Little Pond, Litchfield, CT, September 27, 2023

 

August 29, 2023, Thomaston Dam

 

 

Little Pond Swamp, Litchfield, CT, September 15, 2023

 

Farrel Machine Shop, August 14, 2023

Immediately after taking the photograph of the Farrel Foundry site on September 4th I walked around to this machine shop, still standing. It had paralleled and connected with the demolished Foundry. It looked no different from this picture taken a month before the Foundry demolition. I guess everything that could have been rattled loose by the demolition had already fallen.

The two rows of windows serve various offices and storage areas that were entered from the foundry. The upper row of windows span from the sand elevator in the north to a stair tower beside the" Tunnel" in the south. It contained a workshop and a long rabbit hole lined with shelves, parts to keep the busy factory running. The lower windows brought little light to a few dingy offices, still furnished and entered from the dark perimeter of the demolished foundry's floor. I imagine once they were busy.

Judging from calendars still hanging in nearby places, the offices had not been in use since 1983.

Farrel Machine Tool Foundry, c. noon, September 4, 2023

I just finished assembling as best I could the stitched pan of the empty Farrel Machine Tool foundry site in Ansonia. This is primarily an effort at documentation, but I’m amazed at the vastness. Is there something about the exposed end of the bridge from the sand elevator, like the end of a severed limb, that is disturbing. Perhaps it has to do with having been up there looking down. 

 

Those who have been inside know that behind the high wall a monorail crane shuttled between a tall room on the left side of the image and the "severed limb.” The crane was intact when I took this photograph — so was another crane that crossed the rail corridor to the sand elevator and was parked near the end of the limb. Farrel foundry was as much a giant machine as it was industrial architecture.

 

 

Machine Monster #4

Machine Monster #4 lived in a tube mill on Bank Street in Waterbury. The photos show the regal beast breathing fire when the mill was active (below) and then later after the mill closed (above). The tube being extruded was bound for use on the U.S. nuclear submarine. Those tubes are now manufactured in Mexico on some of the same machinery.

Cookie Monster (#3)