Gingerbread Castle and Wheatsworth Mill

October 13th, 2015

I got lost today in the Wheatsworth Mills and Gingerbread Castle.  Okay, so here's a brief history of Wheatsworth Mills, this mill

was built in 1803 as a grain mill and was rebuilt in 1834 after a fire destroyed most of the structure.  The mill was bought in 1921 and renamed Wheatsworth Mills.  Wheatsworth Mills was then sold to the National Biscuit Company, Nabisco, in 1931, then sold again to Cantebury Mills, and yet again to the Plastoid Company who used the factory up until the 80's. As for the Gingerbread Castle, its a three story structure designed to look like a massive castle made out of gingerbread covered in icing.  The interior is just as elegant as the exterior, with colorful spiral staircases, statues of fairytale characters, and a whimsical wishing well in the center of the castle, all of which are now decaying and falling apart.  The castle was in use for 50 years before finally closing in 1978, opening up to a new type of audience: artists and explorers (such as myself) in search of unique places.
  

So after class I called up a couple of friends who would enjoy exploring with me, we all met up and took one car to head up north to Hamburg, NJ.  As we approached the factory, the black, broken, empty windows seemed to be staring at us from 20 stories above.  We parked at a parking lot across the street at a soccer field, I loaded up my Nikon d7000, my Slik tripod, and Canon Ae-1 and led the way.  We headed up to the locked gate, jogged up some stairs and crawled behind a large Humpty-Dumpty statue into the brush, the bushes eventually opened up revealing a gap in the surrounding fence which we jumped through and made it onto the property safely.  We explored the factory first.  Walking into the garage, I noticed a long blue carpet, as if I was

being invited in to this massive factory.  Walking down this blue 'carpet', I passed a few ruined cars, a broken jet ski, miscellaneous metals and broken glass littered the ground. I took the first staircase I found taking me down into an eerie darkness.  Reaching the bottom of the stairs, I saw a light coming from the next room so naturally, I headed towards the light and found that this room had small windows letting in some light from outside.  I walked around, stopping to shoot photos whenever I thought I could get an interesting picture.  We reached one room with wooden floors and a collapsed roof, as we walked we felt the floor sink in a bit with each step, so we tread lightly, even then, one of my friends' legs broke through the floor.  After we helped her get back up, we carefully made our way out of that room and back to the garage.  I was the first to walk into the garage where we entered, and staring back at me, at the very end of that blue carpet was a black bear.  Yes, I saw a black bear in a abandoned factory, sounds crazy, right? Unfortunately I was too terrified at the fact that I just encountered a black bear to take a picture of it, so you're just going to have to take my word for it.  But I guess I scared it just as much as it scared me because when I looked out into the garage again, it was long gone.  Moving on, I brought us downstairs to the basement where there is a hidden staircase which led us up twenty stories to the top of the factory.

Dirty Jersey

  The view was breathtaking, the sun-kissed mountains of varying greens, yellows, oranges, and reds surrounded me as I sat atop the abandoned mill enjoying a cigarette, taking in the scenery.  From above, I saw a group of kids running off the property, shouting something about seeing a black bear.  I decided to hang out and relax before going down again and entering the gingerbread castle.  I took a stairwell leading me into the basement of the large, pastry-shaped castle.  I found myself at the bottom of the

Myself at the bottom of the well.

old wishing well, light barely trickling down from above. We continued, up the spiral rainbow staircase, over the rusted metal gnomes that lay at the top of the staircase, and into the top floor of the castle.  Ironically, the colors were so vibrant yet everything was falling apart, it was beautiful. After shooting anything and everything that caught my attention, we decided to head back to the car and get home.  

Here are shots from this adventure.