A Look Under the Bridge: Danbury’s Hidden Art Project
I see Danbury in a way that most “normal” people don’t.
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To me, it’s a product of its residents, we all created it, for better or worse. Every person who lives or works here leaves their mark on it in one way or another. The impact left is different for everyone, often intangible, but some people make something you can actually see and touch, like graffiti.
Under the Bridge – Danbury’s Hidden Art Project
Danbury, CT has a lot of murals which have been sanctioned by the city and then there is the illegal graffiti. The Hat City has its fair share of illegal graffiti but most of it, is off the beaten-path. It’s near the train tracks, and under bridges, it’s in places most residents will never go. I intentionally seek these places out. I like to go to places most people would find scary, grimy or even dangerous. I’m willing to climb over downed trees, step on broken glass and dodge rusting metal to find my way to a place I was never meant to see.
Ferris Bueller: “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and take a look around once in a while, you could miss it.”
P.S. If you're disappointed with my photos, I'm sorry, so am I. I was way too focused on the scale of the bridge and the amount of art so details took a back seat. Now, I have to go back.
Behind the Walls of CT's Abandoned Norwich State Hospital
In this day and age, mental health treatment is serious business and in most cases, patients are treated with care and respect. This was not always the case in the U.S. and hospitals dedicated to the "mentally ill" became prisons that regularly conducted torture. America is now littered with shuttered hospitals decaying from the inside and the outside. Many believe these places still contain the dark energy left behind by the gruesome acts of the past. One of these places in Norwich State Hospital.
In 1970, Two Men Robbed a Danbury Bank + Blew Up the Police Station
The story of the Pardue brothers, their connection to Danbury and what happened in the Hat City in February of 1970 came to us from Mike Allen. Every Tuesday Mike joins the Ethan and Lou Show on I-95 for a feature called "The Place You Live" and this week it was a local story unlike any I'd ever heard.
John Pardue was a 27-year-old man in 1970 who lived in Danbury, his brother James was 23, and living in Lusby, MD. Before the story finds its way to the Hat City, and the brothers rob the Union Savings Bank on Main Street, they had already racked up quite the list of astonishing crimes.
Prior to Danbury, they robbed banks in Lewisboro, NY, Georgetown, CT and Union, MO. They also killed their father, their grandmother, two other men who helped them pull off the robbery in Georgetown, CT and had, at minimum, a role in the death of an innocent Bridgeport man that they stole a car from. John and James Pardue were hardened criminals before their Danbury bank robbery.