The Watts-Campbell Factory by Jeremy Blakeslee, Best Made Guide to Urban Archaeology Part 2

Charles Watts grew up in this factory — it’s been in his family for generations. He’s a WWII veteran who piloted B-25 Bombers in China (where he left the name Charles behind and now goes by Chad) and came back to run Watts–Campbell well past retirement age. This man is not a dreamer: Chad Watts is a practical, hands-on guy who has already started properly preparing these items for relocation. He’s the type of guy who refuses to sit by and watch our history fall apart and so he’s putting his heart and all his other available resources into it. Unfortunately, he can’t do it alone.

Places like this are very hard to come by. It’s important to preserve these historical sites so that we may learn from them for the years to come. In a country that invented the automobile and the airplane, and the first mass-produced structural steel elements, things have changed quite a lot. This site is even more important than most; the steady march of time is closing down on a significant collection of artifacts in a site that has unique significance to our country’s industrial revolution.

There is often not much I can do to save a historic industrial site so I look to what I can do, which is create photographic records of these places before they are gone, a premise that underlies why I believe urban archaeology is so important. Anyone can do it with a camera, a love of history, and a sense of adventure tempered with good sense.

Site:
Watts-Campbell Company in Newark, NJ (stationary steam engine manufacturing)

Gestation and Permission Status:
Three years from first discovery through conversations and shoot coordination. Guided access granted late November, 2010.

Landscape:
Urban and commercial/industrial.

Gear:
Hasselblad 501 Medium format camera
120mm macro lens
60mm wide angle lens
Hasselblad 903 Superwide Camera, fixed 38mm lens
Incident Meter
Tripod
120mm film

—Jeremy Blakeslee

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