The Alexander Unger Cigar Box Company occupied a block in New Brunswick, New Jersey, manufacturing wooden boxes used by neighboring Johnson & Johnson to package products including talcum powder. The factory was demolished in 1978 as part of a much larger redevelopment of downtown New Brunswick. Johnson & Johnson’s new corporate headquarters rose on the site, marking the city’s transition from an older manufacturing economy toward corporate redevelopment.

I was a Rutgers student when I photographed the Alexander Unger factory in 1978. I spent time nearby in an urban-planning professor’s loft in Hiram Market, using his light tables to assemble slide shows of the ruins I was photographing; that neighborhood was later demolished too. A decade later I worked at one of Johnson & Johnson’s advertising agencies during the Tylenol crisis, giving me another unexpected connection to the site.