Bell Laboratories - Holmdel

I somehow completely overlooked the former research campus of Bell Labs, known today as Bell Works, on my last visit to the Holmdel, NJ area. I was researching another relic of the company for a blog post, the Holmdel Horn Antenna, when I realized this place was a mere 3 miles down the road. After kicking myself for not stopping in when I was so close by, I made a dedicated trip there while home for Thanksgiving.

To understand the history behind the Bell Labs Holmdel Complex, you first need to know a little background on Bell Labs itself. Founded in 1925 by AT&T and Western Electric, a combined 4,000 engineers from the two companies formed Bell Telephone Laboratories to study communications technology. Different groundbreaking discoveries like CCD technology, residual microwave background radiation (proof of the Big Bang), the Unix operating system, and the C programming language can be attributed to Bell Labs researchers. The research organization changed hands as acquisitions and divestiture took hold in the 1990s, leaving Bell Labs in the hands of Lucent Technologies, Alcatel-Lucent, and finally Nokia.

This complex was left disused in the early 2000s and sold to Somerset Development LLC in 2012 after Nokia Bell Labs consolidated their operations in Murray Hill, NJ. Construction started on the building in 1959 and later expansions totaled 2 million + sq ft of laboratory space. The architect, Eero Saarinen, also designed other notable modernist landmarks like the St. Louis Arch and the Dulles International Terminal in Washington, D.C.

Unlike most historic places I visit which are abandoned and decaying, Bell Works has a new lease on life. Some of the surrounding land has been leveled for housing developments, but the trademark transistor water tower and central office building remain. Inside is a mixed-use development which contains a branch of the county library, co-working spaces, and various eateries open to the public. There was some sort of Christmas party going on when I visited and a 5k run happening outside. Despite the redevelopment, key architectural features of the building remain unaltered - namely the cavernous courtyard covered in skylights which runs the length of the building. All 5 floors open on this courtyard, the scale of which is an incredible sight to behold. If you ever make a visit to Bell Works, try Booskerdoo Coffee & Baking Co. I had a sesame bagel and iced coffee and would happily eat there again.

I came across some traces of the original AT&T Bell Labs research activities while taking a drive around the elliptical perimeter road that rings the central office building. The AT&T Global Product Compliance Laboratory and nearby Ocean Simulation Facility have been repurposed as a landscaping company’s garage. A transistor shaped water tower stands guard near the main entrance on Crawfords Corner Road, paying homage to the Bell Labs researchers who invented the transistor itself back in 1947. While I’m a bit disheartened to see those dreaded Toll Brothers developments encroaching on the sweeping fields of grass that lead into Bell Works, it’s far too often that I find out about a place like this long after it’s been torn down. I’m glad that the township was able to find another use for such an interesting piece of architecture and instituted a redevelopment plan that seems to be working.

1939 & 1964 New York World's Fair

The 1939 and 1964 Worlds Fair found a home in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, situated a short subway ride away from Manhattan on what was then the IRT Flushing line. The park was built atop reclaimed land, similar to what would be done years later in the construction of Freshkills Park on Staten Island. Starting in 1907, coal ash and other street debris from Brooklyn were delivered via rail to the Corona Dump. This material was used to fill in the pre-existing salt marsh that was a haven for mosquitoes during the summer months. While the original plans for the site were to convert the reclaimed land into another Long Island City-esque port, the scarcity of materials brought on by the demands of WWI put those plans on hold. The Parks Department stepped in when the Brooklyn Ash Removal Company’s contract expired in 1933, and the site was selected in 1935 to host the 1939 Worlds Fair.

Flushing Meadows-Corona Park is still one of the largest parks by land area in the New York City Parks system, taking the 4th spot behind Pelham Bay, Green Belt, and Van Cortlandt Park. Worlds Fairs were temporary in nature, and the construction methods used for the various structures that sprung from the ash in 1939 and 1964 largely reflected this. The Trylon and Perisphere, centerpieces of the 1939 Worlds Fair, were built of plaster board. Only two buildings survived the 1939 Worlds Fair - the New York City pavilion (now the Queens Museum), and the Belgium exhibition building (moved by Virginia Union University to Richmond, Virginia). The New York City pavilion was repurposed for the 1969 Worlds Fair and sits behind the Unisphere, the large steel centerpiece that replaced the Perisphere of 1939.

I found myself in a Long Island City hotel back in October with my shiny new Sony RX100VA, wondering what I could shoot before paying a visit to the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria. I’d always planned visit to Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, but it was just so out of the way that I couldn’t justify the trip. Beyond a few obvious landmarks in the park, you have to look closely to find remnants of the Worlds Fairs that were the impetus behind its construction. The New York State pavilion, with it’s towering observation decks overshadowing the pavilion below, still stands where it did in 1964. The brightly colored roof panels that made up the canopy shielding the “Tent of Tomorrow” are long gone, but the entire structure has received a fresh coat of paint within the past few years. The New York City pavilion, bearing a cornerstone dating it to 1939, is now the Queens Museum. The museum also operates the Theaterama, a third component of the New York State pavilion.

I can only imagine how spectacular it must’ve been to see either of these fairs in action, before the proverbial death of the American industrial giants who sponsored it like RCA, Kodak, General Motors, Bell Systems, Westinghouse, and others. While I doubt we’ll ever see another Worlds Fair or similar exhibition of this scale in the United States, I hope that maybe one day Flushing Meadows-Corona Park will once again have the chance to show us a sparkling view of the future as it did in 1939 and 1964.

The Ridges

My relationship with The Ridges, formerly the Athens Lunatic Asylum, began back in 2014 when I was a freshman at Ohio University. It was the start of the 4 years I’d live in Athens while working towards by BBA in Management Information Systems & Analytics at Ohio University. It was a chilly fall night and I was sitting in the lobby of Reed Hall (the same dorm my where my dad lived in 1980) with my friends when I first heard about the place - an abandoned asylum that sat atop a hill overlooking the South Green section of campus. A group of about 15 of us decided to brave the cold October weather and venture out into the night.

A winding road paved with ubiquitous “Athens Block” bricks leads you up to the rear of the asylum, a short walk across the Hocking River from East Green where I lived. Rusted iron fire escapes, tattered curtains slung behind barred windows, and a graveyard with almost 2,000 nondescript burials draped in darkness piqued my interests in history and architecture. I hadn’t yet discovered my love for photography, but The Ridges had me hooked on asylums. I spent lots of time walking laps around the former Kirkbride Plan asylum, mostly at night when I had free time after classes. Looking back on the very first pictures I shot with my D5500, I’m almost glad I never did any serious shooting there. I feel like I’d be disappointed looking back on those photos today. When my dad asked if I’d like to come along for a quick trip to Athens I jumped on the opportunity, excited to finally document the place where you might say it all began - the Athens Lunatic Asylum.

Opened in 1874, the Athens Lunatic Asylum was designed to house a combined total of 572 male and female patients. The campus was expanded over the years with new buildings and housed 1,800 patients at its peak in the 1950s. Ailments of those committed ranged form epilepsy to feebleness and hysteria. Physical labor was considered a form of occupational therapy, and patients helped staff the various agricultural ventures of the asylum. The entire campus was designed to be somewhat self-sustaining in nature, with a dairy barn, farmland, a power and steam plant, a piggery, and orchards. With the introduction of new psychiatric treatments and changes in the way mental illness was treated, the population of patients at the asylum steadily declined until the facility closed in 1993.

The Ridges are a rare case of an asylum finding new life after the deinstitutionalization movement and state governments sapped funding from residential mental health facilities across the country in the 1980s. Ohio University inherited the dilapidated complex of buildings in 1993, which had fallen into disuse as the patient census declined. The main Kirkbride building has been repurposed to host various functions of the university, including the police department and the Kennedy Museum of Art. The West wing, at least from the exterior, appears unused. The spires which dotted the roofline have been removed. A number of outlying buildings, including the receiving hospital, Cottage B, and the tuberculous ward have been demolished. Most later additions like the auditorium and cottages (excluding Cottage M which awaits asbestos remediation) have been remodeled and repurposed, presumably because the cost of renovation was more reasonable than the work needed to bring the Kirkbride building back online.

Over the years, around 2,000 patients were buried across the three cemeteries at The Ridges. Most were given numbered grave markers for which the ledger that contains personal details of those interred is long lost. Similar to Letchworth Village, numbered grave stones were used as a cost saving measure over creating custom marble monuments for the deceased. While The Ridges certainly gave off a creepy atmosphere when I first visited, I became more comfortable there during my many subsequent nighttime visits. I don’t particularly believe or disbelieve in ghosts, but I never saw much at The Ridges to make me think they exist. For me, The Ridges was a place to explore and unwind with a long walk at the end of a tough day. The familiarity of the towering asylum was comforting, almost like visiting an old friend. And I’m glad I made the trip.

Coney Island Cyclone

2400 DPI.jpg

The picture above, if you were unfamiliar with modern day Coney Island, doesn’t look that strange at first glance. There’s a few things that stick out when you take a closer look though: a ride on the Cyclone costs 25¢, there’s a Ford Model A waiting by the curb, and a bus ride costs 50¢. Why? Because this is actually a scan of an 8x10 cellulose negative from the 1930s. I was absentmindedly flipping through the Lelands 2020 Fall Classic auction catalog at my parent’s house in November when I saw this lot tucked away at the end of a larger selection of photographs up for auction. It came from a group of negatives obtained from the Brown Brother’s, the world’s first stock photography agency. There isn’t a specific date associated with the negative but it was probably taken sometime shortly after The Cyclone opened in 1927.

The tagline of my site is “History | Exploration | Photography”, and I don’t think I’d be living up to said tagline if I didn’t try to revisit this shot in the modern age. The Cyclone still towers over Surf Ave some 94 years later, though the area surrounding it has seen better days. The Big Dipper, built in 1921, was torn down in the late 40s and is now a vacant lot. I’m planning a trip to Rockaway Beach to visit the abandoned Fort Tilden this winter, and I’m hoping to stop by Coney Island and recreate this photograph with my own 4x5 camera.

I have to throw in a shoutout to my incredibly awesome dad who won this negative from Leland’s for me as a Christmas present, and I thought I’d share it here for those who appreciate history and photography like I do.

Review | Kentmere 400 vs. Tri-X vs. HP5 Plus

This post was inspired by another I made back in the early days of my website, a post from October 2017 titled Kentmere 400 | Budget B&W Film. Since that time I’ve come a long way with my film development techniques, the capability of my scanning equipment, the digital workflow I use to scan negatives, and my overall knowledge of photography. Looking back on that article I figured it was time for a redo. I loaded up my LowePro 400 AW II with my Nikon F100, 12-24mm f/2.8, 50mm f/1.8, and 85mm f/1.8 one foggy March morning before striking out through the streets of NYC to shoot some film.

GRC_20538.jpg

First, a quick bit about the technical specs behind this comparison. Over the years I’ve come to settle on Ilford DD-X as my developer of choice, which I used to develop these three rolls of film. I do keep a bottle of Rodinal on hand for slower films (Ferrania P30 or Across 100) but DD-X is my go-to for everything else. I started off with HC-110 but found the dilutions impractical for most film I shot. All negatives were scanned on a Nikon D810 with the 60mm f/2.8 AF-S macro lens and a Nikon ES-2 adapter, which is a massive leap forward in quality from the V600 I used when I first started shooting film. Hopefully this will be apparent when you look at the images below, which you can click on to get a closer look.

After digitizing the negatives I import the files into Lightroom, do some basic exposure adjustment, then finish the editing process in Photoshop. All photos were given the same amount of sharpening and then inverted after cleaning up any lingering dust with the spot healing tool. Lastly, I converted the file to 16-bit Grayscale and added a curves layer to set the white/black points in Photoshop. I then used Lightroom for final adjustments and export.

Tri-X 400

Kodak Tri-X 400 is a classic, and was the first film I started shooting with back in college. As of October 2021, Tri-X will run you $9.95 a roll for 36 exposures. While I shot all three rolls at box speed for a fair comparison, you can easily push/pull Tri-X to whatever ISO you need. The same can be said for HP5 Plus.

I personally have a love/hate relationship with Tri-X because no matter what I do, the grain is always hit or miss when scanning. It provides a grittier look than other Kodak films (specifically T-Max 400). Sometimes this grittiness fits your subject - I’ll often choose Tri-X when shooting at former military bases because of the grain alone. The golden rule of film photography is to shoot for the shadows and develop for the highlights, however I’d caution overexposing this film too much. I’ve found that when scanning, especially if you’re using something like an Epson V600, it can be very difficult to recover highlights from Tri-X without throwing off the whole image. Out of all the films I tested, I felt Tri-X had the best balance of contrast overall.

Kentmere 400

Working on a budget? Kentmere 400 is probably the film for you. Clocking in at $5.19 a roll for 36 exposures as of October 2021, this is the lest expensive film I shot for this comparison. I love Kentmete films for when I need to test a camera, lens, etc. because they’re reliable and inexpensive. Kentmere is a low contrast film which leaves you a lot of room to work in the shadows, and turns out great when developed in DD-X. I’ve shot numerous rolls of this film to test repairs I’ve made to my cameras, but not very many on what I’d consider serious work. I just don’t shoot enough film to make the price per roll very relevant, but I think you’d be hard pressed to find a B&W film in this price range that performs this well. I’d also highly recommend Kentmere 100, which I didn’t test here but still make use of quite often.

One word of caution when scanning Kentmere films with flatbed scanners like the Epson V600 or V800 - be very careful with the Unsharp Mask. I actually like to leave this option on when scanning 120, but I think it’s too aggressive for Kentmere and leaves the grain looking chunky. I’d leave the sharpening to Photoshop.

HP5 Plus

At $8.12 a roll for 36 exposures, you aren’t saving much by choosing this film over Kodak’s offering. But HP5 Plus offers something different than Tri-X - stronger contrast and what I think is less pronounced grain, especially in the skies. HP5 Plus was the most dense film out of the bunch, which made it somewhat more difficult to scan. I don’t think this had anything to do with overexposure since my F100 is usually pretty consistent in matrix metering mode. I’d probably let it sit in the developer a little longer next time.Regardless of the negative density, the results speak for themself - just look at the detail in the chrome of the motorcycle pictured below.

The Verdict

So what does this mean to you as a photographer? If you need a budget film, Kentmere is your best choice. Otherwise I’d say it’s a tossup between Kodak Tri-X and Ilford HP5 Plus. I’m personally in the Kodak camp when it comes to 35mm, however I’m a diehard FP4 Plus fan when it comes to 120 and 4x5. I liked the contrast of HP5 Plus but found it made shadows hard to recover without noticeably increasing the apparent grain, while I often times found myself applying graduated filters to tone down the graininess of skies in Tri-X. I think I spent less time editing my Tri-X shots in Lightroom after applying a basic curve in Photoshop, but I wouldn’t say that’s a good indication of film performance. Both films are a solid choice - try both and see which you like better! There’s never a bad time to go out and shoot some film.

Brooklyn Army Terminal

GRC_20623-Edit.jpg

The Brooklyn Army Terminal comprises a network of warehouses, administration buildings, piers, and railroad tracks which occupy the shores of Sunset Park, Brooklyn. What began life in 1918 as a supply base exists today as a shell of its former self, sparsely occupied by various industrial tenants. Construction of the terminal was authorized during WWI but was not completed until after the war had ended. Swinging into action for WWII, the Brooklyn Army Terminal was a crucial facility supporting the New York port of embarkation. Locations such as “AFRICA, ODD COUNTRIES” and “PORTUGAL” are stenciled on the concrete pillars of Building B, just some of the destinations where men or material might be dispatched.

Millions of soldiers passed through the terminal on their way to various theaters of war during WWII. After the terminal was vacated by the military in 1975, logistical operations were moved to the now-defunct Military Ocean Terminal in Bayonne, NJ. A unique feature of Building B is the gantry crane and small concrete balconies arranged in neat diagonals on the interior courtyard’s walls. Freight would enter the warehouse via rail and be offloaded directly by the gantry crane, which would deposit the delivery on the appropriate concrete balcony a number of floors up.

My visit to the terminal was eerily quiet. Building B is a gargantuan warehouse with overgrown railroad tracks, rusting equipment, and little activity. I had to keep my eye on my camera’s meter to make sure I didn’t loose shadow detail as the skylight overpowered the scene, flooding the interior of Building B with light. Looking at my negatives, there’s clear definition between the highlights of the skylight and the shadows of the courtyard. One thing that amazes me about film is the ability to recover highlights – when shooting digital, you meter for the highlights and recover the shadows in post. In this case film was not only the best choice in terms of technical medium for the subject, but also fit the overall narrative of the history surrounding the Brooklyn Army Terminal.

GRC_21469-Edit.jpg