STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. - Buildings on the sprawling site in New Brighton that once housed the U.S. Gypsum Plant continue to come down.
I visited the site a number of times while some recent demolition was going on.
Each visit revealed a new vista of destruction amid ever-increasing piles of discarded industrial debris and gigantic machine parts.
Tom Wrobleski | wrobleski@siadvance.com
The best approach to the site was down Bank Street.
Tom Wrobleski | wrobleski@siadvance.com
I visited over a period of months last spring and summer, checking on the progress of the demolition.
Tom Wrobleski | wrobleski@siadvance.com
Looks kind of like a face, right?
Tom Wrobleski | wrobleski@siadvance.com
According to Beryl A. Thurman's study, "Staten Island's Gold Coast 5.2 Miles From St. George to Arlington, this area of New Brighton was open beachfront in the early 1800s.
The building that we know as the U.S. Gypsum Plant was the J.B. King Company's Windsor Plaster Mill Co. from 1898 to 1917. It was built in 1895.
Here's what the building looked like back then.
Tom Wrobleski | wrobleski@siadvance.com
As the site was incrementally cleaned out during the demolition, I was able to get a better view of things.
Tom Wrobleski | wrobleski@siadvance.com
Including this immense piece of machinery. Maybe some kind of industrial shaft? Just guessing.
Tom Wrobleski | wrobleski@siadvance.com
Whatever it is, it's mammoth.
Tom Wrobleski | wrobleski@siadvance.com
That red-while-and-blue tarp in the background is the salt mound at the Atlantic Salt Co., which has owned the 9.1-acre site for more than 40 years. The company has incrementally been demolishing structures on the site over the years.
Tom Wrobleski | wrobleski@siadvance.com
Another titanic piece of industrial debris.
Tom Wrobleski | wrobleski@siadvance.com
There's that distinctive smokestack that we've all seen so many times driving down Richmond Terrace.
This 2002 shot shows the familiar view when driving down Richmond Terrace toward the Staten Island Ferry.
Tom Wrobleski | wrobleski@siadvance.com
The U.S. Gypsum Co. of Chicago bought the site in 1924, and the gypsum plant quickly became one of the biggest employers on Staten Island, with 400 people working in the plant at one point.
Tom Wrobleski | wrobleski@siadvance.com
How does one go about disposing of stuff like this? Is it sold for scrap? Re-purposed somehow?
Tom Wrobleski | wrobleski@siadvance.com
Writing in the Staten Island Advance, in 2013, James Ferreri described how "Gypsum is a type of rock mined in Nova Scotia that was crushed and pulverized before being marketed as gypsum wallboard, cement, plaster, drywall, paste paint and other fireproofing materials."
Photo courtesy of NYC Municipal Archives
The plant was served by this Baltimore and Ohio Railroad line running behind the building. This shot is from sometime in the 1940s.
Tom Wrobleski | wrobleski@siadvance.com
A different view some eight decades later.
Tom Wrobleski | wrobleski@siadvance.com
The factory was fitted with additional equipment for the manufacturing of partition tile in 1933 and paste paint products in 1936, which helped make it one of the country's leading manufacturers of building materials.
Tom Wrobleski | wrobleski@siadvance.com
Ferreri wrote: "Chances are, if you bought a new house on Staten Island from the end of World War II through the mid-1970s, it was erected with materials manufactured at the U.S. Gypsum Company plant in NewBrighton."
The bustling plant was so successful that a conveyor belt, seen in this vintage shot, was built so that product could be stored across the street from the manufacturing plant.
This 1972 aerial shot shows just how massing the U.S. Gypsum complex was.
Tom Wrobleski | wrobleski@siadvance.com
But there was a downside: Asbestos was also used in the manufacture of U.S. Gypsum products, and some workers later claimed to have contracted asbestos-related cancers and other diseases as a result of their work here, as well as at other Island industries.
This photo from the 1930s or 1940s shows just how close homes were to the manufacturing plant.
Tom Wrobleski | wrobleski@siadvance.com
In 2002, Advance reporter Diana Yates wrote that a warehouse building on the site was demolished. While neighbors feared that they were exposed to asbestos dust during the demolition, the building had been cleared of asbestos two years earlier.
Here's a shot of that 2002 demolition underway.
It makes for a lot of debris.
Our photog, Rob Sollett, had to shoot this shot of the 2002 demolition through a chainlink fence.
Tom Wrobleski | wrobleski@siadvance.com
In 2002, Joseph Casey, a manager overseeing demolition operations at the site, said that it would cost $10 million to tear down all the properties on the site, and that Atlantic Salt wanted to do the demolition "a little bit at a time."
Tom Wrobleski | wrobleski@siadvance.com
A warning during the recent demolition.
Tom Wrobleski | wrobleski@siadvance.com
Tom Wrobleski | wrobleski@siadvance.com
This truck was on site to help manage any dust kicked up by the most recent demolition.
Tom Wrobleski | wrobleski@siadvance.com
Water was also sprayed to help keep any dust from becoming airborne.
Tom Wrobleski | wrobleski@siadvance.com
According to Advance records, several cylindrical silos on the site were torn down in the early 1990s, Yates reported, and devastating fires in 1965 and 1991 took out two other structures.
This photo from 1989 shows how the gypsum plant buildings had decayed over the years.
The place looked even more hollowed-out by 1999, when this photo was taken.
It looked much sleeker back in the day.
Tom Wrobleski | wrobleski@siadvance.com
You could see the broken edges of this building from the sidewalk on Richmond Terrace.
Tom Wrobleski | wrobleski@siadvance.com
But the area was pretty solidly fenced off, so I couldn't take any pictures from up on the street.
Tom Wrobleski | wrobleski@siadvance.com
Having made the decision to close the New Brighton plant in 1976, Ferreri wrote, the company's Staten Island employees were given the chance to relocate to other U.S. Gypsum plants located in New Jersey in Jersey City, Kearny, South Plainfield and Clark.
Here's a shot of the plant from April, 1976, about three months before the company ceased Island operations for good. Atlantic Salt bought the property in 1977.
Tom Wrobleski | wrobleski@siadvance.com
The place actually cleans up pretty good.
Tom Wrobleski | wrobleski@siadvance.com
Here's what the site looked like when I visited the other day.
While we're in the neighborhood, can we talk about that building on the right on Bank Street?
Tom Wrobleski | wrobleski@siadvance.com
Pretty nondescript, but look at those high-tech surveillance cameras by the door.
Tom Wrobleski | wrobleski@siadvance.com
And look up on the roof. A lot of antenna and camera hardware up there.
Tom Wrobleski | wrobleski@siadvance.com
Just what are those eyes in the sky looking at?
Tom Wrobleski | wrobleski@siadvance.com
And look here, on the other side of the buidling.
Tom Wrobleski | wrobleski@siadvance.com
Protected by chainlink screening and barbed wire. What the heck is that?
Tom Wrobleski | wrobleski@siadvance.com
Just who's in that building?
Tom Wrobleski | wrobleski@siadvance.com
And here in the building parking lot...
Tom Wrobleski | wrobleski@siadvance.com
...an old trailer from Weis Markets, the supermarket company. The store closest to Staten Island appears to be in Hillsborough, N.J. Wonder if they know their missing trailer is here?
Tom Wrobleski | wrobleski@siadvance.com
Speaking of odd stuff on Bank Street.
Tom Wrobleski | wrobleski@siadvance.com
Check out my slideshow about this strange abandoned office structure that's at the other end of the street from the demolition site.
Tom Wrobleski | wrobleski@siadvance.com
Go down a little farther, toward the Staten Island Ferry, and you'll find some history: Mounds of dirt dug out to create the New York Wheel site. Pretty much all that's left of the now-defunct project.
Tom Wrobleski | wrobleski@siadvance.com
A final shot of the iconic smokestack, also festooned with that looks like cellphone hardware.
Tom Wrobleski | wrobleski@siadvance.com
Another iconic Island name continues to pass into history.
This your first trip to Staten Odd-land?
Check out this recent photo essay, featuring an eerie vacant funeral home, and a strange shack on the North Shore waterfront.
It also has shots of the old Taco Bell restaurant in Tompkinsville, which sits on land where the city wants to build a homeless shelter.
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