Tag Archives: dick alvey

Kingsport Foundry

kptfoundry

This was taken in March, 2004.  The foundry, begun in 1927, had been unable to struggle through past 2003.  Later, after all the buildings had been demolished, I used to walk around and marvel at the massive concrete foundations for the heavy machinery used in the making of iron castings.  Foundries have a particular odor, mostly of metal and furnaces.  You could just get the faintest whiff of it.  Look in Dick Alvey’s Wings over Kingsport for an aerial view of this operation in the late 30s and, again, in the 60s.

I was going to link to the book on amazon.com, but it’s currently out of print.  You can occasionally run across it at local antique stores.

 

 

Kingsport Foundry

This was in 2004.  The business had already closed by this time.  There’s a good aerial shot of this complex in its heyday in the “Wings Over Kingsport” second edition by Dick Alvey. I interviewed him once when I had a talk show on a little station in Kingsport.  He was a pleasant guy.  He gladly gave me permission to use a shot of Broad Street he’d taken from the upper window of the train station tower back in 1939.  I worked up a (not very good) ink drawing from it.  Made prints.  Sold some.+
Kingsport Foundry