The Mad River, Waterbury

The Mad River follows a ravine between Mill Street and River Street in Waterbury, CT, through what looks like a park but whose chain link border is a legacy of its toxic history. The river flows under two bridges beside where South Main crosses Washington Street, moments before its waters blend with those of the Naugatuck. The view is upstream from the historic, 1881, iron bridge on Washington Street across a modern highway bridge on South Main. Once this was the center of acres of furnaces and factories making the metal that would become buttons and pins, oil lamps, clocks, bullet casings and tea kettles. It’s a busy intersection of roads and rivers with an awkward jog put in place when traffic was horse-drawn wagons and laborers trudging to and from work in shifts. 

The odd intersection isolates a tiny, right triangle of real estate with legs along the crossing avenues and a Mad River hypotenuse. It is a site almost too small for a building, but a four story apartment house known as “The Louis Block" has stood there since 1890 with balconies buttressed out over the river to make its narrow plot more commodious. Delicate brick work on the front (not shown) of the Louis Block have caused speculation that it might be the work of Robert Wakeman Hill, sometimes called CT’s “State Architect.” Across the river from the Louis Block several bays of train trestle, hidden behind the foliage, are all that’s left of a timber structure that crossed here carrying rumbling, puffing freight loads of manufactured goods and raw materials through the Mad River Ravine. 

The Waterbury Companies was founded by Aaron Benedict to make military buttons for the War of 1812. It grew to be the Benedict & Burnham Brass Company making buttons, clocks and eventually making injection molded plastic parts. The Waterbury Companies is still making buttons that stylishly supply clothiers such as Ralph Lauren and Brooks Brothers. 

The iron bridge is the work of the Berlin Iron Bridge Company which also fabricated steel to build the historic Farrel Foundry downstream in Ansonia. 

from Washington Street upstream on the Mad River

up the Mill Street - River Street Ravine

from the Mad River Falls toward South Broadway

Looking across S. Main St., down Washington St. to the iron bridge

 

Strutting 3 — Between Hoods

 

Strutting 2

 

Strutting 1

...continuing the journey now to 2014 and once more reversing the view (see previous post) on the vacant Benedict & Burnham lot: The corner of the powerhouse is in the foreground. The offices are on the right, and the building in the center blocks our view of the other shed that stood on what is now the vacant plaza. The stair tower at its corner was structurally sound at the time, but leaks had rotted floor boards between the tower and the work floors at the heart of gloom which were bare.

 

Benedict & Burnham

The first shot below reverses the view from the photograph posted on June 16. It looks back at the Benedict & Burnham / American Brass powerhouse & corporate offices across the site of their demolished manufacturing shed. The second shot, taken eleven years earlier from near the corporate offices and before the manufacturing shed was demolished, looks toward where the first shot was taken.

 

 

 

 

Through Factory Windows 8 — Benedict & Burnham campus from the surviving powerhouse

 

Through Factory Windows 6 & 7 — Cherished Views from the Corner Offices of American Brass Co., Waterbury

South Main Street Looking South to St. Francis Xavier Church

South Main Street Looking North to St. Anne's Church

Formerly the site of Benedict & Burnham brass factories, this building was built after brass manufacturing was merged into a single company, the American Brass Company. Manufacturing was carried on in the sheds below these offices.

Through Factory Windows, 2011 — St. Anne's from the attic of the Holmes, Booth & Haydens Lampworks, Waterbury

From the north end of the attic of the brick Lampworks (c.1880), where Holmes, Booth & Haydens once made brass burner mechanisms for oil lamps, the view across the sawtooth roof of the tube mill (c. 1918) took in one of Waterbury’s most prominent landmarks, St. Anne’s Church (1906), formerly the Shrine of St. Anne's. In 2019 the distinctive stone spires of St. Anne’s were determined to be unstable and demolished. The view in this photo was already gone, as the Lampworks had burned to the ground a year earlier. It had been empty since 2012, the year the tube mill shut down and the elaborate machine shop which had previously maintained the machines of tube-making was emptied and the lathes and presses sold off and taken away.

Through Factory Windows 4 — Pine Hill and Our Lady of Peace Cross

 

Through Factory Windows 3 — Union Station, Waterbury from Ruins of American Brass Co.

 

Through Factory Windows 2 — St. Xavier Church, Waterbury

 

Through Factory Windows 1 — Pine Hill, Waterbury, from the Benedict & Burnham Powerhouse