THE LANDSCAPE OF COPPER
Laurel Hill Works
The
Landscape of Copper is a layer of land use that runs throughout
the United States (and the rest of the world), emerging in places
where the mineral is extracted, processed, and used. This industry
forms some of the most dramatic "anthropogenic" landscapes
on earth, and is therefore a special focus area for the CLUI,
which has been cataloguing copper-related sites in its database
and photographic archives since the inception of the organization.
Recently, two public programs focussed on the Landscape of Copper,
in the form of an exhibit at the Center’s Los Angeles exhibition
hall, and presentations by two individuals who, unknown to each
other, have been working independently on sites on separate
ends of the industry: at the source, and at the finishing end
of copper production
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Laurel Hill Works, before
demolition.
Photo Curtis Cravens.
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Representing the downstream
end of the landscape of copper, independent researcher Curtis
Cravens lectured at the Center in March, 2001. He presented
documentation of an abandoned (and now razed) copper and chemical
works on the Newtown Creek in Queens, NY. The Laurel Hill Works,
a copper extraction and smelting plant, was a massive industrial
site in the shadow of Manhattan, with over 100 buildings, partially
built on the detritus of its own production- the slag from the
plant itself. The site was owned by mining conglomerate Phelps
Dodge, who, after closing the works in 1983, sold the land and
its contents to the US Postal Service. This contract was rescinded
four years later as the extent of the contamination at the site
was uncovered.
The Laurel Hill Chemical Works was founded at
the end of the 1880s by the Walter and Nichols Company, who
used sulfuric acid to refine copper ore. By 1930 Phelps Dodge
Corporation, which had a long history of association with the
works, absorbed the company. Phelps Dodge continued copper production
there until the 1960s, when the smelter was shut down because
of the rising price of raw materials and the plant's inability
to comply with New York State's emission regulations. By the
1980's copper prices had fallen, leading Phelps Dodge to halt
production at many of its locations, and to close the refinery
at Laurel Hill (continuing some of the facilityÙs functions
at a large plant in El Paso, Texas). Until the demolition of
the buildings on the site last year, it had been a starkly abandoned
place, both a museum and a mausoleum to the industrial past,
containing file cabinets full of company records, employee health
reports, and other artifacts.
Several years ago, due to an "unreasonable and
sustained interest in unloved and unseen urban places" as he
puts it, Cravens first entered, through a hole in fence, into
what would become a six-year relationship with the silent ruin.
He soon set up an office there, and began an artistic/archeological
investigation and interpretation of the site, otherwise occupied
only by pigeons, feral dogs, and a few homeless people. Over
time, the Works revealed traces of the history of labor, and
the changing nature of heavy industry. He tracked down former
workers and interviewed them. He photographed the site thoroughly
- the last captured views of a now disappeared place.
Cravens published his research in a booklet called
Copper on the Creek: Reclaiming an Industrial History,
that documents the otherwise
ignored story of this remarkable site, and which chronicles
his personal odyssey into this monumental hulk, before it was
erased from the landscape of copper. In his presentation at
the Center, Cravens told the story of the site and his unusual
interaction with it, and showed his images along with historical
maps and photographs.
The Landscape of Copper:
Todd Trigsted, Views from the Pit
About the Landscape of Copper
