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I'm coming to the tail end of the explores from my trip now, with just two more large locations to post up after this and a little compilation thread of the smaller ones I didn't get enough photos of.
E.J. Footwear, once known as the Endicott-Johnson Corporation after two of the cities in which it was based, was a leading manufacturer of shoes in upstate New York and employed 20,000 people across it's factories during the 1920s. During the 1950s the company started a slow decline, gradually shedding factories. In 1995 the company was bought and rebranded E.J. Footwear, and the closure of the last factories in it's home cities was announced in 1998 after it's headquarters relocated to Tennessee. Nowadays all of E.J's footwear products are manufactured elsewhere.
Most of the old factories have been torn down but there are a few left in a little cluster with one having had half of it converted into a mosque. We got into two of them which was pretty cool. The first place had, after closure, been turned into an indoor skatepark arena across two floors but all this has since been ripped out leaving just the typical skatepark graffiti behind. Luckily for me, the upper floor was mercifully untouched by the skate park people. The other site was totally original but very stripped, we didn't spend too long inside due to the amount of pigeon poo and the police driving around below us.
Whilst we were in the building that used to be a skatepark, a group of around eight little kids (and I mean little, the youngest must have been about seven) wandered into the site with nerf guns, and we managed to unintentionally scare the crap out of them from an upstairs window, their cries of 'OH MY GOD GHOSTS!!!' were hilarious.
Moving on to the second building. It was the same layout on every floor.
Thanks for looking more here https://www.flickr.com/photos/mookie427/albums/72157659387721740
E.J. Footwear, once known as the Endicott-Johnson Corporation after two of the cities in which it was based, was a leading manufacturer of shoes in upstate New York and employed 20,000 people across it's factories during the 1920s. During the 1950s the company started a slow decline, gradually shedding factories. In 1995 the company was bought and rebranded E.J. Footwear, and the closure of the last factories in it's home cities was announced in 1998 after it's headquarters relocated to Tennessee. Nowadays all of E.J's footwear products are manufactured elsewhere.
Most of the old factories have been torn down but there are a few left in a little cluster with one having had half of it converted into a mosque. We got into two of them which was pretty cool. The first place had, after closure, been turned into an indoor skatepark arena across two floors but all this has since been ripped out leaving just the typical skatepark graffiti behind. Luckily for me, the upper floor was mercifully untouched by the skate park people. The other site was totally original but very stripped, we didn't spend too long inside due to the amount of pigeon poo and the police driving around below us.
Whilst we were in the building that used to be a skatepark, a group of around eight little kids (and I mean little, the youngest must have been about seven) wandered into the site with nerf guns, and we managed to unintentionally scare the crap out of them from an upstairs window, their cries of 'OH MY GOD GHOSTS!!!' were hilarious.
Moving on to the second building. It was the same layout on every floor.
Thanks for looking more here https://www.flickr.com/photos/mookie427/albums/72157659387721740
