A
arntzville
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Photos by Moss Man, Jackson, CaptainJack, and Arntzville
Along the banks of a long disused industrial river looms the enormous (and long disused) Uniroyal tire plant. The Stooges circled the property for a while, tried a couple of entrances that didn't pan out, gave the passing traffic plenty of chances to be suspicious, and eventually took advantage of a stroke of genius on the Captain's part to gain access - We turned around and he was already through.
1.
The scale of the place was so staggering that we didn't know where to start. Four massive buildings marched toward the river, each more decayed and destroyed than the last. Parts of the site resembled a bombed-out, post-apocalyptic hell.
2.
It was immediately obvious that we wouldn't have time to see it all, so we shrugged our shoulders and picked a door. Inside, the place seemed even more vast.
3.
An amazingly small amount of the machines of industry remained. Mostly what was left was a somber sense of loss.
4.
Some of the cavernous floors were completely empty of anything at all, but we could still smell the oil and rubber, and see our footprints in the residues on the floor.
5.
Many of the floors had been coated with a latticework of crosscut slices of wood, hundreds of thousands of square feet of it. This was used to absorb the workers' weight as they stood at their stations, allwing them to be much comfortablethan if they were standing on bare concrete. They also served to absorb spills, and were replaceable.
6.
The roofs had problems. Lots of problems. Although the views would have been amazing and the weather was sublime, we stuck to the foul-smelling interiors, where the dangers were at least more obvious.
7.
And obvious they often were. Some of the floors were so decayed and rotten that it wasn't even an option to explore them, despite what the signs said.
8.
The place was a maze of connecting passageways, some very high off the ground... it was unnerving to use them without being able to see what they looked like from below, but our alternative was almost certainly being spotted from the road. We had observed a couple of security vehicles parked down the street, and there was no way of knowing when it was time for a Dunkin Donuts run, or perhaps even time for them to take some interest in their job.
9.
10.
Of course, ALL of the industrial equipment wasn't gone. It was interesting to try to make sense of what remained behind. We knew that the plant had made tires and rubber products, but most of what we saw left us at a loss, without the context of its vanished surroundings. Kudos to Moss for my favorite photo of the day; this was some sort of system of rollers that turned out to actually be made of wood!
11.
No idea what this thing was, but it looked vaguely as if you could start it up and drive it around. Or maybe that was just the rubber fumes talking.
12.
Years of vandalism were apparent in most of the complex, so we weren't expecting to find many pristine items of interest, and yet the place was so huge that we were startled to run across four complete fire trucks, including two ladder trucks, with not a single broken window or light. Despite a heavy coating of dust and debris, they looked as if you could hose them down and return them to service.
13.
14.
Which way would you rather climb, the older iron rungs with the equally old and flimsy iron cage enclosing you, or the newer, unenclosed coated steel? It was a nauseating choice to contemplate.
15.
Finally we decided to check out the youngest building, which housed the administrative offices for the plant. Unfortunately, by this point we were exhausted and had had our fill of snaking our way around using the elevated passageways, so we made the unwise choice to dash across open ground, only about 100' from the road. We were sort of taking our time about it, actually - the fresh air was music to our lungs.
Our stomachs tightened into knots when we looked over to see an older Cadillac with a red light on the roof sloooowly reversing back into view. We flattened up against the building, but the damage was done. As soon as the car drove away, we went straight up to the top floor of the office building to take up observation stations. We saw the car far below, driving slowly back past again, clearly looking for us, and then park back where we had seen it before. It was also at this point that we noticed the police station across the street.
16.
So, we decided to take our time in this last building. Even with the relentless decay and destruction we'd seen over the past few hours, the thoroughness of the devastation here was eye-opening. We ended up not even bothering to explore it; it was basically all ripped out to the studs, ceilings ripped down, broken glass and trash everywhere.
17.
We did run across a pretty nice executive office of solid oak, which had mysteriously escaped the havoc.
18.
Eventually it was time to take our chances with exiting. Our entrance point was almost comically exposed, but we knew it was the only way. There was a black SUV parked only 30' away that had been there for a while; we'd seen it from upstairs. We couldn't tell whether or not it was occupied until we were almost right up to it (it wasn't). It takes a minute or so to get four exhausted explorers and their belongings through a tight spot, but we pulled it off just in time (not quite, actually, but the person who came along didn't look at us twice), and headed off for a well-deserved meal.
Arntzville, Captain Jack, Moss Man, and Jackson.
19.
Along the banks of a long disused industrial river looms the enormous (and long disused) Uniroyal tire plant. The Stooges circled the property for a while, tried a couple of entrances that didn't pan out, gave the passing traffic plenty of chances to be suspicious, and eventually took advantage of a stroke of genius on the Captain's part to gain access - We turned around and he was already through.
1.
The scale of the place was so staggering that we didn't know where to start. Four massive buildings marched toward the river, each more decayed and destroyed than the last. Parts of the site resembled a bombed-out, post-apocalyptic hell.
2.
It was immediately obvious that we wouldn't have time to see it all, so we shrugged our shoulders and picked a door. Inside, the place seemed even more vast.
3.
An amazingly small amount of the machines of industry remained. Mostly what was left was a somber sense of loss.
4.
Some of the cavernous floors were completely empty of anything at all, but we could still smell the oil and rubber, and see our footprints in the residues on the floor.
5.
Many of the floors had been coated with a latticework of crosscut slices of wood, hundreds of thousands of square feet of it. This was used to absorb the workers' weight as they stood at their stations, allwing them to be much comfortablethan if they were standing on bare concrete. They also served to absorb spills, and were replaceable.
6.
The roofs had problems. Lots of problems. Although the views would have been amazing and the weather was sublime, we stuck to the foul-smelling interiors, where the dangers were at least more obvious.
7.
And obvious they often were. Some of the floors were so decayed and rotten that it wasn't even an option to explore them, despite what the signs said.
8.
The place was a maze of connecting passageways, some very high off the ground... it was unnerving to use them without being able to see what they looked like from below, but our alternative was almost certainly being spotted from the road. We had observed a couple of security vehicles parked down the street, and there was no way of knowing when it was time for a Dunkin Donuts run, or perhaps even time for them to take some interest in their job.
9.
10.
Of course, ALL of the industrial equipment wasn't gone. It was interesting to try to make sense of what remained behind. We knew that the plant had made tires and rubber products, but most of what we saw left us at a loss, without the context of its vanished surroundings. Kudos to Moss for my favorite photo of the day; this was some sort of system of rollers that turned out to actually be made of wood!
11.
No idea what this thing was, but it looked vaguely as if you could start it up and drive it around. Or maybe that was just the rubber fumes talking.
12.
Years of vandalism were apparent in most of the complex, so we weren't expecting to find many pristine items of interest, and yet the place was so huge that we were startled to run across four complete fire trucks, including two ladder trucks, with not a single broken window or light. Despite a heavy coating of dust and debris, they looked as if you could hose them down and return them to service.
13.
14.
Which way would you rather climb, the older iron rungs with the equally old and flimsy iron cage enclosing you, or the newer, unenclosed coated steel? It was a nauseating choice to contemplate.
15.
Finally we decided to check out the youngest building, which housed the administrative offices for the plant. Unfortunately, by this point we were exhausted and had had our fill of snaking our way around using the elevated passageways, so we made the unwise choice to dash across open ground, only about 100' from the road. We were sort of taking our time about it, actually - the fresh air was music to our lungs.
Our stomachs tightened into knots when we looked over to see an older Cadillac with a red light on the roof sloooowly reversing back into view. We flattened up against the building, but the damage was done. As soon as the car drove away, we went straight up to the top floor of the office building to take up observation stations. We saw the car far below, driving slowly back past again, clearly looking for us, and then park back where we had seen it before. It was also at this point that we noticed the police station across the street.
16.
So, we decided to take our time in this last building. Even with the relentless decay and destruction we'd seen over the past few hours, the thoroughness of the devastation here was eye-opening. We ended up not even bothering to explore it; it was basically all ripped out to the studs, ceilings ripped down, broken glass and trash everywhere.
17.
We did run across a pretty nice executive office of solid oak, which had mysteriously escaped the havoc.
18.
Eventually it was time to take our chances with exiting. Our entrance point was almost comically exposed, but we knew it was the only way. There was a black SUV parked only 30' away that had been there for a while; we'd seen it from upstairs. We couldn't tell whether or not it was occupied until we were almost right up to it (it wasn't). It takes a minute or so to get four exhausted explorers and their belongings through a tight spot, but we pulled it off just in time (not quite, actually, but the person who came along didn't look at us twice), and headed off for a well-deserved meal.
Arntzville, Captain Jack, Moss Man, and Jackson.
19.
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