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!
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