Whimsical Windows - Redevelop, please...

For this week's edition of Whimsical Windows/Delirious Doors, I am 
featuring the old city owned ATP building. 
With municipalities so eager to get a building back onto the tax rolls, many implausible ideas are pitched by developers where nothing comes of fruition. 

Still I hope that it is rehabbed and repurposed sooner than later.There are currently new bids by developers to rehab this - so hope remains...These were taken with my phone on a cloudy day, the look is forlorn and not stylish - but too solid to tear down. Buildings like this were built to last. I hope to see something on this functional building happen, and get our small city out of the landlord business...

Whimsical Windows - Retro Gallery

For Toby's meme Whimsical Windows/Delirious Doors I am traveling back a couple of days to a reception at a new gallery in a cool old factory in a nearby town.

Owner and artist (in so many disciplines :) opened Studio E.Y.E. (Express Yourself Endlessly).

This old facility has the requisite windows to let lots of natural light in to this stylish gallery, workshop and classroom to those in the pursuit and learning of making metallic art...not to mention paint parties. A very cool place!

Whimsical Windows - Old factory with possibilities

Toby hosts the architectural meme Whimsical Windows/Delirious Doors. My subject today is the old Farrel Corporation Process Lab building in our domicile of Ansonia CT. This is the back, taken from Main Street. I am taken by the large windows and vines growing on the fire escape.

I like the style of the unused factory, and see many possibilities for. A developer has purchased this building with an eye toward redeveloping into lofts with nearly ceiling to floor lofts and retail. Being such a sold building, we taxpayers hope for its reuse...

Whimsical Windows - Past industrial passed

Toby hosts the fun architectural meme Whimsical Windows/Delirious Doors, and we keep our eyes open. Today is a prosaic view of our old and small industrial town of Ansonia Connecticut. 

This is the intersection of Olsen Drive at the Maple Street Bridge that carries traffic over the Naugatuck River to downtown. We see the backside of the Farrell Machinery plant in the foreground, looking as if it were built in the very early 1900s, the modern building in the middle of the frame the company headquarters from the early 1970s. The old industry is a much smaller part of life - the gray autumnal day seems appropriate here...

Shadow Shot Sunday - Old industrial

An old world exists just north of the Ansonia CT train platform - I once noticed shadows and drove down the end of West Main Street to look for subjects for Shadow Shot Sunday 2. Past the Maple Street overpass are two old structures of once bustling Farrel Machinery plant. It seems lost in time and shadow...a black-and-white edit seems appropriate for this, we are lost in place that feels like 1920 or so.

The complex sits next to the sole track on the commuter railroad's Waterbury-Bridgeport line. Here is a grade crossing, once a train stop for the factory. The sign seems quite explicit: stop, look and listen. A very large truck is no match for a much heavier and faster moving diesel locomotive, much less my minivan...

This looks of a day long past with hundreds of workers per shift, building rubber and mixing machinery for export. Shadows are interspersed with the weeds...

Tina's Pic Story - Old

Tina's Pic Story reappears, and we add the picture to complement Tina's chosen theme, which today is Old...This view is old to our eyes in 2012. Yet the subject, my father, is not at all and rather young as he is photographed in the middle of the crowd. The place is unknown (Steubenville?), the time perhaps in the mid-late 1930s given ths sign that says NLRB. As to what defines 'old' vs. 'not old' may depend on our own point of view...