American Cyanamid was a leading fertilizer company whose success broadened its horizons to a vast range of industrial and chemical products. It fell to pieces in the 1990s under the weight of patent lawsuits, corporate reorganizations and decades of environmental pollution. These pictures were captured in in New Jersey by an urban explorers. Haunting images offer a glimpse into the decaying remains of an abandoned American Cyanamid Research Facility once sued for dumping hazardous substances.
The American Cyanamid Company employed roughly 900 researchers when it opened in 1960. Located along a busy commercial stretch of Route 1, the research complex provided ample space for testing its agricultural and medical products, both in its laboratories and on live plants and animals in its greenhouses, pastures and pens. Cyanamid continued there until 1994, when the company merged with American Home Products, a conglomerate that manufactured food, healthcare, and household products.
After the AHP acquisition, the Cyanamid conglomerate was disassembled over a period of years. The $1.7 billion agricultural business was sold in 2000 to the German chemical giant BASF, raising BASF Today the site is owned by a real estate company who hopes to build a mixed-use development on the plot. However the project seems to be held up by zoning issues the future of this massive research complex is uncertain but for now it will continue to be reclaimed by nature.
The eerily empty offices, greenhouses and storage facilities may not survive much longer, if the developer has any say in the matter. In its last years, the company was involved in numerous legal issues related to its earlier environmental pollution. Tens of millions more were spent in efforts to clean up large wastewater pools which had decades of accumulation of toxic, carcinogenic, and teratogenic chemicals.
