A second chance for the Loray?

A view of the Loray Mill in Gastonia on Monday June 25, 2012. Gastonia leaders announced Monday the acquisition of a Federal Housing Administration loan of almost $21 million to reconfigure the historic mill into loft apartments and retail space.

A few weeks ago a developer announced plans to redevelop two historic high rise buildings in downtown Gastonia into apartments. This week it was announced that another developer has secured a major piece of the funding necessary to start a project to redevelop the historic Loray Mill into apartments. 

For a lot of people in the area, myself included, this is great news. For all too long these structurally sound but very old, and in the case of the Loray Mill, historically significant structures have been abandoned for decades. 

There are still quite a few challenges ahead for the projects, but I'm just glad to see these buildings put back to good use. 

New life

I just found out today that two old high rise office buildings, the Lawyers Building, here, and the Commercial Building in downtown Gastonia are going to be remodeled into apartments and will be open in the next year. I might be moving in...

You can read more about the project in the Gazette story. We should be finding out a lot more at a presentation on Tuesday. 

Waiting...

I recently took a tour of the Commercial Building in downtown Gastonia. It was built in the 1920s, and all but the ground and first floors have been largely abandoned since the '80s.

Walking up the stairs you sort of felt like you were in a time machine, with some of the floors abandoned and left as they were in the '80s, some very obviously in the '70s and still others seemed as though they were unchanged since the '30s.

Truly a forgotten treasure, this building appears to be in perfectly good shape for remodeling into something new. Perhaps a boutique model to compliment the new Gastonia Conference Center which sits on the same city block? That's what I would do if I owned it.

There was also quite a view from the top. I might have to post a picture of that view soon, but for now I'll just tease you.  

The Nurse's Dorm

Pathways Housing and Services Development Coordinator Kim Maguire poses for a photo in the former nurses dormitory on the historic North Carolina Orthopedic Hospital campus in Gastonia on Thursday March 1, 2012.

The building was most recently occupied by the Gaston County Department of Social Services until it was abandoned in the mid '90s. Maguire hopes to secure funding to renovate the building and convert it into veterans' housing.

Paint peels and crumbles away from water-damaged walls inside the building.

Furniture sits discarded inside the building. The last occupant was Gaston County Department of Social Services, who left for a new much large facility in the mid '90s.

Paint peels off of columns on the front facade of the building. 

My new TTV toy

Last week I acted on a tip that a local consignment store going out of business had some old cameras.

There was in fact a Polaroid model 150 roll film camera there. Unlike the other Polaroids I have, you can't get film for these older models anymore, but it was very clean and only $20 so I got it for a shelf piece.

Next to the 150 was a little Kodak Brownie camera for $15. Not in pristine condition by any means, but unlike the Brownie I've had for a while this one had a clear viewfinder with no lines.

That means TTV time baby!

That's "thought the viewfinder" for the uninitiated, wherein you use a modern digital camera to shoot through the waist level finder of a Brownie or some other such camera.

I know what you're thinking. It's sort of silly using the dirty viewfinder of a 50-year-old camera that wasn't even a good camera to start with in order to get low-fi pictures out of a $7,000 digital SLR set up.

If this boggles your mind, just think of the Brownie as a cheap but cumbersome filter that produces vintage looking pictures. It's sort of like the Hipstamatic app on my iPhone, but unlike the iPhone, I have all the motion-stopping shutter speeds and low light performance of that state of the art Canon Mark IV taking the pictures.

I took a little walk around downtown Gastonia the next day to play around with it. After adjusting to the reversed image in the viewfinder it was fun to use. I got these pictures a and a few odd looks from people on the street.

Downtown

A few recent Hipstamatic photos of downtown Gastonia.

The ruins of Alba Mill

I recently explored the ruins of Alba Mill in rural Gaston County north of Stanley, thanks to the tip of my colleague Leo Hohmann who makes it a hobby to find old abandoned historical treasure like this.

As best as I've been able to find out, this is an old paper mill, but the internet didn't offer much information.

In any event, it's been long abandoned and barely any of it is still standing. I thought it was a pretty cool place to explore and I'll probably return to take more pictures in the future.

OKI 2011

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Here are some Hipstamatic photos from my recent week of vacation on Oak Island and surrounding areas, including Southport and Wilmington. 


My goal was to shoot all week with only the Hipstamatic app on my iPhone 4, but I caved on the penultimate day of the trip and took a few sunset pictures (this one and this one) with my "real" camera. I'm weak, I guess.

Battle of Ramsour's Mill

I was assigned to photograph the Battle of Ramsour's Mill Celebration and Reenactment at a historic site in Lincolnton today. Due to a low turn out of reenactors this year, they chose not to do an actual Revolutionary War battle simulation (bummer) and the weather scared people off too.

There were actually over a hundred spectators when I arrived, but they quickly dispersed after the afternoon's demonstrations (below). With few visitors interacting with the reenactors I didn't have much to photograph, but I got all that I needed anyway and was able to spend the down time learning a thing or two about history myself.

And I think I must have spent half an hour watching this line of thunder storms roll in and precipitate (pun intended) a mass retreat from the battlefield. As ominous as the sky was, the storms turned out to be pretty mild.

Imperial Mill

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I recently took some time to stroll through the abandoned and gutted Imperial Mill building in Belmont. At over 100 years old, it's one of the oldest in the area, but demolition will continue if no one steps up to redevelop the site soon.

I was assigned to go take picture of this mill and one other in Belmont when demolition work began several months ago, but only had time to get a few shots of each. This is a large mill, and I wanted to go back and wander around exploring a little more.

As luck would have it, I procrastinated until I went into work one day and had an assignment to get more pictures of the mill, and lots of time to do it. I would have gone back on my own time, but I can't complain about getting to do it on the clock.