After finding my way out of the chaotic construction site that is Stamford Station, I had but to cross a few streets to encounter the luxury complexes of Stamford South End, including Harbor Point: “the perfect place to LIVE, WORK, and PLAY”.

Gritty-chic is the name of the game, as abandoned brick factories abut reconstructed brick “factories” abut slick steel abut modern glass. It’s hard to separate the merely dilapidated from the intentionally dilapidated, from the still-under-construction-but-soon-to-be-stylishly-unkempt.

I made a beeline for 644 Atlantic Street, the site of the old Blickensderfer Typewriter factory. Now gutted, the building once housed the largest and most innovative typewriter manufactory in the world.

Nearby, I found Schleicher & Sons, a remnant from the hay day of the upright piano.

Elsewhere in the neighborhood, I saw more old buildings giving their best go at a second life as wine bars, fast food restaurants, and co-working spaces.

 

I was most curious what had become of Yale & Towne’s old lock factory, which established the South End as Stamford’s industrial heart, and became the cornerstone of the city’s economy. Today, it is a collection of loft-style apartments, with bits and pieces of the old factory popping warmly against the monochromatic and slightly austere backdrop of modern residential life. The effect was a bit jarring, to see what was once proudly utilitarian now incorporated as a design element.

My favorite part of the new Yale & Towne is its proximity to Fairway Market, a sprawling and beautifully undesigned warehouse of groceries and intoxicants. A food desert this new South End is not.

I couldn’t leave South End without paying homage to the canal, once a critical conduit for transporting goods into and out of the city, driving Stamford’s economy.

I had expected some sort of manicured park, and was surprised to find heavy industry still crowding the canal’s banks. A sand and stone yard took up prime waterfront real estate. The acrid smell of burning tires wafted around me, and I followed it to the epic scene of the Rubino Brothers’ open air metal yard. Giant claws lifted up whole cars into the crusher, as I gaped on.

A bit down the canal, I saw another set of Rubino claws lifting crushed cars into a barge, presumably to transport downriver toward some equally interesting dismemberment process. How wonderfully historic, I mused, for a city to still be using the canal that fed its founding, not for tour boats, not for some scenic backdrop to urban life, but for the same purpose for which that canal was built. This ongoing manifestation of history, I realized, roots a place to its identity more than any repurposed factory ever can.