It's over 92 years of industrial history that ended in 2004 when the Spexel factory was closed down. The story of this plant start in 1912 when is built the paper mill, which took the name of Howard Smith Paper Mill. Over the following years, the...
The plant itself is definitively not as great at we saw in other places. Located in the heart of Pointe-Saint-Charles neighborhood of Montreal, this two storey building has no longer the cachet of its heyday. While neighboring buildings are gradually revamped to accommodate them new condo owners, nothing seems to have changed over here. Nature has reasserted itself in the courtyard with all these trees, aged of dozen years old.
This factory was creating billboards of any kind (for sale, do not enter, etc). By entering, we find on the floor an old mattress surrounded by waste. As we approach a bit, we discover that beyond the old Doritos and Ruffles bags, there was syringes and condoms. Junkie's shelter probably.
A junkie poet, I must specify. On the walls, we discover parts of William Blake's poems, an English painter and poet of the nineteenth century. Jim Morrison of the Doors, has also chosen the name of his band by refering to a quotation from Blake's poem "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell": "If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite".
On the ground floor, it is rather a verse from a song by Keny Arkana adorning the wall to the right of the entrance: "We want billions who are trying to turn the wheel in the opposite direction. (On est des milliards à vouloir faire tourner la roue dans l'autre sens)"
Also here are some other verses (in french) who can be found on the walls here and there:
It's over 92 years of industrial history that ended in 2004 when the Spexel factory was closed down. The story of this plant start in 1912 when is built the paper mill, which took the name of Howard Smith Paper Mill. Over the following years, the...
More than a century of expertise in the construction of mega steel structure that represents hundreds of projects from coast to coast. The company's story began in 1879 in Toronto, where a group of businessmen sniff a bargain following the...
Located in Gloversville near Albany NY, this abandoned factory is ready to crumble. Before 1870, Gloversville was a small village called Stump City. When it became an incorporated village in 1853, the name was changed to Gloversville due to the...
For the region, it is a vestige of an industrial era that is now over. Whereas in the past, the factory gave a salary to nearly a hundred employees, the complex is now padlocked and deserted, although monitored by about twenty surveillance...