Bell Labs, Holmdel. Shutting down.

[yesthattom]

The place where the microwave transmitter, fiber optics, the SNOBAL programming language, and other fine things is shut down and being sold. Here are some beautiful pictures of where I worked for 3.5 years.

http://gallery.planethofmann.com/album/366922#imageID=16651844

Comments

[geeksdoitbetter.livejournal.com]

oOoo

i remember visiting your office there, just before you moved over to lumeta

[unzeugmatic.livejournal.com]

I forgot you worked there.

That building is very near the house I grew up in -- in Middletown, but not too far over the border from Holmdel. (When you get off the Parkway at exit 114 you head one direction to go to Bell Labs and the other directions to get to my parents house, which is only two miles or so from the exit.)

Various dads of my childhood compatriots worked there.

[drwex]

My father worked there for about 13 years while we grew up in a town once called New Shrewsbury and then Tinton Falls.

[unzeugmatic.livejournal.com]

My late uncle Gabriel Spector was mayor of New Shrewsbury at the time it became Tinton Falls.

[drwex]

Do you have an online reference for the shutdown?

[yesthattom.livejournal.com]

First they sold it and the new owner was going to tear it down and build condos. here and http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/14/realestate/commercial/14bell.html?ex=1187928000&en=0820a78c13f4036e&ei=5070
and here.

Then there was a big public debate begging the developer to save the building.

Then they said they'd save part.

I don't know the final outcome.

[ljtourist.livejournal.com]

Wow. That was where I worked right out of college; all those pictures really take me back. The gardens in the back were a great place, and I'd forgotten about the glass elevators completely. Thanks for the refresher.

We always wondered what would eventually become of that place: what other company would move in? A running gag was that it would be turned (or was that returned) into a prison... I don't think we ever thought it'd be demolished.

I can't see MH ever being torn down, though. Aside from the even larger historic angle, those permits for semiconductor manufacture wouldn't easily be regained.