History of the Complex
IBM (International Business Machines) began operations in the outlying rural region of Kingston -- a small city in the Hudson Valley -- in 1955, introducing the old world to a new, modernized way of life, initially manufacturing typewriters and complex computing systems for the military. IBM-Kingston would later specialize in constructing and distributing computer mainframes, data managing and storing systems that fill entire rooms and would pave the way for the computer-driven lifestyle we live in today. IBM experienced prolific success here by producing such innovative technology, so the complex consequently expanded over their 40 year occupancy in the area, leading to substantial infrastructural growth in the surrounding region and eventually housing a collective of over 7,000 workers ranging from clerks and factory attendees to engineers and programmers.
Aerial view of IBM-Kingston in the early 1960s -- the expansive corporate architecture of the complex radically reconfigured the rural landscape to house the computer operations of IBM. The company's personal advancement worked in tandem with the movement of modernization and suburbanization of the same era, leading to further infrastructural changes to the surrounding region.
Image of two men in BLDG 001 of IBM-Kingston tending to the construction of the SAGE System in 1955. This was a military targeting system utilized by the US government to survey the airspace in the case of an attack from the Soviets during the Cold War. IBM initially erected the Kingston complex to construct this system, and later expanded the scope of their work.
IBM Punchcard -- the original method by which information was processed and stored in analog computers. The information in this card being stored is a negative image of a blueprint schematic of a vent system in BLDG005N.
However, after a dramatic shift in the the computer market generated by the increasing presence of laptop and desktop computers posed by competing corporations, IBM was forced to withdraw from the Kingston location in 1995 to cut annual losses and attempt to retain its prominence as an imposing tech giant. In completely ceasing operations and pulling away thousands of workers, Kingston would feel the void of IBM's once long and embedded presence. The property was later purchased by a commercial real estate agent, who renamed the existing buildings Tech City in the effort to redevelop the expansive corporate space. However, it became quickly identifiable that this would be an almost insurmountable feat to revitalize the expansive property without the prominence of another massive tech company. A quarter century after IBM's departure, with much of the property frozen in time, locals have thus referred to this place as the Tech City Ruins, which I have explored and analyzed in all of its strangeness as a forgotten tech world. In the archive room hidden in the complex, I was also able to discover rich visual evidence of the world that existed here prior when IBM harnessed the fabrication of the future with their computer technology. Some of the visual material I recovered included black and white prints from the 1950s-60s (shown above), 35mm slides from the 1970s-80s (shown below), and original architectural blueprints.
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IBM 3090 Mainframe System Setup - Introduced in 1985
IBM System 7 Mainframe - Introduced in 1971
Obscured Man in Laboratory
Mainframe Maintenance and Distribution in BLDG 043
The Concrete Creature as it Rests
Only small sections of the complex—those of which that are still standing—have been leased out to a variety of small businesses by Tech City. The occupied sections have kept the ecosystem in living condition even if in a notably weakened state, as the tenants have manipulated office and warehouse spaces to accommodate their own ways of life. In mapping the usage of space occupancy, these businesses only constitute fragments of the generally abandoned but still slightly maintained and supervised architectural shell. Much of the spaces have completely stood still, and others have more visibly suffered from the deteriorating effects of nature or have been ravaged by the hand of man through demolition. The full lifespan of architecture is visible throughout the complex with some buildings retaining some active occupancy, others growing increasingly empty and uninhabitable, and rubble piles of the demolished buildings lying on the plots of their former existence.
The taxidermy shop located in BLDG 022.
Pile of debris containing chunks of BLDGS 003-005.
A simplified design of the campus map, indicating the range of use, disuse, and disintegration throughout the buildings of the complex since Tech City's reign.
A diagram created from a satellite image of the complex that is overlaid with the original architectural blueprint of the plot, drawn in July 1954, which depicts the gradation of building disintegration from back to front.
In the empty sections of the complex, the preserved space feels imagined, like walking through the inners of hollowed out computer chasms, the semblance of human presence and life almost entirely vanished from the perturbed chambers. But to think that at a point in time, extended over the duration of some forty years, they had once held a ceaseless ambling of workers coming and going, thinking and plotting, building and attaching, writing and designing, living and breathing. This complex once served as a foundational site that propelled the greater tech movement and aided the world's immersion into the interconnected digital networks that shape our experience of the world today. Despite the level of advancement it once conjured, it now resides as a shell of the world it was fabricating. The complex itself has become identifiable as an artifact of the modern world that has become dominated by exponential technological growth, exemplifying that even the most technologically advanced and human-fabricated places are susceptible to the Earth's natural processes.