This is really a relic from an entirely different era. The all-wooden building is in a very late stage of decay and one can really wonder for how long time it has been abandoned and how long time it will take before it all collapses into a giant pile of rubble. A not too advanced guess is that it closed around 1960 or so, after a few years of falling output. Presumably the old-fashioned setup made it hopelessly non-competitive as brand-new oil-fired brick works with a high level of automation went into operation during the 1950s.

The story of these old abandoned plants is more or less the same. The post-WWII era simply eradicated the foundation for labor intensive business as wages followed the overall increase in living standards. Facing a society with full-employment, the new urban rock n' roll generation was simply not interested in following their grand parents footsteps into the darkness and poor conditions of these old industries. A rapidly sinking relative productivity, an aging workforce, overall increased costs and a fiercer competition became a lethal combination of factors and in the twenty-year period between 1955 and 1975, a massive onslaught killed most of these industries. Another important factor was the industrialization of house building with centralized planning and usage of prefabricated structures. Hand-made production meant less consistent output and quality which was okay when buildings were also hand-made. Skilled eyes could then sort and adjust the result to take this into account, whereas the new high productivity customers required perfect consistency and exact dimensions. A bit off topic, but one can wonder if that has anything to do with the fact that old brick structures are so much more appealing than new ones... ?

The few that eventually survived this period typically died in the following ten year period when energy prices soared and recession marked the end of the post-WWII growth era.

Interesting and thoughtful, I think...
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