Save Stanley

PHOTOGRAPHER’S JOURNAL: It’s time to stop and reconsider before the historic Stanley Works factories in New Britain are demolished forever. On Monday the New Britain Historic Preservation Commission voted to halt demolition for 90 days.

What is the value of preserving historic buildings in our communities even after they’re no longer of use for the purposes for which they were built? I live in a different part of Connecticut, grew up in another state entirely, but I knew the name Stanley from the first time in my childhood when I measured a length of board and made a cut to build a bird house as a gift for my father. Currently, guests visiting me from the Netherlands describe similar recognition of the name, “Stanley,” and find delight in learning that Stanley Tools were made here, in the state they are visiting. Stanley, even beyond Colt and Sikorsky, is an iconic Connecticut brand that evokes immediate recognition to all who hear it. The name brings recognition to the city of New Britain.

For the past seven years I have been photographing the few remains of the region of Connecticut once known as "Brass Valley." With few tangible reminders of the brass industry's past, the central importance of this region to American industrial development is vanishing, and even in the Naugatuck Valley where it was centered, the name “Brass Valley” is being forgotten, though once brass was Connecticut’s leading industry and part of a metals and machine tools culture that built our state and the nation. For seven years I have photographed this region as it disappears, and Brass Valley: The Fall of an American Industry (Schiffer Books, 2015) is my attempt to hold on to something of the brick and mortar reality that changed lives and that has almost vanished.

Stanley still stands. For generations of those who worked there it provided, not only a respectable living, but a path to opportunity and advancement. Men and women who worked there saw career options, and their children grew up in an American Dream of possibilities. Their children and grandchildren live among us. As factories closed we unknowingly closed down part of our educational system, but the buildings still speak of the world they created, and preserving tangible remains of that world provides a living connection to what we were and to what we can be. Stanley Works is more than a collection of brick work sheds. Just as forts and battlefields remind us of past struggles and our ability to overcome adversity, historic factories re-purposed for future generations tell those generations of the paths we have followed and provide the inspiration for deeds and enterprises yet to be accomplished. Historic buildings tell us who we were that we may know who we may become. New Britain should think long and hard before allowing demolition of this legacy.

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Those who are moved by this issue can write to the Hartford Courant or to the New Britain Herald.