Hidden Hometown

The Castle on the Hudson

2010-01-27T10:13:00.004-05:00

In January 2010, portions of Bannerman's Castle collapsed during a winter storm. This video is one of the last clips of the partially-intact castle available. Have a look.

Silos of New York

2009-08-29T21:28:00.011-04:00

In the early 1960s, Cold War fever was sweeping across America. Yuri Gagarin had gone to space, missiles were rolling into Cuba and in the halls of power, there was the growing fear that the dominoes would soon fall.

Around this time, the US began constructing missile silos around the country to counter the burgeoning Soviet threat. Among these silos were the “Atlas F,” the sixth iteration of the Atlas ICBM. The Atlas F silos reached 174 feet underground with a 1,500-ton launch platform designed to carry an 85-foot missile. Connected to the silos via a 15-foot tunnel was the Launch Control Center (LCC). It was here that the crews lived and worked and here that, should the call have ever come, they would carry out the task of launching a nuclear missile.

Most of the Atlas F sites were located in the Midwest, but 12 were constructed in the Northeast, forming a sort of protective ring around Plattsburgh Air Force base.

Dogged by technical problems, many of these silos were taken off alert and fully decommissioned within a few years. Following their closure, most of them were sold of to salvagers and left to decay.

That probably would have been the end of the story had people like Alexander Michael not intervened.

An industrial architect and interior designer from Australia, Michael was inspired to purchase a silo after hearing of someone in Kansas who’d been living in one. A short time later, he got word that Site 5 of the 556th Strategic Missile Squadron in Lewis, NY was up for sale and he jumped at the chance.

Twelve years on, the renovation of the silo continues. The Launch Control Center has been completely refurbished, but work on the silo itself has only just begun.

In July, Alex was gracious enough to let us tour his underground home. This is what we found…

Michael is just one of the many silo enthusiasts who have purchased these crumbling giants of the nuclear age and begun to restore them. Though the mission today is a far different one, there is life inside the Atlas silos again, and its new residents are helping to ensure that their stories, and their legacy, will not be forgotten.

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Many thanks to Alexander Michael for his allowing us total access to his home. To learn more about the continued renovations at Site 5, head over to www.siloboy.com.

Thanks also to Gary at www.siloworld.com and David at www.atlasmissilesilo.com for the incredible archival photos seen in the video. Head over to their sites to learn everything there is to know about the Atlas Missile program!

The Harlem Valley Psychiatric Center

2009-07-15T21:11:00.020-04:00

If you’ve driven up Route 22 into Wingdale, or gotten off at the Harlem Valley-Wingdale train station, you’ve seen this place. It’s a massive conglomeration of buildings scattered through the hills looking empty, forlorn and utterly eerie. But up until just 15 years ago, the Harlem Valley Psychiatric Center was a premiere treatment facility for the state’s mentally ill.

For an afternoon, we were allowed on the grounds to shoot what was left of this once thriving state hospital. As you can see, what we found was eye-opening to say the least. This is the ONLY authorized video shot inside the facility that you will find on the internet.

Opened in 1924, the Psychiatric Center quickly grew from a new facility housing just 24 patients to a fully functional community of its own. They grew their own crops, slaughtered their own beef and basically ran their operations entirely independently. They even had their own baseball field, where, during the 1950s, patients played as part of an intramural league.

The baseball field during Harlem Valley's heyday.

The field as it looks today.

Meat lockers inside the main hospital's gigantic kitchen.

For a time, Harlem Valley was also on the cutting edge of psychiatric treatment. During the 1930s, insulin shock treatments were conducted there, with physicians traveling from all over the country and from Canada to receive instruction on administration. As World War II dawned, the hospital was already conducting electric shock treatment and, by the 50s they had begun instituting lobotomies (though the drastic procedure was done rarely).

As the decades wore on, the Psychiatric Center continued to serve the community until budget restraints forced it to close down. On January 31, 1994, the flag was lowered and the hospital closed its doors forever.

This was an "ice cream shop" that was part of the recreational facilities inside the Hospital.

The kitchen area, now a total ruin.

Now, coming up on two decades since its closure, the hospital may get a second lease on life, with the Knolls of Dover project well underway. A radical revamping of the shambling Psychiatric Center, the Knolls project will turn the facility into a series of homes, including a Golf community and a Village Center with the potential to bring in more than $11 million in new property tax revenue.

Smith Hall, where patients would watch movies and various other performances.

Projector oil. Has this can lain undisturbed for 15 years?

Looking back at the auditorium from the stage.

The Nurse's Station. Note the small doors beneath the middle window. This is where medications were dispensed to the patients.

The future of the Harlem Valley is, as of this writing, still up in the air. But for now, its past remains standing silent amongst the hills, the voices of those who spent their days there still echoing in its empty hallways.

Mining the Past in Putnam County, NY

2009-06-04T15:56:00.006-04:00

Unbeknownst to many of its residents, Putnam is home to a host of elaborate iron mines, which snake their way under the streets of towns, behind homes and through the mountains that surround the region. This vast subterranean world passes unseen and unheralded beneath the busy, bustling feet of the county, forgotten to everyone but a few. Many of these mines were excavated during the 19th century and were incredibly successful. The Croton Magnetic Mine, which runs along Magnetic Mine road in Croton Falls, produced over 100,000 tons of ore during its lifespan, while the Tilly Foster Mine, the area’s most prosperous mine, hauled out an average of 1,000 tons per month.

Mining in Putnam was a key industry. The ore hauled from the Sunk Mine, located in Fhanestock State Park, was reportedly used to make Civil War cannons at West Point. As the century drew to a close, many of the mines had outlived their usefulness and were closed off. In 1897, after the Middle Branch Reservoir began to flood the open pit, the Tilly Foster mine was closed and completely filled in with water. During World War II, the mine was actually used by soldiers who tested their diving equipment there.

Today, these mines lie forgotten and ignored, some remarkably intact, with many artifacts from the era of their heyday just waiting to be rediscovered. It’s here where Mike Hetman and his fellow researchers from IronMiners.com enter the story.

Hetman has been exploring mines for a number of years and documented them extensively on the website. He feels that documenting the mines will help bring history to life for residents who may be unaware of what happened right in their own backyards. “A lot of textbook history is just kind of, ‘this side won, this side lost,’” he said. “But when it’s that local and it happened right here, in some cases, this history happened right beneath the first floor of your house, it connects better. I’ve walked through environments where the miners would have heard the same echoes that I’ve heard. I’ve walked through mines using the same lighting on my head that the miners would have had, and that way you can connect with what that life might have been like.”

The mines of Putnam County have been largely ignored over the years, and as a result many are simply waiting for the developer’s axe to fall. For example, the Croton Magnetic Mine, a very intact mining site, was recently filled and sealed off, burying all of the history there and entombing the bats that had taken up residence there. “This was one of the most intact historical mining operations in the New York Highlands,” lamented Hetman. “The interior of the mine contained an immense tunnel with trackage, a few thousand feet in length that connected with side tunnels branching off to the left and right. The mine could have easily made an incredible educational tour mine had the right people known about it with the dedication capital to run it.”

Visiting a mine with the team from Iron Miners is like undergoing a military operation. Even before a mine site is visited, the team is researching maps and historical documents in order to better place the mine in a historical context. At the site itself, the explorers work quickly and efficiently, rappelling down into the tunnels and then setting up equipment to better document the site. Using everything from electric lamps to high-powered lights to illuminate the tunnels, the Iron Miners try and capture as much of the area as possible on film. As they explore, sometimes wading through water, skittering along steep inclines or navigating through centuries-old wreckage, amazing discoveries are revealed. Hetman recalled one adventure in Putnam inside a mine that had not been explored since before World War II. “Inside, the mine was left just as it had looked 70 or more years ago,” he said. “A miner’s axe was found just where a miner had likely last placed it.”

The fate of Putnam’s mines is still precarious, but Hetman hopes that by raising greater awareness, a turning point could be at hand. “These mines have stories untold, lost memories, and are a part of our industrial archeology,” he said. “They are not only a symbol of our heritage but are windows into understanding our past."

For more information visit www.ironminers.com

All photos courtesy of Mike Hetman and Ironminers.com