Georgetown

Gilbert & Bennett Wire Manufacturing Company Headquarters - Georgetown, Connecticut
Built: 1850-1960 - Operational: until 1989 - Selective dismantling: 2006-2007


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Invited to Georgetown in the fall of 2006, I began documentating the slow motion process of asbestos abatement and brownfield cleanup from nearly two centuries of industrial manufacturing.  



The process yielded a range of imagery from the site’s original state, through the eerie white corridors formed by the abatement containment, to the fallen debris fields where materials were sorted for recycling.

 

 



I retraced my paths many times over as passageways opened, rerouted, closed, then cleared again, illuminating weathered brick walls that spent decades in darkness.

 

 

 

 

The Great Pond at the mouth of Connecticut's Norwalk River provided turbine water power and the setting for the Gilbert & Bennett Wire Manufacturing Company, a growing company that had already introduced many innovations, from horsehair sieves in 1818 to insect wire screening during the Civil War.

 


Best known for its chicken wire and window screen products, the company sold the Georgetown facility in 1989 where it sat, largely abandoned until 2002.

 

 

 


Most of the early buildings had been destroyed in fires, but at the time of redevelopment, no less than thirteen turn-of-the-century buildings had been preserved, many obscured by massive steel warehouses and connecting roofing that were added in the 1960’s to expand operations.

 

 

 


The founders and their families promoted a high standard of values as a community was built around the wire mill.  A church, school, post office, farm, group life insurance plans and favorable home loans all contributed to this unique community; a tradition that Georgetown Land Development Company attempted to carry into the 21st century with plans to reinvent the village spirit as a sustainable development that would have included neighborhoods, a hospital, performing arts center and train station.  

 




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All images and text © 2005-2013 Eric P. Laverty except where noted