts, he strikes poses to get an angle on his work. In the light of the spark-trail fireworks, a series of these photos become a dance.

The Last Machine, Part 4

NEXT SLIDE TALKS: 
"Brass Valley: The Fall of an American Industry"
Nov. 3 @ 6:30 PM - Two Roads Brewery, Stratford, CT, for CT Trust for Hist Pres
Nov. 14, 7:30 PM at Newtown Public Library for Newton Hist.Soc.

PHOTOGRAPHER’S JOURNAL: This summer was full of photographs, but we returned to the last machine too late! Pieces of the “coil basket conveyer,” lay at the end of the shed waiting for the hauler, and if the “walking beam transfer rack” was there, it was unrecognizable to me. The control consoles, furnaces and other machinery had been cleared to the front end of the shed. Where previously it had been too tight to make pictures, there was now space to turn the large fork lifts that Art and Ben would use as they began the dismemberment of the long body of the extrusion press. Art and Ben would start at the back, called “The Bottle” that held the hydraulic cylinder (The Last Machine #1), and finish at the face that once extruded metal rod in infinite lengths.

For the first time we saw it without its drab raincoat. If I stress too strongly that it struck me as sphynx-like people might question my sanity, but in time I wasn’t alone in calling it, “The Cat.” Whatever the beast that hunched there at the back of the shed, it weighed a half million pounds according to the engineering parts list, and it wasn’t going anywhere quickly.

I’d learned that torch cutting makes for fireworks pictures. I asked if there would be fireworks pictures. A half million pounds of extrusion press made that a foolish question.

[This series, “The Last Machine” records the story and demolition of the largest extrusion press in New England, a massive machine which is currently being dismembered and scrapped at the old American Brass property in Ansonia on the site of Anson Phelps original brass mill there.]

The Last Machine, Part 3

PHOTOGRAPHER’S JOURNAL: In the extrusion shed, the row of machine shops (previous photo) received most of our photographic attention, though the giant extrusion press, “the last machine.” was like nothing we had ever seen, and we never really saw it. Always wrapped in black plastic and crowded in by furnaces and other machinery, it remained a Sphynx-like mystery. I photographed reluctantly and without conviction until I knew it would be gone.

An extrusion press squeezes molten metal the way a toothpaste tube squeezes toothpaste. The WWII extruder in Waterbury, which we photographed in operation, may be the central “character” of my book, but it was a minnow beside this whale. I was told this machine could extrude metal rod, “in infinite lengths.” All we could see beneath the plastic were the partially exposed haunches that squatted above a deep, wet cavity, accessed by stairs, too dark to photograph and too raunchy to tempt exploration. In front of the Beast were vast beds and a racetrack of coils; they were two distinct systems to which it once spewed its infinite rod. The plans refer to these as the “walking beam transfer rack” and the “coil basket conveyer.” They made good pictures but seemed incomplete without the machine that fed them.

The rest of the vast shed was empty, though the plans  show it was once populated with pickling tanks, wire machines, something called a “Vaughn Block,” and four large “Schumags,” (drawing machines, I believe) with pointers. It is a newish shed built onto older structures sometime after the aerial map of 1921. Its empty newishness made it, of all the sheds on the property, the place we photographed least until this July.  These pictures were taken much earlier. I had no idea the dismemberment of all this would provide a photographic spectacle like fireworks.

The Last Machine, Part.2 - "The Lady Chair"

PHOTOGRAPHER’S JOURNAL: The story of the largest extrusion press in New England, “the last machine," is still mostly unknown to me. The press was always there when Lazlo Gyorsok and I began photographing in the casting shop on the same Anaconda American Brass property in Ansonia in 2011. The casting house was our primary interest, but in the long periods between pours, we’d explore the other buildings of the property, all silent and decaying. And so, from time to time, we’d shoot in the extrusion mill. There were many wonderful things to photograph there in machinists' bays along an ancient back wall that may have been built in 1845, when Anson Phelps built his own Ansonia Brass & Copper here. That was when he built the canal and industrial village that founded Ansonia. 

Unfortunately, the rest of this shed was newer, difficult to shoot, and uninspiring, but I wish I could go back and photograph that hall of idle machine bays when it looked like this.

The Last Machine, Part 1

NEXT SLIDE TALK: "Brass Valley: The Fall of an American Industry"
Norwich, CT, Otis Library @ 6:30 PM on Monday August, 29.

PHOTOGRAPHER’S JOURNAL: Whether this is the largest extrusion press ever installed in New England, as the men tell me, is a question beyond my expertise. That it is the last machine standing of old Brass Valley is certain.

My friend, Lazlo Gyorsok, and I have been photographing the demolition of Brass Valley since 2010. This year we received a Preservation Award from CT Trust for Historic Preservation for our efforts. For the past two weeks we’ve been photographing the demolition of the last machine. It is an excruciatingly slow process with time for all sorts of photographs. One of the first steps was to slide this giant hydraulic cylinder as far forward as it could go in preparation for removing it from, “the bottle.” Here Art (real names withheld) is removing bolts that connect the fully extended cylinder to the steel block known as the "cylinder cover.” 

The men deny it, but taking this machine apart is a bit like solving a Rubix Cube. Some months back when the machine was operable, the cylinder might have been ejected by running the machine, but power is long gone from this building, and so Ben and Art must plan carefully which piece to move and when to cut so as not to waste effort, time and money.  They do this while recognizing that mistakes can be deadly. The cylinder alone weighs 55,000 lbs. No single machine in the shop is strong enough to lift it. They will have to position it so that two, giant fork lifts can grab it together.

Demolition of this giant extrusion press is, arguably, the final step in the dissolution of old Brass Valley. After this it’s only the truss-work sheds that sheltered the vanished men and machines. These men who have come to pick apart the last spoils of the industry may be the most hard-working I’ve yet met and photographed. 

[Extrusion Press demolition: Former Anaconda American Brass, Ansonia, CT.] 

Making It Square

NEXT SLIDE TALK: Aug 21 @ 10:30 AM, JCC in Sherman, CT

PHOTOGRAPHER’S JOURNAL: I have been visiting recently with my friend, the cabinetmaker, Craig Chessari and photographing him in his shop in Woodbury, CT.  I’ve caught him in different stages in the construction of a single cabinet. The pace of work is relaxed with time for side conversations that may concern art, craft, music (He has a special love of Russian opera) or an antique tool which Craig has just picked up to use. Sometimes he stops to explain the characteristics of a certain wood or how a joint has been designed to contend with the stresses at work in the wood as temperature and humidity change. However, when Craig turns back to his work he enters a space all his own. His motions are at once calculated and instinctual. When he spins some wooden clamps over his head, it is a dance, when he anticipates the drop of a shaving, his face suggests a song. His music is in making it square, and I’ve taken up his theme.

Through the Opera House Windows