a happy surprise
Updated 2015 | By Matthew Christopher
My first visit to the Rosenau Bros. Clothing Factory was a bit of a fluke. A gallery owner I knew was looking at abandoned property owners in the region to expand her rental/gallery business to and invited me along because of my interest in the subject.
The first few properties we visited were very dull. We visited two mill buildings that were completely empty, a school that was barren of any real subjects to photograph, a small church, and a few other places that will likely never make it onto this site for lack of anything photogenic. I was a little bored and disappointed by the time I visited the clothing factory.
What shocked me when the owner let us in was how perfectly untouched the entire site was. A lot of people talk about locations looking like the people there just left, but the reality is that often property owners, urban explorers, vandals, scrappers, and so on all move things, take things, and in general change the way a site is. Finding a place that has simply been closed off and left unmolested for 20 years almost never happens. But Rosenau Bros. Clothing Factory was that site. Aside from the pigeon droppings and general decay, the factory was just as it was on the day it closed. Dozens of sewing machines were connected by yards and yards of yarn and thread, and employees' workstations were still covered with pictures and other random tchotchkes. It was very likely that the owners had closed the factory over the weekend with no prior notice to the workers, and that nobody was able to come back in to retrieve their things. The first floor had been moved around quite a bit for the current owner's storage, and the top floor had been stripped of many of the machines, but the second floor was mint.
I quickly made arrangements to revisit the factory as we were running short on time. I knew that this site was a once-in-a-lifetime find, that I needed to return quickly. I did return later that same month and spent an entire day trying to get as much done as i could. It was a great experience, and Rosenau Bros. remains one of my favorite places.
The factory still stands, but when I returned two years later with a friend I knew I could trust never to reveal its whereabouts and whom I owed a favor to, I made an unfortunate discovery. The owner had decided to scrap the vintage sewing machines (which probably would have been worth much more as well-preserved antiques). He had hired someone to help him, and piled them in the middle of the second floor. At that point the other worker bailed and the price of scrap crashed, so while technically the machinery was still there, the magical feeling of walking into an undisturbed tomb was completely gone and had been replaced with a mangled heap of disappointment. It was a bitter pill for me to swallow, but there was little that could be done about it. I don't think I'll ever visit the factory again, partly because there is very little left there to shoot now (it is nearly as bereft of features as the other mills I visited the first day I went there), and because I want to remember it was it was - one of the happiest surprises of my photography career, and one of the trips I think back to when I am discouraged to remind myself why I do what I do.
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My first visit to the Rosenau Bros. Clothing Factory was a bit of a fluke. A gallery owner I knew was looking at abandoned property owners in the region to expand her rental/gallery business to and invited me along because of my interest in the subject.
The first few properties we visited were very dull. We visited two mill buildings that were completely empty, a school that was barren of any real subjects to photograph, a small church, and a few other places that will likely never make it onto this site for lack of anything photogenic. I was a little bored and disappointed by the time I visited the clothing factory.
What shocked me when the owner let us in was how perfectly untouched the entire site was. A lot of people talk about locations looking like the people there just left, but the reality is that often property owners, urban explorers, vandals, scrappers, and so on all move things, take things, and in general change the way a site is. Finding a place that has simply been closed off and left unmolested for 20 years almost never happens. But Rosenau Bros. Clothing Factory was that site. Aside from the pigeon droppings and general decay, the factory was just as it was on the day it closed. Dozens of sewing machines were connected by yards and yards of yarn and thread, and employees' workstations were still covered with pictures and other random tchotchkes. It was very likely that the owners had closed the factory over the weekend with no prior notice to the workers, and that nobody was able to come back in to retrieve their things. The first floor had been moved around quite a bit for the current owner's storage, and the top floor had been stripped of many of the machines, but the second floor was mint.
I quickly made arrangements to revisit the factory as we were running short on time. I knew that this site was a once-in-a-lifetime find, that I needed to return quickly. I did return later that same month and spent an entire day trying to get as much done as i could. It was a great experience, and Rosenau Bros. remains one of my favorite places.
The factory still stands, but when I returned two years later with a friend I knew I could trust never to reveal its whereabouts and whom I owed a favor to, I made an unfortunate discovery. The owner had decided to scrap the vintage sewing machines (which probably would have been worth much more as well-preserved antiques). He had hired someone to help him, and piled them in the middle of the second floor. At that point the other worker bailed and the price of scrap crashed, so while technically the machinery was still there, the magical feeling of walking into an undisturbed tomb was completely gone and had been replaced with a mangled heap of disappointment. It was a bitter pill for me to swallow, but there was little that could be done about it. I don't think I'll ever visit the factory again, partly because there is very little left there to shoot now (it is nearly as bereft of features as the other mills I visited the first day I went there), and because I want to remember it was it was - one of the happiest surprises of my photography career, and one of the trips I think back to when I am discouraged to remind myself why I do what I do.
Rosenau Bros. Clothing Factory is a chapter in my book, Abandoned America: Age of Consequences.
Buy a signed copy via this link or get it on Amazon using the link below to read more!
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