Goltens Marine
For 60 years, machines and tools clanged though the cavernous Goltens Marine machine shop in Red Hook, Brooklyn. Mechanics rebuilt giant engines and drive systems of ships and tankers stranded throughout the world. On July 3, 2014, Goltens closed. The building was sold to a New York City real estate developer—a casualty of the neighborhood’s changing demographics and corporate consolidation. These photos capture Goltens’ final days, and the employees who built their careers (for some, as many as 40 years) in its greasy workshops and (now missing) towering machines.
Golten Marine’s main workshop area two days before shuttering, 2014
Ivo Sisic and Sandro Morelli, longtime Goltens’ employees
The remains of a stripped workshop near the facility’s downstairs office
With the heavy equipment removed, soon-to-be laid off workers sort through the facility’s remaining supplies
One of the facility’s empty loading bays
Edik Fishman climbing stairs to decommission the workshop's electrical system
One of the many safety signs posted throughout the facility
The view from the building's roof on 9/11/2001
Million-dollar Manhattan views from Goltens’ second floor workshop
An empty workshop
The locker room and bathroom
Dominic Rama, one of the Goltens’ longtime employees, deconstructing his former workplace
Dominic Rama's grease-stained hands
Years of grease and grit cover an empty Goltens workshop