So I went to enjoy the beautiful day by driving around Somerset/Middlesex in search of interesting things. Going down Easton, the first thing I came across was the Abraham Statts House in South Bound Brook. It is a quaint old house, overlooking the Canal. With the sun shining and a few 
hawks in the air, one can almost imagine how life was once. Adjacent to is a housing complex. It is amazing how much this house has seen. Built in the mid-18th century, before the canal, before the Revolution. This house has seen the change of times; no longer is the area Dutchmen, exporting crops and homemade goods. After a few more shots, I continued along following the canal road where it becomes Weston. Along that portion of the canal there is a house built for the lock man, the person in charge of allowing commerce to flow from the various homes and villages of the Raritan to the larger towns of Philadelphia and New York. (Depending which way you floated of course.) The canal is a very lovely, quiet place that allows for good biking or canoeing. I arrived at the lock just before the downfall, and even then the canal had become fast-moving, with the water rushing through the remains of the lock. Though the canal is obsolete as a means of commercial transportation, much remains of the lock system, which can create very pleasant waterfalls. One of which I enjoyed, until that freak rainstorm, which sent me packing to drier places....and so I went home.
hawks in the air, one can almost imagine how life was once. Adjacent to is a housing complex. It is amazing how much this house has seen. Built in the mid-18th century, before the canal, before the Revolution. This house has seen the change of times; no longer is the area Dutchmen, exporting crops and homemade goods. After a few more shots, I continued along following the canal road where it becomes Weston. Along that portion of the canal there is a house built for the lock man, the person in charge of allowing commerce to flow from the various homes and villages of the Raritan to the larger towns of Philadelphia and New York. (Depending which way you floated of course.) The canal is a very lovely, quiet place that allows for good biking or canoeing. I arrived at the lock just before the downfall, and even then the canal had become fast-moving, with the water rushing through the remains of the lock. Though the canal is obsolete as a means of commercial transportation, much remains of the lock system, which can create very pleasant waterfalls. One of which I enjoyed, until that freak rainstorm, which sent me packing to drier places....and so I went home.Soon after the stopping of the rain, I found myself once again on the road, this time in Helmetta. Helmetta is one of those quaint Central Jersey towns; it has a Main Street, a firehouse, houses from various decades, and an abandoned snuff factory, from the days of yore... A good website to check out the history of this interesting place is:
http://www.jamesburg.net/snuffedout01.html.
The site talks of another amazing historical place that will soon be devoured by housing developments. While I only stuck to the outside, the factory is amazing. It is a gigantic structure that dwarfs anything else in the town. Pictures will be posted shortly, or as soon as I can go get them developed. The decay and eventual destruction of this factory shows the overall decay and loss of small-America. Places of historic, or intrinsic value are being gobbled up for profit and greed. It is quite depressing. Most the times people turn to destruction as the answer. In Milltown, the township has saved the namesake of their town: The Mill, by turning it into apartments. While the inside is different from its industrial past, the Mill that gives Milltown its name will continue sitting tall and proud. It makes me wonder if this could not be used more. Who wouldn't think it would be interesting to live in an apartment that was once a snuff factory? But all this has made me pondered: If old buildings of beauty and majesty are destroyed for newer concepts of beauty and majesty and for progressive growth, how long before that new building is labeled old and becomes nothing but dust?
