Hike a while down a picturesque woodland trail that runs alongside the Roaring Brook in Glastonbury CT, and you’ll suddenly find yourself in front of the stunning remains of an old cotton mill that was built in 1814. I had only the vaguest idea about where it was when I arrived in Glastonbury, and I wasn’t even sure where to park to get to it, since the ruins are no longer located next to a road that is still in current use. It wasn’t until I met a local walking her dog in the woods, that I was able to get some real directions to the old mill. And so it was that I found myself hiking through the snow - following a brook deeper into the woods, until suddenly, there it was.

It was definitely worth the hike.

The mill was built in 1814 and in the days when Glastonbury was still a major manufacturing center, it employed more than 350 people who worked in a small industrial village with multiple mills all powered by the waters of the Roaring Brook. The mill was tragically gutted by fire in the 1920s, putting an end to its commercial use, and all that remains of the mill today is an incredible, free-standing, four story wall. several sections of which have already crumbled away.

The section that is still standing looks like it might fall at any moment, and the structure is extensively posted with signs warning visitors of the risk of getting too close. After unauthorized demolition attempts in 2020, the Town of Glastonbury purchased the site to protect the remaining stone walls in partnership with the Historical Society of Glastonbury and the Save Cotton Hollow Mill Coalition

Despite the danger, it’s an incredible sight if you keep a safe distance from the structure, and well worth the hike.

© Gordon Webster

Using the link below, you can browse a curated set of images from the Cotton Hollow Mill in a gallery at my website, from which you can purchase photographic artwork in multiple formats. If this work resonates with you and you haven’t already done so, please consider subscribing to get future project updates.

Brunswick is the second New England mill town that I visited, that is located on the banks of the Androscoggin river in Maine. And like Lewiston, the first one, Brunswick is also a college town, being home to Bowdoin College. During one of the road trips that I made for this project, I spent a night in Brunswick, and although it wasn’t directly on the list of places to photograph for that trip, I couldn’t stay there and not get a few photographs. This article therefore, features just a few of the opprtunistic photographs that I managed to grab while we were staying the night in Brunswick. Later on, I hope to return to Brunswick to do a more in depth exploration of the town.

I think that the main reason Brunswick was not on my initial list of places to visit, is that it has not followed the archetypal pattern of economic decline and depopulation that has been visible in many of the other mill towns in this project. From the 1800s to the early 1900s, there was a heavy manufacturing presence with textile and paper mills powered by the falling waters of the Androscoggin River, and for a while these were the pillars of the local economy for Brunswick and its neighboring town of Topsham, across the river.

And there was a decline in these industries as a result of the same kind of economic forces that drove these declines in other towns. But in Brunswick’s case, the town was able to transition from manufacturing, to a diversified set of industries in the service sector, education, and innovation. Indeed, in stark contrast to many of the other mill towns I have visited, the population of Brunswick at the time of writing, is higher than it has ever been at any point in its history - a tribute to the town’s resilience and recovery from its former dependence on manufacturing.

Although there are some signs of the kind of economic changes that are widespread in that state of Maine, Brunswick does not bear the significant scars of decline that are so visible in the other mill towns.

© Gordon Webster

Using the link below, you can browse a curated set of images from Brunswick, ME in a gallery at my website, from which you can purchase photographic artwork in multiple formats. If this work resonates with you and you haven’t already done so, please consider subscribing to get future project updates.

The North Grosvenordale Mill feels almost as much like a castle as it does a mill. Beyond its grandiose architecture, it even has a moat, which lends it even more of the aspect of a castle. Standing in relative isolation on the banks of the French River in rural Connecticut not far from the state border of neighboring Massachusetts, it feels like a place that’s not really on the way to anywhere else. When I read about it online however, and saw a few of the photographs that other people had taken of the place, I knew that it would worth the detour on my road trip through Connecticut for this project.

Specializing in the production of fine cottons, this enormous mill in North Grosvenordale CT was once one of the largest textile mills in Connecticut. Built by William Grosvenor in 1872, it was actually his second mill - the first one having been constructed about a mile further south down the French River in what was then known as Masonville.

The huge facility was initially powered by turbines installed beneath the mill to harness the energy of the river’s flow. With the decline of the textile industry the mill would suffer the same fate as many other mills around New England, eventually closing for good in 1954. Since that time, some parts of the facility have been adapted for other uses, but in its heyday as a working textile mill at the turn of the 20th century, the North Grosvenordale mill employed close to 2000 people.

Given that the North Grosvenordale mill is now on the list of historical sites, its preservation seems assured, although, given the scale of the complex and its relative isolation, it is certainly not clear what it will take to repurpose this structure for more 21st century activities.

© Gordon Webster

Using the link below, you can browse a curated set of images from the North Grosvenordale Mill photo shoot in a gallery at my website, from which you can purchase photographic artwork in multiple formats. If this work resonates with you and you haven’t already done so, please consider subscribing to get future project updates.

Originally incorporated in the late 18th century, Lewiston became a hub for manufacturing and industry as a result of its location next to the Androscoggin River and the Lewiston Falls. Later on, subsequent to its incorporation as a city in the mid-19th century, it would be twinned with the city of Auburn on the opposite bank of the river, with whom it shares infrastructure and transportation.

The home of Bates College, Lewiston has a kind of dual identity as a college town, that is also a somewhat rough-around-the-edges, working class town. You can feel this dichotomy as you walk around the town, with some neighborhoods having the kind of trendy shops, cafes, and coffee bars that you would expect in a college town, while other neighborhoods exhibit the poverty and neglect that you would associate with the economic decline that the town has seen since its former glory days as a textile and manufacturing hub.

After World War I, with declining profits from the textile industry that had been so crucial to the town’s prosperity and growth, the local economy started to decline. Many of the town’s jobs moved away as new technologies and methods of transportation eroded the economic advantages of being located on a major inland waterway, and by the 1950s, the town’s mills started to close. With the decline in the town’s economy, came a decline in the population starting in the 1970s, and gradually accelerating through the 1990s. Lewiston’s population peaked at about 40,000 in 1970, declined relatively rapidly throughout the remainder of the 20th century, but has since recovered to about 39,000 as of 2025.

© Gordon Webster

Using the link below, you can browse a curated set of images from Lewiston ME in a gallery at my website, from which you can purchase photographic artwork in multiple formats. If this work resonates with you and you haven’t already done so, please consider subscribing to get future project updates.

Pawtucket Rhode Island is one of those rare New England mill towns that has been able to successfully weather (at least in part) the vicissitudes of economic change, holding onto an industrial base for more than two centuries, since its origins as an important textile manufacturing center. This is not to say that the city has been immune to the kind of economic downturn experienced by the old mill towns. In the last few years in fact, it has lost some of its economic anchors such as the famous toy manufacturer Hasbro, who had been in Pawtucket for more than 100 years.

Well before European settlers established the Blackstone River Valley as a center of industry and commerce in the late 18th century, the river’s abundant supply of fish supported populous settlements of native Americans that flourished along its banks. By the 1920s, Pawtucket was a prosperous mill town, but the New England Textile Strike of 1922, followed only a few years later by the onset of the Great Depression, would trigger an economic decline from which the town has never fully recovered. Despite this decline however, Pawtucket’s population that peaked above 81,000 people in 1950, is still at above 75,000 as of 2020.

© Gordon Webster

Using the link below, you can browse a curated set of images from Pawtucket RI in a gallery at my website, from which you can purchase photographic artwork in multiple formats. If this work resonates with you and you haven’t already done so, please consider subscribing to get future project updates.

Technically, I could have folded this story about my visit to the old Norman paper Company into the larger story about my photography in Holyoke, Massachusetts, but the now abandoned site of this grand, old paper mill is so vast and so impressive, that I felt it deserved a gallery of its own on my website.

The Norman Paper Company was founded in 1891, in Holyoke, a city that once produced an astonishing 80 percent of all the writing paper that was used in the United States, and boasted some of the largest paper, silk, and wool mills in the world. The Norman Paper Company’s Holyoke location consisted of nine enormous buildings with several huge smokestacks that filled an entire city block and drew their power from the Connecticut river that flows through the city.

Alas, by the 1930s the factory was largely abandoned as the U.S. paper manufacturing sector declined nationwide (more about this in the article on Holyoke) - a decline that has continued apace during the last hundred years, as paper has become cheaper to manufacture in other parts of the world, and demand has plummeted as a result of a shift to digital media.

It’s hard not be impressed at the sheer scale of this old mill, occupying as it does a roughly 5 acre site on the bank of the Connecticut River. As the city seeks to reinvent itself once more, new uses for the hundreds of thousands of square feet of workspace within the mill are being considered. In keeping with some of the new economic modalities of the 21st century, part of the space inside the mill has been leased to a company that cultivates and manufactures marijuana for medical and recreation use, and at the time of writing, there is a proposal on the table to convert a part of the mill into a data center that could take advantage of the plentiful clean hydroelectricity that the city’s utilities are now generating from the waters of the Connecticut River.

© Gordon Webster

Using the link below, you can browse a curated set of images from The Norman Paper Company in a gallery at my website, from which you can purchase photographic artwork in multiple formats. If this work resonates with you and you haven’t already done so, please consider subscribing to get future project updates.

Of all the places I have traveled to for this project, none can match the sheer scale and degree of urban decay that is visible today in Holyoke Massachusetts. This is largely due to the fact that at its peak, Holyoke was one of the greatest manufacturing centers of the post-agrarian industrialization of New England - a planned city built around the wealth of potential power that could be tapped from the Connecticut River’s 57ft drop at South Hadley Falls. For efficiency, the city was even organized on a grid pattern like Manhattan’s. At its peak in the early decades of the twentieth century, it was home to more than 60,000 people and had more millionaires per capita than anywhere else in the U.S.

But when the mighty fall, they tend to fall hard.

Once the potential for harnessing the energy of the Connecticut River had been recognized, the city transformed from an agrarian settlement into an industrial town built around the production of textiles. With the advent of the Civil War and the disruption to cotton supplies that accompanied it, the focus of Holyoke’s industrial output shifted to paper production. Incorporated as city in 1873, at its peak, it was home to more than 25 paper mills. By the turn of the 20th century Holyoke produced an estimated 80% of all the writing paper used in the United States and earned the name “The Paper City” as a result.

But the subsequent chapter of the story of Holyoke is an all too familiar one amongst the mill towns of New England. A series of setbacks that started with the Great Depression, gradually ate away at the business model of the paper industry - consolidation, competition from other regions and the general commoditization of paper, the high costs of production and maintenance of aging infrastructure, and perhaps most devastating of all - a shift to digital media in the last two or three decades, that saw paper demand in some sectors plummet by as much as 90%.

The population of Holyoke has almost halved since its peak in the 1920s, and as I have witnessed in other mill towns such as Lawrence MA, it looked to me as if the city’s decline was so sudden and catastrophic, that it left no time even to figure out what to do with all of the empty spaces that it left behind it. In some of of the industrial zones of the city where there are no residential neighborhoods, so little traffic passes that the roads have grass and weeds growing through the cracks in the asphalt. There were areas where I could stand in the middle of the road to take pictures of the surrounding buildings, since there were literally no other vehicles using the street. In fact, I don’t think I have ever seen a city with so many empty and decaying structures, and sprawling acres of unused land.

This story of post-industrial decline is a familiar one, but like many of the other great mill towns I have visited around New England, Holyoke may be down but it is certainly not out. This is a city that on more than one occasion, has proved itself capable of innovation and even reinvention. This is the city that adapted to the cotton shortages of the Civil War years by pivoting to paper production. It is the city where volleyball was invented in 1895 and is still home to the Volleyball Hall of Fame. It is the city that now has the lowest energy costs anywhere in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts as a result of its new green energy initiatives - harnessing the power of the Connecticut River that once drove its mills, to generate cheap, clean hydroelectric power.

In 2012, Holyoke would leverage this new source of clean energy to pivot once more into a new and very 21st century area of economic activity - computers. With the opening of the Massachusetts Green High Performance Computing Center powered by locally generated hydroelectricity, Holyoke is establishing itself as a supercomputer center that can provide the kind of high-end computing resources needed to service the educational and commercial research sectors that have made Massachusetts a modern economic powerhouse.

© Gordon Webster

Using the link below, you can browse a curated set of images from Holyoke MA in a gallery at my website, from which you can purchase photographic artwork in multiple formats. If this work resonates with you and you haven’t already done so, please consider subscribing to get future project updates.

Located on the Millers River in the hilly uplands of Massachusetts, Orange is a small mill town that has a very distinct look and feel to it - so much so, that it in 2018, it was featured as the eponymous location of the TV series “Castle Rock”, which was loosely based upon the stories of the writer Stephen King. From the old cemetery on the hill overlooking the town, to the quiet, abandoned spaces that are common even around the streets of the downtown area, Orange truly has the feel of a setting for one of King’s novels - perhaps the closest place in real-life, to his fictional town of Derry, Maine.

Orange MA was a farming community until the end of the 18th century when the damming of the Millers River on which the town is located, would spawn the growth of local industry. By the middle of the 19th century, Orange was firmly established as an industrial mill town, and by the end of the 19th century, the New Home sewing machine factory would be the largest employer in the town. By the beginning of the 20th century, Orange would also be home to the Grout Brothers company, a pioneering producer of steam-powered automobiles that would be the first factory-produced automobiles in the U.S.

Although the town would experience the familiar pattern of industrial and economic decline in the 20th century, it did not experience the accompanying population decline seen in other New England mill towns. Although the town’s population peaked around 2010, the current population is still much bigger than at any time in the past couple of hundred years. Inasmuch as Orange has managed to hold onto its population however, the town is replete with abandoned and truly derelict spaces, some of which feel genuinely dangerous. The shells of old mills and factories are often little more than isolated chimney stacks, and crumbling walls with nothing behind them to support them - places where a misstep as you scramble over the ruins, might bring down a few tons of bricks on your head.

When I visited Orange, I was also struck by how many of these wonderful old mill towns are located in picturesque rural areas of New England. Before steam and electricity, mills needed running water to power their machinery. Running water usually meant a river valley set in hilly country, through which the elevation changed rapidly enough to create a fast-flowing body of water whose energy could be tapped for mechanical work. It’s therefore not surprising to find these old mill towns located in such scenic landscapes, and the juxtaposition of New England’s natural beauty with these abandoned spaces only adds to their charm. A carpet of fall leaves blowing across a concrete floor with maple saplings forcing their way up through its mossy cracks. The soft, warm glow of the old red brick of a factory’s crumbling walls in the golden sun of a fall afternoon. The peaceful silence of these spaces whose former buzz now hangs in the air like an echo.

© Gordon Webster

Using the link below, you can browse a curated set of images from Orange MA in a gallery at my website, from which you can purchase photographic artwork in multiple formats. If this work resonates with you and you haven’t already done so, please consider subscribing to get future project updates.

The first time I drove into Lawrence Massachusetts and saw the wonderful, old redbrick mills that lined its streets and the banks of the Merrimack River, I knew this town was going to be an absolute treasure trove of compelling images. There are relatively few of the old mill towns around New England in which the demise of the region’s industrial era is so starkly visible as it is in Lawrence. In many of them, this decline feels more like a long and gentle erosion - like the way that running water and the passage of time will gradually soften the edges of the stone along a river bank. The economic decline in Lawrence feels much more sudden and catastrophic - as if the mills had fallen silent and their workers had abruptly walked off the job, never to return. The town conveys the feeling of a great exodus that was so sudden and unexpected that there was no time even to plan what was to be done with all of the empty spaces that it left behind.

One of the great New England mill towns that sprung up along the region’s rich network of inland waterways, Lawrence was founded by coastal settlers who migrated inland along the Merrimack river in the middle of the 17th century. The river provided not only the means to transport goods and materials, but later when it was dammed in the 1840s, also provided power to the mills and factories that would be built along its banks during the industrialization of the region.

For all of its economic benefits however, industrialization could often be a mixed blessing for the workers who flocked to the the region for the jobs it brought with it. A mill collapse in 1860 killed 145 workers, and conditions in the town’s mills and factories were often terrible, prompting waves of strikes and walk-outs. After WWII, Lawrence briefly flourished as center for wool processing, but with the decline of this industry, the town fell upon hard times from which it has struggled to recover, to this day.

Known as the "Immigrant City," Lawrence has benefited from successive waves of immigrants coming to work in its mills including Irish, French Canadians, English, and German workers. Later on, starting in the early 1900s, Italians, Poles, Lithuanians, and Syrians began arriving. A significant wave of Puerto Rican and Dominican immigrants starting in the second half of the 20th century, has created a largely Hispanic population that gives Lawrence a strong Latino vibe - a result of the warmth and vibrancy of the rich culture that they brought with them. When you walk around downtown Lawrence, it is striking how many wonderful Latino restaurants, bars, and coffee shops there are, all of which bring some much needed vitality and life to a town that has endured more than its fair share of hardship. And even today, the flow of immigrants into the town continues, with the latest arrivals coming from Vietnam and Cambodia, adding their own unique cultural influences to the melting pot,

Like all of the neglected mill towns featured in this project, Lawrence is very much a place of incredible potential. It has a relatively young population whose energy you feel could be tapped to bring renewed prosperity. With a little bit of luck, and some good choices, it would be great to see the town freed from the shackles of its former dependence on the economic modalities of a bygone era.

At the time of writing in 2026, many of the derelict and abandoned sites depicted in these photographs have already been demolished and cleared to make way for what will hopefully be the redevelopment and renaissance of the town center.

© Gordon Webster

Using the link below, you can browse a curated set of images from Lawrence MA in a gallery at my website, from which you can purchase photographic artwork in multiple formats. If this work resonates with you and you haven’t already done so, please consider subscribing to get future project updates.

Crossing the bridge as you drive into Claremont NH on route 103, if you glance to your right across the waters of the Sugar River, you will notice something quite rare in the 21st century - a working paper mill. Largely displaced by paperless digital media, demand for paper has plummeted as much as 90% in some sectors of the paper industry, and the number of working paper mills in the U.S. has declined sharply since its peak in the early 20th century.

And yet there are some holdouts.

The APC Paper Company (purchased in 2021 by ProAmpac) that runs the Sugar River Mill, stays relevant by pursuing a very 21st century business model - paper recycling. Where once the raw materials for a mill like this would have been lumber and its byproducts, today the APC mill is turning old paper into new.

You might be thinking that this location doesn’t really fit a project whose goal is to photograph the abandoned and post-industrial spaces of New England. The APC paper mill is however a post-industrial space in its own right, being as it is, a legacy of the old Monadnock Mills whose construction along the Sugar River was started in the 1830s by the Sugar River Manufacturing Company. Part of those original mills still survive on the North side of the river, but much of the original complex has been repurposed, including the APC mill that stands on Sullivan Street.

Although this mill does not need to draw its power from the river as was the case in previous centuries, the paper production process does require a great deal of water, which is used primarily in the manufacture of wood pulp, and for heat transfer. Even today, in this age of electricity and cost-effective transportation, the benefits of locating your manufacturing facility on a river have not entirely disappeared.

There is a beauty to the aesthetic of an industrial landscape that to me, is every bit as compelling as a natural scene. As a resident of New England I am fascinated with the region’s industrial past and the legacy that this has left on the landscape. I am always chasing the kind of light that can amplify the emotion expressed by a particular scene, and this often means shooting in less than wonderful weather. On the day I captured the opening image of the paper mill from the Sugar River bridge, the late fall landscape and cold, damp, and overcast conditions, all came together to create the kind of color palette and lighting that I feel lends that image the look of a painting by the Dutch Masters.

Using the link below, you can browse a curated set of images from the APC Paper Mill shoot in a gallery at my website, from which you can purchase photographic artwork in multiple formats. If this work resonates with you and you haven’t already done so, please consider subscribing to get future project updates.

© Gordon Webster

It was fitting that this project should start in Windsor, Vermont, since of all the places that I have visited in the six New England states, this one is the closest to our Vermont home. My wife and I married in Hartland which is actually a town within Windsor County, of which the nearby town of Woodstock is the county seat. In stark contrast to the kind of places that I have photographed for this project, Woodstock is one of the most picturesque towns, not only in New England, but anywhere in the United States. Woodstock truly embodies the kind of picture postcard vision of New England that I referred to in my introduction to this project; a town center like something from a Norman Rockwell painting, with quaint shops and cozy cafés. A town whose picture-perfect streets are decked in sparkling lights, decorations, and a fresh dusting of snow at Christmas time, all nestled within a scenic valley of mountains and forests.

Nearby Windsor Vermont may share some of the the surrounding scenery, but the vibe downtown is very different.

The town of Windsor is known as the “Birthplace of Vermont” since it is where the constitution of Vermont was signed, creating the Vermont Republic, a sovereign state that was independent from Great Britain. In 1791, as the new state of Vermont, this republic joined the United States. Located on the banks of the Connecticut River, Windsor was ideally situated to become an important commercial hub, which is was from the 18th century through the first half of the twentieth century. Windsor was also the first town in Vermont to break ground for the railroad. The war years of the 1940s were a time of prosperity for the town, with more than a 1,000 of the townspeople employed by the Cone-Blanchard Machine Company manufacturing machines for the aerospace and automotive industries, and a similar number working at the local Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company.

With the closure of these factories in the second half of the twentieth century however, the town’s fortunes declined. With rising unemployment came a decline in the town’s population, which peaked at about 4,500 people in 1960, and had lost almost a quarter of its population according to the 2020 census.

Like many of the once great industrial towns in New England, you can get a sense of Windsor’s former glory days from some of the structures still remaining in the town, such as the old Robbins and Lawrence Armory (now the American Precision Museum) and the Old Constitution House on Main Street, where the delegates of the Vermont Republic met on July 8, 1777, to adopt the first constitution in America to prohibit adult slavery and grant universal male suffrage.

And although it has it has had its share of problems as a result of its declining economic fortunes and population, Windsor still has a lot going for it, including a wonderful old railroad station now repurposed as a restaurant, one of New England’s iconic covered bridges, as well as one of the region’s few surviving railcar diners.

Using the link below, you can browse a curated set of images from Windsor VT in a gallery at my website, from which you can purchase photographic artwork in multiple formats. If this work resonates with you and you haven’t already done so, please consider subscribing to get future project updates.

© Gordon Webster

As a culture, we have a collective tendency to amplify and elevate a kind of shimmering, flawless perfection as the epitome of beauty. We revere the unblemished skin and symmetric features of a model’s face, or the clear, pitch-perfect tones of a singer’s voice. And yet within our DNA, we harbor a deep compulsion towards a more recherché kind of beauty that embraces imperfection and even celebrates its flaws.

An actor whose face does not fit the cultural standards of the handsome and chiseled leading man, and yet is so compelling to watch that we cannot take our eyes off them. A singer with a coarse, unpolished voice that can barely carry a tune and would sound more at home busking on a subway platform than in a concert hall, but who can imbue a song with such raw emotion and authenticity that nobody who hears it can remain unmoved.

So it is in photography as well.

Images of beautiful people and beautiful places are the norm - perfectly-lit models with flawless airbrushed skin, or stunning natural landscapes bathed in the glorious colors of a picture-perfect sunset. Indeed, such images can sometimes feel so prevalent that they risk making a cliché of the very beauty that they portray.

In landscape photography however, beyond the more obvious visual appeal of landscapes shaped by nature, there are equally compelling subjects to be found in the landscapes that have been shaped by man. These subjects exist not only in the symmetry, architecture, and frenetic energy of the places still in use by humans, but also in the quiet places that humans once built and used, before abandoning them as time and circumstance rendered them obsolete or irrelevant. These places aren’t always “pretty” in the conventional sense, but they can be possessed of a kind of forlorn, melancholy beauty that makes them as compelling a subject for landscape photography as the natural landscapes that are the mainstream of the genre.

I am fortunate enough to live in New England, one of the most beautiful and scenic regions of the United States - a landscape photographer’s dream. From mountains and forests decked in fall leaves or fresh snow, to fast running rivers and rugged shorelines, I never grow tired of photographing its stunning, natural beauty. New England’s maritime climate plays its part as well, constantly repainting its spectacular landscapes in shifting patterns of shadow and light, or changing the mood with its restless weather.

There is however, another New England - one that even many of us who live here scarcely give any attention to. In the years following the Industrial Revolution that started in old England, New England would experience a transformation from relatively small agrarian economy to industrial powerhouse - built on industries like shipbuilding, lumber, paper, and textiles. One of the great drivers of this industrial transformation was the region’s vast network of inland waterways which provided not only an efficient and economic means of transporting goods, but also the power to drive the mills that manufactured them. The fast flowing rivers of New England were both literally and figuratively, the driving force of the region’s rapid industrialization.

But we all know where this would ultimately lead.

As the world changed and technology advanced, a lot of these industries were eventually either consolidated, transplanted to other regions and countries where labor and materials were cheaper, or they became largely obsolete. What would be left behind in the wake of these changes, would be a pattern of abandonment, neglect, and decay that would decimate the economic lives of the once proud mill towns clustered around New England’s waterways.

Since 2022, I have been working on a project I call Another New England in which I aim to capture with my camera, the haunting beauty of these abandoned, post-industrial spaces in all six of New England’s states.

It might surprise you to learn that there is any beauty at all to be found in the kind of neglected places that many would dismiss as wastelands, but it’s there if you have eyes to see it. The passing of time and the constant action of the elements can create wonderful colors and patterns on the man-made structures left behind. The soft warmth of crumbling, red brick walls aged by decades of weather. The spectrum of iron oxide reds, oranges, and purples that spreads through a steel girder as it is overtaken by rust.

One of the greatest sources of beauty in these abandoned places, is the way in which nature slowly and patiently reclaims the space. Creeping vines take hold on weathered, red brick walls. Mosses and lichens overrun once pristine stone and concrete surfaces, softening their aspect and making them look more like something you would encounter on a rocky riverbank, than in the foundations of an industrial building. Grasses and flowers seemingly against all odds, force their way up through asphalt and between paving stones, to defiantly replant nature’s flag in a space formerly occupied by man.

For sure, there is often a dark side to the beauty of these abandoned places.

There can be signs of more recent human activity - evidence of a repurposing of the space for more recreational or even creative pastimes. A huge, blank canvas for the graffiti artist. A hidden, inaccessible place largely out of public sight, in which to hang out, to sleep, or to ride the kind of pharmaceutical train that would draw far too much attention in more populated spaces. These abandoned places sometimes have a darker story that is told in graffiti, trash, and discarded needles - not pretty, but a story nonetheless.

Photography is above all else, a medium for telling stories and not all stories are pretty. Of all people, a photographer should understand that shadow always accompanies light.

The bigger story though, is of a great absence - the emptiness left behind by the many lives of those who once settled New England’s river valleys, built these industrial towns, labored in their mills and factories, and raised families there. You can literally feel the history in these places, as if it is imprinted in the brickwork and steel of their crumbling structures. It speaks of the tenacity and optimism of generations for whom these mill towns were the hope for a better life - of their sadness and disappointment at the eventual realization that the world had not only moved on, but in doing so, had also swept away the foundations of the dream on which they had pinned their fortunes.

These abandoned places carry an emotional weight to them that you can feel as you walk around them. Beneath their quiet, meditative stillness, they possess a haunting beauty that compels me to photograph them, and that I strive to convey with my camera. Photography for me, is above all else, a process of learning how to see, and the subtle beauty of these abandoned industrial spaces certainly exercises this urge.

We are daily surrounded by great beauty, but it is often easy to miss, especially when it is hidden in plain sight in places where we might not expect it to be. But to paraphrase one of my favorite writers, Robert Pirsig: “The Buddha, the Godhead, resides quite as comfortably in the crumbling brickwork of an old mill or the rusty iron girders of an abandoned bridge, as he does at the top of a mountain, or in the petals of a flower.”

© Gordon Webster

Want to see more of this other side of New England? Consider subscribing, purchasing my work, or even just buying me a coffee. It all helps support my work.

Subscribe now

My name is Gordon Webster. I am a photographer based in New England, where I divide my time between Cambridge, MA and Hartland VT. This Substack is the home for my project Another New England - an ongoing photographic exploration of New England’s abandoned and post-industrial landscapes. If after reading this article, you follow the link at the end, you can read more about my motivation for this project - kind of an artist’s statement if you like, about why this subject matter appeals to me so much as a photographer.

All of the images from this project are available to purchase in a variety of formats including beautiful, gallery-quality prints that will last a lifetime. The articles on this site include links to galleries where you will find the images used in the articles, as well as a selection of other photographs captured at the various locations I have visited in all 6 New England states. These images are only available through my site, and in many cases, depict abandoned spaces that no longer exist as a result of redevelopment.

So if these images of New England’s abandoned and post-industrial spaces resonate with you, you can support my work by purchasing from my galleries or even just buying me a coffee.

Before we go on - in this age of AI slop, it’s worth stating here that all of my writing and photography is 100% authentic, human-created content - real people, real places, real things. I truly hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoy creating it!

And so, to this project …

For most people, New England is synonymous with idyllic towns set in a picturesque landscape of mountains, rivers, and forests, all decked in fall foliage or soft, powdery snow. This picture postcard portrayal of the region is amplified in virtually all forms of print and digital media and to be fair it is entirely warranted. As somebody who has called the region home for more than twenty-five years I have to admit to a certain amount of bias here, but for me, New England is definitely one of the most beautiful parts of America.

There is however a side of New England that is much less well known to visitors of the region, and even those of us who live here can easily pass it by without giving it a second thought. As one of the earliest settled regions of the United States, New England has a long and rich history of industry and commerce, much of which initially developed around its coastal harbors and inland waterways, and was later further expanded by the railways. From the 18th century through the first half of the 20th century, a significant fraction of New England commerce involved the kind of heavy industry that we would associate with the Industrial Revolution - textiles, manufacturing, shipbuilding, and so on. The region’s abundant inland waterways would play a central role in this industrial expansion - water providing both the means to transport goods and materials efficiently and economically, and the power to drive the mills and machinery needed for manufacturing. Little wonder then that much of New England’s industrial growth was concentrated around these natural water resources upon which this kind of commerce so heavily depended.

But as the world changed and technology advanced, a lot of these industries were eventually either consolidated, transplanted to other regions and countries where labor and materials were cheaper, or they became largely obsolete. Technologies like the internal combustion engine and electricity, along with the expansion of roads and railways, would eventually erode the economic advantages of locating industries next to inland waterways. In time, even the railways would fall into decline. Since their peak at 429,000 miles of track in the U.S. in 1929, the U.S. has lost 63% of its railroads and currently operates about 140,000 miles of track.

The final nail in the coffin was in some sense the burgeoning prosperity of the U.S. itself, as it underwent the familiar trajectory of economic structural transformation that developing nations seem to follow - a phase of de-industrialization accompanied by a rise in the outsourcing of manufacturing to places with lower labor costs.

This decline of the great industrial era in America has dramatically impacted many of the once prosperous mill towns of New England. The loss of industries like textile manufacturing that were once powerful drivers of local economies, have left behind a visible legacy on the landscape, particularly in these mill towns, many of which have now fallen into neglect and decay. And it’s not only the abandoned structures and land left behind by the closure of these businesses that is apparent. The visible decline of these towns is further exacerbated by the lack of opportunity and poverty that this economic decline leaves in its wake. Businesses struggle to stay open in communities where money is tight, and when they end up abandoned and boarded up, it is to the detriment of the other businesses around them. Many residential properties in these towns suffer a similar fate as a declining and economically disadvantaged population reduces the demand for housing.

Another New England is a project that I started in 2022, and on which I am currently still working. My goal is to capture the often haunting, subtle, and melancholy beauty of these places that have been left behind by New England’s industrial past. Looking beyond the surface impressions of desolation and decay in these post-industrial spaces, there is truly a kind of forlorn beauty in the colors, textures, and forms that have been created by years of weathering, and by the gradual reclamation of these spaces by nature herself. The red brick walls of an abandoned mill taken over by vines. Wild flowers sprouting through the cracks in stone walls or the concrete flagstones of an old road that hasn’t seen any traffic in decades. In many of these places there’s a very real sense of their once-vibrant past, of a heyday that has come and gone, leaving a sense of loss in its wake. Beyond the aesthetic aspect of this work, this project also has an industrial archaeology and conservation component to it - recording as it does, a visible legacy of New England’s industrial past that in some places is already starting to disappear.

Recently, more and more of New England’s neglected mill towns are starting to experience something of a revival as their old structures and public spaces are repurposed for modern civic life. Ironically, this might be due (at least in part) to the kind of new technologies that drove the industrial obsolescence in the first place. The rapid expansion of the internet over the last three decades has now made it possible for many jobs to be performed from virtually anywhere that has a decent internet service. This connectivity along with the advent of technologies such as computer-driven manufacturing, also allows smaller enterprises to relocate to less expensive areas that are often more remote and further from the main commercial centers - while still being able to function as efficient and competitive businesses.

While the last century or so has seen a rise in the dominance of the coastal cities of the U.S., the rural, river valley regions in which many of these neglected mill towns are located, offer a potentially vast and largely untapped resource for the U.S. - the large rural tracts of New England being no exception. In fact there are some wonderful initiatives in place to nurture this potential, including the Center on Rural Innovation based in my other hometown of Hartland Vermont. There is already a sense that change is in the air for some of these neglected New England communities, and the early signs of this are visible in towns like Manchester, New Hampshire, and White River Junction, Vermont.

But in New England as in many other regions of the U.S., some serious investment of time, money, and creative effort in these economically disadvantaged areas will be needed to pull them out of stagnation and re-integrate them into more vibrant local economies. But where there is hope, great things can happen - and there is definitely hope. Such efforts are of course, subject to the vicissitudes of America’s economy and politics, but the eventual disappearance of these forgotten spaces seems inevitable one way or another - either through urban renewal, or through the inexorable march of nature gradually erasing the imprint of man’s industrial past on the New England landscape.

I also created a short video that gives a very brief introduction to the project, and a little biographical detail about myself and my photography.

So I promised at the beginning of this article, that I would provide you with a suggestion for an article to visit next, in which I explain my motivation for this project and why I’m so drawn to the particular kind of beauty that I feel these abandoned places have. If this sounds interesting, check out the article The Subtle Beauty of Abandoned Places.

© 2026, Gordon Webster

Want to see more of this other side of New England? Consider subscribing, purchasing my work, or even just buying me a coffee. It all helps support my work.

Subscribe now