How I Scout (Without Giving Away the Spots)
Everyone wants to know where I find this stuff. The mills, the houses, the places half-eaten by vines that somehow still have their bones intact. So let me tell you the actual answer — because it's simpler than people think, and it's older than the internet.
I use a map.
A map has always been an explorer's best friend. You don't need a tip from a forum. You don't need someone whispering a location to you. You crack open a map on the kitchen table or pull one up on your phone, and you'll see something you never noticed driving past it a hundred times.
Sanborn Maps Are Where I Live
The ones I really get lost in are Sanborn fire insurance maps. These got drawn up for insurance companies back in the 1800s and early 1900s, so they show every mill, every shop building, every store house, every reservoir — labeled by number, footprint, and use.
Pull up a Sanborn from 1923 and you're holding a snapshot of an industrial town frozen at its peak. You can see what's still standing today. You can see what's been demolished. And in the gap between those two — that's where the story lives.
The Conant Thread Company / J & P Coats complex in Pawtucket and Central Falls is a perfect example. The map lays out Mill No. 6, Mill No. 5, the Bleachery, the Dye House, the reservoirs, the cooling basin — a whole industrial city on one sheet.
Then you pull up to the site and you're staring at the same Mill No. 6 — that brick tower with the crenellated top and "1919" carved into the stone. The castle-looking stair tower. Same building. A hundred years apart. The map gives you the imagination. The road trip gives you what's left.
What Makes Me Pull Over
Bell towers do it for me every time.
These towers used to be the alarm clock for an entire village. The bell rang and people got up, went to work, came home. A whole community ran on sound. We don't think about it anymore because we've got phones and notifications and clocks on every wall — but there was a time when one tower told a whole town what hour it was and what they were supposed to be doing.
That's what I'm photographing. Not just brick and decay. I'm photographing the bones of a way of life we take for granted now.
Going Back Through the Seasons
For most of these places — mills or houses — I try to go back through every season I can. Winter, spring, summer, but fall hits the best. Something about that golden light against weathered brick, the vines turning red before they let go. That's the stuff that genuinely stops people scrolling.
The scouting has turned into something bigger lately, too. I'm doing full history deep-dives now — reading up on the people who worked these mills, the families who lived in the abandoned houses, the dates stamped into the cornerstones. The writing has become part of the work, not just the captions.
What I Share. What I Don't.
Real talk on this one.
I don't name every place I visit publicly. The ones that have already been demolished — those I can tell the full story on, because there's nothing left to protect. They're gone. That's the whole point of having documented them in the first place.
But the places still standing? A lot of them I've photographed and never reshared, and probably never will, because I know what happens when locations leak. The secrecy is part of the protection.
If a spot has a story that's still being told and I can share it without putting a target on it, I will — but I'll keep the visuals vague and the address out of the caption. That's the balance.
Documentation is the whole point. The map shows me what was. The camera shows me what's left. The blog is where I put both of them together so neither one disappears.
Run of the Mill is what I do over at Filmmaker Dave. If old buildings, lost places, and the forgotten corners of New England are your thing, hit the link for everything I'm working on — including prints if you want to take a piece home.
More soon.
#PVD #ProvidenceRI #RhodeIsland #FilmmakerDave #RunOfTheMill #SanbornMaps #ConantThread #PawtucketRI #CentralFallsRI
Comments
Post a Comment