I was lucky enough to have two trips to the USA this year, although both were primarily non-exploring ventures. I had plans to do a couple of things back in June but it was too brutally hot to actually want to do anything by that point, so for the first time I ended up not doing any exploring on one of my trips (which I didn't really mind!). Earlier this month however I managed to sneak in a day out with a good friend of mine who, unlike me, has been an exploring machine this year having done over 400 things across a vast array of States.
I had wanted to see this place for years - I've actually had it pinned on my USA map ever since before my first trip over a decade ago - but had never quite been in the right place or there had always been other stuff to see that was more pressing. However I was very happy to finally be able to see it for myself, even if it's a little worse for wear now.
Nowadays, Curtiss-Wright is a well known, large scale manufacturer of aircraft components, however in it's early days it originally manufactured aircraft. The company was formed by the merger of Curtiss Aeroplane & Motor Co. and Wright Aeronautical (of Wright brothers fame), plus a dozen supplier companies, in 1929, immediately becoming the USA's largest aviation company with a headquarters in Buffalo, NY. The company was divided into three divisions - airplanes, engines and propellers. Pre-World War II the company designed and built aircraft for military, commercial and private markets however it was it's engine division and it's longstanding relationship with the US Military which kept the company afloat during the years of the Great Depression. During World War II the company produced 142,840 engines, 146,468 electric propellers, and 29,269 aircraft in total and employed 180,000 workers across all it's sites, ranking second only behind General Motors in terms of wartime production contracts.
After World War II ended Curtiss-Wright failed to make any headway in developing new jet engined planes, which resulted in the company losing out on multiple large orders of military aircraft. The company's final plane, the jet powered XF-87 Blackhawk, was cancelled in October 1948 at the prototype stage and following this, Curtiss-Wright completely shut down their aircraft division, selling the assets to North American Aviation. Subsequently the company moved away from whole aircraft production and diversified into becoming a massive supplier of parts, buying out numerous smaller businesses and to this day is still a huge global player in the industry.
The site at Fairfield, New Jersey was constructed in the early 1940s primarily as an engine manufacturing facility, which included this building to test run propeller-driven engines. Following the war, and the shifting business strategy the factory closed in 1948, and was largely demolished to make way for what is now Essex County Airport, with various other companies finding homes in some of the former buildings. The wind tunnels building was one of them - it housed a string of machining companies for the next few decades, before ending it's days as a simple storage warehouse before becoming derelict at some point in the 1990s.
The building is made up of two wind tunnels on either side, with a large room between them on the ground floor. Upstairs is a control room with viewing ports into the wind tunnels on either side, as well as various other rooms that are impossible to determine the use of now. The upstairs is heavily decayed, and the downstairs has much graffiti following thirty+ years of dereliction. Both apertures in the centres of the tunnels were bricked up following closure and their use by other companies, however one of the tunnels still has the massive concrete plinth and some sort of test cell where the engine would have been mounted in situ behind the wall. The space is vast, it was very difficult to get a sense of scale into the photos but I tried my best in the almost non-existent light inside.
I didn't get any outside photos because 1) the building just looks like a giant box and 2) it was dark by the time we got out.
Thanks for looking
I had wanted to see this place for years - I've actually had it pinned on my USA map ever since before my first trip over a decade ago - but had never quite been in the right place or there had always been other stuff to see that was more pressing. However I was very happy to finally be able to see it for myself, even if it's a little worse for wear now.
Nowadays, Curtiss-Wright is a well known, large scale manufacturer of aircraft components, however in it's early days it originally manufactured aircraft. The company was formed by the merger of Curtiss Aeroplane & Motor Co. and Wright Aeronautical (of Wright brothers fame), plus a dozen supplier companies, in 1929, immediately becoming the USA's largest aviation company with a headquarters in Buffalo, NY. The company was divided into three divisions - airplanes, engines and propellers. Pre-World War II the company designed and built aircraft for military, commercial and private markets however it was it's engine division and it's longstanding relationship with the US Military which kept the company afloat during the years of the Great Depression. During World War II the company produced 142,840 engines, 146,468 electric propellers, and 29,269 aircraft in total and employed 180,000 workers across all it's sites, ranking second only behind General Motors in terms of wartime production contracts.
After World War II ended Curtiss-Wright failed to make any headway in developing new jet engined planes, which resulted in the company losing out on multiple large orders of military aircraft. The company's final plane, the jet powered XF-87 Blackhawk, was cancelled in October 1948 at the prototype stage and following this, Curtiss-Wright completely shut down their aircraft division, selling the assets to North American Aviation. Subsequently the company moved away from whole aircraft production and diversified into becoming a massive supplier of parts, buying out numerous smaller businesses and to this day is still a huge global player in the industry.
The site at Fairfield, New Jersey was constructed in the early 1940s primarily as an engine manufacturing facility, which included this building to test run propeller-driven engines. Following the war, and the shifting business strategy the factory closed in 1948, and was largely demolished to make way for what is now Essex County Airport, with various other companies finding homes in some of the former buildings. The wind tunnels building was one of them - it housed a string of machining companies for the next few decades, before ending it's days as a simple storage warehouse before becoming derelict at some point in the 1990s.
The building is made up of two wind tunnels on either side, with a large room between them on the ground floor. Upstairs is a control room with viewing ports into the wind tunnels on either side, as well as various other rooms that are impossible to determine the use of now. The upstairs is heavily decayed, and the downstairs has much graffiti following thirty+ years of dereliction. Both apertures in the centres of the tunnels were bricked up following closure and their use by other companies, however one of the tunnels still has the massive concrete plinth and some sort of test cell where the engine would have been mounted in situ behind the wall. The space is vast, it was very difficult to get a sense of scale into the photos but I tried my best in the almost non-existent light inside.
I didn't get any outside photos because 1) the building just looks like a giant box and 2) it was dark by the time we got out.
Thanks for looking
