Anaconda Wire and Cable Company

Anaconda Wire and Cable Company
HASTINGS-ON-HUDSON, NY

July 1999.

Located on 26 acres on the Hudson River, the former Anaconda Wire and Cable Company factory buildings are slated for demolition. It will be very interesting to see what direction this site takes in the future. Like the General Motors site in Sleepy Hollow, this was built on landfill and will be highly coveted by developers when the time comes. The Anaconda Factory is also one of the more polluted sites along the river - New York State imposed a $40 million to $50 million cleanup of the site - and made it onto the Superfund list. Anaconda has been classified as a Class 2 Inactive Hazardous Waste site since 1987. The heavily polluted part of the site seems to be contained in the northwest corner of the property.

December 2002.

Operations began at this location in 1898, under the National Conduit and Cable Company name. This company produced conduits consisting of cement-lined steel tubes, and later, cable wrapped in pregnated paper for the transmission of electrical power. Most buildings on the site date to the 1910s, during an expansion of the factory, and are only one or two stories high. Some buildings have stepped gables, and monitor roofs to allow light in. South of the Anaconda Factory is the location of the Zinsser & Company chemical plant, which produced mustard gas. These buildings are demolished.

The Anaconda site is now owned by Los Angeles-based Atlantic-Richfield Company, aka ARCO. Like General Motors, ARCO wants to be involved in the cleanup, and more importantly for them, future development of the site. ARCO will present a workplan over the summer (2000), and after taking soil samples, will be ready to apply for a permit to demolish the buildings, of which approximately 20 remain. Some of the buildings on this site are still in use. You can be sure that these buildings will be demolished in the not-too-distant future. The Local Waterfront Revitalization Programs Committee has already submitted recent proposals to the Board of Trustees of the Village of Hastings. None of which, by the way, include preservation of any existing structures. It seems in the past there may have been proposals which incorporated the buildings, none of which ever worked out.

December 2002. This building has been demolished.

Erroneously called an "eyesore" in local newspaper articles, these buildings are actually quite attractive, I crane my neck to see every bit I can while taking the Hudson Line train. I am often amazed that "Revitalization" does not include restoration or incorporation of previously existing buildings. In nearby Irvington, the village appropriately reused the greenhouse factories of Lord and Burnham. The building on the east side of the railroad has been converted to the new Village Library with affordable housing above, and the buildings west of the railroad have been converted to offices (some home to high-tech firms) and storage space (including the archives for the Irvington Historical Society). The interiors have been modernized though often showing the structure of the building, but the exteriors have been preserved, thereby retaining part of the village history, character and identity. I shake my head that similar can't be done in Hastings.

LINKS:
Hudson Valley Ruins - Tom Rinaldi's photographs of the Anaconda Wire and Cable Company.

UPDATE MAY 2003:
Regarding the fate of the Anaconda site, there are certainly those who would like to see the buildings torn down, however, there are also many who would like to see them stay up. Their final destiny has not yet been decided. A settlement has been tentatively reached with the owners of the property regarding cleanup of the site. That plan can be viewed at http://village.hastings.ny.us/waterfrontsettlement.htm. At the moment the settlement calls for destroying all buildings on the site so that a protective "cap" can be laid down across the entire waterfront. But a number of concerned citizens are working to change this language in the settlement. The Hastings Local Waterfront Revitalization Plan actually calls for the preservation and adaptive reuse of existing buildings where possible (See LWRP Draft Report: http://village.hastings.ny.us/waterfront.html).

UPDATE MARCH 31 2004:
Last week the New York State Department of Environmental conservation issued it's long-awaited "ROD" (Record of Decision) on the Hastings waterfront cleanup. This decision has selected a cleanup process that appears to call for the destruction of all historic buildings on the Hastings waterfront.

Apparently the last best chance to save any of these buildings is to find a tenant willing to occupy and renovate the space. Two of the buildings (Buildings 51 and 52) are quite beautiful and almost completely free of PCB contamination. They are brick structures featuring dramatic 20' high window openings, saw-tooth skylights, raised gable clerestory windows, and cavernous, nearly column-free, interior spaces large enough for several football fields.

UPDATE MARCH 13, 2005:
On March 1, the Village of Hastings-on-Hudson Board of Trustees voted 5-0 to approve Atlantic Richfield Co.'s application to demolish ten buildings at the Anaconda site. Twelve buildings on the site have already been demolished. At lest three other structures will not be torn down, for now at least. According to the Journal News, ARCO hopes to start asbestos removal in April, followed by demoliiton of the buildings in the middle of the summer.

Source article: "Hastings Board Approves ARCO Demolition Plan," by Hema Easley, The Journal News. March 2, 2005.

With info from American Architecture, Westchester County, New York, by Frank Sanchis, and various Journal News articles.

Thanks to Stuart Cadenhead for the updates.

Above and Below: December 21, 1999.

The abandoned Yonkers Power Station, at Glenwood, is visible at right
above the roofline of the Anaconda factory buildings.

Hastings-on-Hudson Ruins

Yaz’ Hudson Valley Ruins and Abandoned Buildings, etc.

E-mail Rob Yasinsac