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Former Meriden Medical Center Office

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The long-vacant medical office building at 116 Cook Avenue is finally gone. In its place, city leaders want to build a combined senior center and health department campus that would replace the aging senior center on West Main Street and the leaking Health and Human Services office on Miller Street. It is a big swing at a stubborn problem, and it comes with a price tag and a timeline that have sparked fresh debate. The city bought the Cook Avenue property in 2009 for $700,000. It secured $2 million for demolition, and the City Council approved $25 million in bonds to build the new center, which is slated to open in 2027. With the old building demolished, officials say the site is shovel-ready and more attractive for state funding. There is one wrinkle. The property sits in the city’s flood plain. That issue has been less of a concern during planning because of the Harbor Brook flood control project. But delays with that work have stretched the timeline and reopened a practical question...
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Former Meriden Castle Bank & Trust Company

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In the shadow of the Hanover and Harbor Towers, a two-story brick building stood for more than a century. Built in 1910, it watched Meriden rise, fall, and try again. The address changed with the times, and those changes tell the city’s story in miniature. On April 12, 1999, the doors opened as Castle Bank and Trust, an FDIC-insured community bank. For 10 years, it handled paychecks, mortgages, and savings accounts for people who lived a short walk away. On August 8, 2009, the bank merged with Naugatuck Savings Bank. Within four years, the brand shifted to Ion Bank, part of a wave of name changes and mergers across small-town banking. After the last deposit slip was filed, the building kept working. Visiting Nurse Services Inc. of Southern Connecticut moved in. A local campaign set up its headquarters there during the election season. Then a church, Elohim Casa De Dios, turned the space into a place of worship. The floors and walls absorbed a lot of everyday life. The city era came ne...
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Location: 100 Hanover St, Meriden, CT 06451, USA
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The Miller Corset Factory

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Photo Courtesy of 43 North Real Estate The story of this site begins with a simple set of numbers. It covers 1.63 acres. At its center stands a four-story, 80,000 square foot building. Around it sit a parking lot, two driveways, and a small strip of grass along the north side. To anyone driving by, it might look like an ordinary old industrial property, the kind you see in many towns. What you cannot see from the street is the long environmental story written into the ground beneath it. For years, this property was used in ways that left behind more than just history. It became a brownfield, a place where past industrial activity left pollution in the soil and groundwater. Today, the land has undergone a cleanup, focused on two serious “hot spots” of contamination tied to a chemical called trichloroethene, or TCE. TCE is a common industrial solvent. It is often used to remove grease from metal parts, a routine step in many factories and repair shops. The problem starts when TCE is spil...
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Location: 10 Chapin St, Canandaigua, NY 14424, USA
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Henry Gordy International

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Photo courtesy of LoopNet.com This marks the start of a new series I am calling “The Forgotten Ledger.” Think of it as a record of places that slipped through my fingers. These are the mills and foundries that came down before I could photograph them, the churches and farmhouses that vanished behind fences and “No Trespassing” signs, the offices, barns, factories, and odd little buildings that were gone before I had the chance to step inside. Over the years, I have built a long list of locations I meant to visit. Some were already abandoned and waiting. Others were still hanging on by a thread. Many of them are gone now. Demolished. Redesigned. Paved over. Erased from the map but not quite erased from memory. “The Forgotten Ledger” is where I go back to those missed chances. Each entry in this series will be a brief look at one of these places. You might see old notes, rough research, scraps of history, half-finished maps, or a single blurry photo taken from the road. Sometimes all tha...
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Location: 768-900 North Ave, Plainfield, NJ 07062, USA
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Warner Brothers Company (Warnaco)

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The news arrived as it so often does: mundanely, in a Google Alert buried between spam and a newsletter. Eight days ago, the demolition of the former Warnaco Clothing Factory in Bridgeport began. For most people, this was a long-overdue end to a local eyesore. For me, it was a missed appointment, and I felt that familiar, frustrating pinch of an explorer beaten by the clock. I was supposed to go back. I had even bookmarked a YouTube video that allegedly revealed a secluded entrance into the main, larger building. My chance was gone. My first and only visit had been a tense reconnaissance. The place was a beautiful monster. I remember the floors feeling less like a structure and more like a damp suggestion. They were soft, spongy with rot, and every step was a careful calculation. Openings in the floorboards gaped wide enough to swallow a car, let alone a person. The air was thick with that specific perfume of urban decay: damp wood, swirling dust, and dark corners. There was a rumor th...
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Location: 330 Myrtle Ave, Bridgeport, CT 06604, USA
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