Last whale oil factory in U.S. gutted to the walls
[Update: Stay tuned for an article about this in The Boston Globe!]
The country’s last remaining example of a whale oil processing works* is now gutted in New Bedford, a city that touts itself as a historic whaling port tourist destination. No other whaling industry building (or ship) exists in the city.
The photo attached shows the gutted building with the intact tryworks, a hearth on which whale fat was rendered into oil. (Photo: The Standard-Times)
Despite assurances by the developer it would not be touched for another year, the 19th-century Baker-Robinson whale and candleworks building, prominent on the waterfront for its giant granite-block walls, was stripped last week of its still-intact machinery, as well as a storage locker still clearly marked “spermaceti,” and other artifacts of its days processing whaling oil.
This rushed event occurred as organizations pondered whether the building should be included in the nearby historic national park district.
The building is slated to become a function room for a new Marriott Residence Inn, a class of franchise hotel usually seen at highway ramps. Within sight of this hotel, across the river, is another 100+ room hotel, which recently was purchased out of bankruptcy. Across the street is a failed hotel, the Bourne Counting House.
In 2009, a casino developer bought land purchase options adjacent to the hotel site.
New Bedford Mayor Scott Lang and the city’s economic development council OK’d a $250,000 loan to the developer, LaFrance Hospitality, allowing deconstruction of the whale oil works. (The hotel developer also received a TIF tax incentive—although some would argue that TIFs are intended to encourage development in blighted areas, not on prime waterfront property.)
New Bedford Standard-Times columnist Jack Spillane notes:
“Photos taken last year show an immense flagstone foundation that once supported a mammoth 19th-century kettle that boiled down whale oil. And inside the decrepit interior of the former Baker-Robinson whale and candle works building, Foster took photographs and notes about the remnants of a huge piston inside the “taught press.” The taught press was a device used to press whale spermaceti (waxy material found in the cavity of sperm whale heads) into the wax used for candles.
“They also show a huge beam that once supported the whale works’ hydraulic presses, as well as a money safe and the wooden wainscoting in the candle works offices, including paneling that continues to be stained with spermaceti wax even today.” (Column in local paper: http://www.southcoasttoday.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100307/NEWS/3070324)
Some photos: http://www.southcoasttoday.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100307/NEWS/3070324&Template=photos
Photos of the building taken in the 1800s and last year: http://www.flickr.com/photos/nbwm/with/4112748750/
This is the last remaining tryworks in the country.
New Bedford has long bemoaned its lost historical assets: New Bedford’s last intact wooden whaling ship, the Charles Morgan, was offered to the City of New Bedford, which turned it down in the 1920s. It was sold to the founder of Mystic Seaport for $1 and became the central attraction around which the historic port museum was built. In the 1960s, a wide swathe of historic New Bedford buildings was demolished along the waterfront to make way for a highway in a fruitless effort to attract federal urban renewal funds–an effort now deemed a tragedy of vision and strategy. Last year, the historic Fairhaven Mill—where child labor was famously photographed by WPA photographer Lewis Hine, prompting new labor laws—was demolished to make way for a supermarket, even though a city advisory committee supported a proposal to preserve the mill and integrate it into a mixed-use hotel and office campus.
Ultimately, these losses are not just losses for New Bedford; they are facets of a shared national heritage, one that should have been stewarded with care and respect, if not just for cultural and commercial rewards, for all of us.
* In case it’s not obvious, this was a defunct factory. No whales have been rendered in this plant for 100 years!
Filed under Uncategorized | Tags: cities, New Bedford | Comment (0)Silence of the Whales
Once the world’s primary port of the whale oil trade, and later a textiles and machinery producer, the city of New Bedford has gone the way of much of the the United States–from industrial producer to grant-dependent shadow of the past. The death blow was the mall-ification more than 25 years ago of the next-door farm community, which attracted strip malls and big-box stores with its flat tax rate and sucked the retail life out of New Bedford. (Now that town, Dartmouth, is facing serious financial difficulties.)
Currently, New Bedford is courting casino interests on its waterfront. I can’t begrudge a city, whose leaders see few constructive prospects, inviting what’s literally an industry of last resort. The pursuit of unearned riches is replacing this city’s legacy: the pursuit of hard-won riches.
Remarkably, New Bedford is still a national standout: It is this country’s most profitable fishing port, thanks to the high value of scallops. It is generally thought that this status cannot continue with current fishing practices.
Filed under Cool City | Comment (0)Creating Cool Cities
New Bedford, long known as the “armpit of Massachusetts,” is trying to recraft itself as a setting for the “creative economy.”* To some extent, it has the ingredients: Proximity to a state university (UMass Dartmouth), a scenic working waterfront, an art school, a cobblestone city center, a whaling museum, ferries to the islands, and slightly cheap (but still overpriced) real estate. But it is still just a little too far from Boston-area jobs and its own jobs base is going the way of most manufacturing in this country. At the same time, this city, for all its assets, has some syndromes common to cities in decline (which I will detail at another time). In 2005, I met Kennedy Smith of CoolTown Studios, a consultancy that helps cities become “cool cities” that capitalize on their unique assets and features. She was a Loeb Fellow at Harvard Design School. I tried to line her up as a speaker at New Bedford’s AHA (Arts History Architecture) Night but the organizers didn’t want her to steal thunder from the Preservation Awards ceremony later that night. It was a symbolic introduction to New Bedford, the gritty city on the bay. Anyway, see this post on the Cool Cities Studio site about how cities too often look for the outside “big fix” instead of cultivating local resources: click here
*When I read up on the Creative Economy market angle, it looks to me more like the Life 2.0 schtick: that small affordable cities will be incubators for small- to medium-sized businesses. New Bedford could indeed fit that bill, however, it is not entirely conducive to white-collar business. Ultimately, if we analyze its intrinsic value, its primary assets, we see they are mostly physical: a port, infrastructure (power, tankage, wastewater treatment plant) on the coast, a city with shoreline throughout, an affordable workforce, and lots of wind and water.
Welcome to Watering Woman
Welcome! So many folks ask about the status of the too-many projects I start. I’m hoping this blog will replace about an hour of daily email writing. If you have a question about any of the Ecovita, Ecowaters, Fish Island or Watering Woman projects, please email me and I’ll post it on the blog.
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