Item #3112 Photo Album Documenting the Construction of a Gas Plant in the Bronx.
Photo Album Documenting the Construction of a Gas Plant in the Bronx.
Photo Album Documenting the Construction of a Gas Plant in the Bronx.
Photo Album Documenting the Construction of a Gas Plant in the Bronx.
Photo Album Documenting the Construction of a Gas Plant in the Bronx.
Photo Album Documenting the Construction of a Gas Plant in the Bronx.
Photo Album Documenting the Construction of a Gas Plant in the Bronx.
Photo Album Documenting the Construction of a Gas Plant in the Bronx.
Photo Album Documenting the Construction of a Gas Plant in the Bronx.
Photo Album Documenting the Construction of a Gas Plant in the Bronx.
Photo Album Documenting the Construction of a Gas Plant in the Bronx.
Photo Album Documenting the Construction of a Gas Plant in the Bronx.
Photo Album Documenting the Construction of a Gas Plant in the Bronx.
Photo Album Documenting the Construction of a Gas Plant in the Bronx.

Photo Album Documenting the Construction of a Gas Plant in the Bronx.

Hunt's Point, Bronx, New York: 1925-1927. 7¼” x 11¾”. String tied faux leather over card. 62 pages with 210 black and white photographs adhesive mounted. Most photos measure 2¾” x 4¾” and nearly all are captioned. Album good due to lacking rear cover, a front cover with heavy wear and some loss and a new string tie; leaves with a hint of waviness, otherwise internally near fine or better with approximately one quarter of the photos with varying degrees of fading.

This is an album filled with page after page of captivating construction photos, documenting the building of a gas plant in the Bronx. The work was done by Baltimore's Bartlett Hayward Company for New York's Consolidated Gas Company, which is now Con Edison. The plant converted coal into coal gas and coke first by pulverizing it and then baking it for 13 hours at 1100 degrees centigrade. The coke was then cooled at the water tower. The plant also recovered naptha, ammonia and ammonium sulfate and produced water gas. An eight minute film of the operations of the plant shot not long after it opened it is available online.
The album is devoted entirely to the construction of the plant. We see men teetering on steel beams and working in brickyards as they assembled purifiers as well as the erection of a dock crane. There's a magnificent two page spread of cranes moving completed generators into their housing and at least three two-photo panoramas. Several images show workers pouring concrete down wooden chutes as part of building a generator house, others show excavations and trench digging for the laying of gas mains. A few show the construction of a tunnel, others depict the building of coke ovens and a series shows the building of a salt water pump house. Still more show pile drivers, boilers, quenching stations, oven batteries and other intricacies of the project. There are also a number of birdseye and far away views showing wide swaths of the construction area with spewing smokestacks and occasional glimpses of skyline.

Exceptional industrial photography reminiscent of the era's iconic photographers. Item #3112

Price: $1,500.00