7 ms·

Bell Works New Jersey

57 points by graderjs 4y ago

lunaticlabs 4y ago
I worked at a startup working with haptic touch screens, and got to participate in a student hack-a-thon with our hardware at this location around 2014-2015. At the time, it looked like the pictures here: https://metropolismag.com/projects/eero-saarinens-bell-labs-now-devoid-life/ https://metropolismag.com/projects/eero-saarinens-bell-labs-... Got to spend the night in the building, and the most interesting part was wandering around into the offices that still had writing on the chalkboards/whiteboards lamenting the closure of the building and Bell Labs/Lucent. It was an amazing experience!
andyjohnson0 4y ago
Pictures of the building back in 2013 when it was empty and still awaiting redevelopment: https://metropolismag.com/projects/eero-saarinens-bell-labs-now-devoid-life/ https://metropolismag.com/projects/eero-saarinens-bell-labs-...
walrus01 4y ago
For anyone interested in this in general, googling "history of Bell Labs" has a number of fascinating pages to read. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_Labs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_Labs https://www.wired.com/2014/09/coupland-bell-labs/ https://www.wired.com/2014/09/coupland-bell-labs/ I was following the re-use of this building into modern smaller office spaces shortly before covid19 hit the commercial real estate market. I hope they're doing OK. Spaces were getting leased and companies were moving in and then a vast number of things shifted to remote work/full work-from home, and I'm not sure to what extent they've really recovered. I have a theory that the original placement of Bell Labs, back in the day, was chosen by the higher ranking executives to be conveniently close to their large homes in some leafy suburbs out in that particular part of NJ. It's not really what you could call a hotbed of tech innovation and local commute-distance talent pool nowadays, compared to locating a company in some retrofitted space in NYC.
- jmartrican 4y ago
  Many of the developers that work in the city live near this area. A lot of software developers live in Monmouth and Middlesex counties in NJ.
  - roflyear 4y ago
    Correct. Cheaper and you can have a yard.
- TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
  > chosen by the higher ranking executives to be conveniently close to their large homes in some leafy suburbs out in that particular part of NJ Edison, NJ is not far away and was definitely a hotbed of tech in the late 1800s and early 1900s (Thomas Edison).
  - evanelias 4y ago
    Minor correction: although Edison had his first lab in Menlo Park (today's Edison NJ) for ten years, he later moved to a larger campus in West Orange NJ in order to be closer to NYC, and spent four decades there. They're about 25 miles apart, in different counties. But yes, lots of tech history throughout NJ!
    - graderjs 4y ago
      Sorry, probably a stupid question but isn't Menlo Park in Cali...where FB is??
      - TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
        There’s more than one Menlo Park in the US. We’re talking about the one in New Jersey: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menlo_Park,_New_Jersey https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menlo_Park,_New_Jersey In 1876, Thomas Edison set up his home and research laboratory in Menlo Park, which at the time was the site of an unsuccessful real estate development named after the town of Menlo Park, California.[4] While there, he earned the nickname "the Wizard of Menlo Park".[5] The Menlo Park lab was significant in that it was one of the first laboratories to pursue practical, commercial applications of research.[6] It was in his Menlo Park laboratory that Thomas Edison invented the phonograph and developed a commercially viable incandescent light bulb filament. Christie Street in Menlo Park was one of the first streets in the world to use electric lights for illumination.
toddm 4y ago
Note that this building is also known as the HQ for Lumon in the show Severence: https://www.fastcompany.com/90762774/jessica-lee-gagne-severance-cinematographer-most-creative-people-2022 https://www.fastcompany.com/90762774/jessica-lee-gagne-sever...
- lotsofpulp 4y ago
  What an awful mobile website experience. You scroll down and the video stays locked and auto playing on top.
  - blamazon 4y ago
    Such annoyances seem to be table stakes for modern media conglomerate sites these days. It's profoundly embarrassing to our species that even a publication like Fast Company purporting to be at the front edge of tech, business, and design, gives in to so much bloatware.
- blamazon 4y ago
  I went on a kick looking up Severance locations recently, the 'Perpetuity Wing' is the Hudson River Museum in Yonkers, NY, and is worth a visit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hudson_River_Museum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hudson_River_Museum It's interesting in general how that show was produced in the 'tri-state area'. (Not sure how else to call this - the urbanized junction of NJ/NY/CT radiating outwards from NYC)
  - uni_rule 4y ago
    "Tri-state area" is more succinct than "New York City Metropolitan Area" and more people will understand it than the "Mid-Atlantic Region" (which is also physically a slightly different region).
- graderjs 4y ago
  It's funny: I'm partitioning a LaCie hard-drive while watching Severance
lordleft 4y ago
I work at AT&T Labs. We often drive over to Bell Works for our lunch break; it's a lovely mixed used space, and also a chance to keep in touch with a part of AT&T history.
DIARRHEA_xd 4y ago
I take Everett Rd to work every day. The revamp and surrounding developments have pushed the whole population of deer curbside. I have had 3 near collisions in the past year. My friends, about the same. Be warned
eschulz 4y ago
https://bell.works/chicagoland/explore/ https://bell.works/chicagoland/explore/
dnamlin 4y ago
The square footage of this building is double that of Meta's MPK 20/21 complex, and comparable to the entire Googleplex. It wasn't even headquarters for Bell Labs. A reminder....all glory is fleeting!
- walrus01 4y ago
  all glory to the hypnotoad
- blamazon 4y ago
  "And on the pedestal, these words appear: My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings; Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
- googlryas 4y ago
  SV seems to have a little more depth to it. Were there many other high tech companies in the Holmdel region back in the 80s, or was this a little island of the future in a land of farms and Springsteen?
  - a-dub 4y ago
    > SV seems to have a little more depth to it. there would have been no need for silicon if it hadn't been for the things invented at bell labs.
    - googlryas 4y ago
      By depth I meant depth of the job market and community. As in, there is more than just one big employer, which is why I was asking if there were any other big tech companies in/near Holmdel than Bell
      - a-dub 4y ago
        oh. well i think if you had a job at bell labs, depth of job market wasn't a concern. as i understand it was in a class of its own.
mradek 4y ago
Used to go there daily for a project a few years ago. Pretty interesting campus and spent some time walking the hallways. They had some ancient looking computers which was interesting.
jmartrican 4y ago
Don't sleep on NJ. It has "the highest number of millionaires both per capita and per square mile in the U.S., and hosting more scientists and engineers per square mile than anywhere else in the world."
- roflyear 4y ago
  NJ is expensive as all hell but it is also a safe, enjoyable place to live. Lots to offer.
  - throwaway74829 4y ago
    It's absolutely lovely. The wealthier pockets remind of a less mountainy Switzerland.
  - subpixel 4y ago
    I am one of those kids from a nice part New Jersey who left and will never back. We are legion.
    - mikeweiss 4y ago
      Curious... Where do you live now and why would you never come back?
      - orangepurple 4y ago
        Not OP but... there's the debt problem. https://www.njspotlightnews.org/2022/05/nj-state-owes-bondholders-more-than-48-billion-up-4-billion-last-fiscal-year-among-most-indebted-states/ https://www.njspotlightnews.org/2022/05/nj-state-owes-bondho...
        deltree7 4y ago
        That's as dumb as saying US has the highest debt among all countries and don't live there. Probably good to pick Somalia because they have low debt
planetsprite 4y ago
New Jersey's Googleplex The Gabagoogleplex
- notacop31337 4y ago
  A+
rdm70 4y ago
Back around 83 I got to do a project at this facility working with a guy who built prototypes of consumer products. I was in middle school. The project was to make a wireless joystick for the apple 2. You could go to the basement and fill out an order sheet and get any kind of electronic component. The order was filled on the spot while you stood there. I didn’t know anything about the assembly written for the project. The mentor did all that. However I got to do all the wire wrapping and some of the other bits. It worked! Good times. No doubt this is one of the reasons I ended up as an engineer…
rrdharan 4y ago
I interned at Lucent in 2000 and had a desk / cube in this building: http://www.extropia.com/hacks/webcal/WCfacility.html http://www.extropia.com/hacks/webcal/WCfacility.html It was my first “real” office job and I just assumed all office buildings were that grandiose! Only later did I realize how fortunate I was.. Anyway I occasionally visit it now as Bell Works and am glad it has found a second life - hopefully one that lasts at least as long as its first incarnation.
- roflyear 4y ago
  It's kind of out in the boonies but well worth the visit. Awesome building.
- rrdharan 4y ago
  p.s. I wrote that code in about a day, and then spent a month trying to figure out how to deploy it on the IBM-managed Windows NT IIS machines with only some ancient Perl available (5.005 maybe?) and no option to upgrade. IIRC it involved printf-over-email debugging where the IT folks would try and deploy it, email me the errors, I’d iterate and we’d repeat. Was a pretty valuable experience in some ways - good taste of enterprise computing realities…
dr_ 4y ago
I grew up near here and visit once in a while when I come to see my rents. It’s a nice, large space. The holmdel public library has actually moved into it. Not a huge fan of the surrounding McMansions they’ve built, but Bell Works itself is a good place to grab a bite, go for a walk, grab a drink - and of course to work. Always wondered if the Holmdel area could’ve been SV, but I don’t think there was the same level of entrepreneurial risk taking as there was in the Valley.
aj7 4y ago
It’s basically a food court with aspirations.

57 points by graderjs 4y ago

I worked at a startup working with haptic touch screens, and got to participate in a student hack-a-thon with our hardware at this location around 2014-2015. At the time, it looked like the pictures here: https://metropolismag.com/projects/eero-saarinens-bell-labs-now-devoid-life/ https://metropolismag.com/projects/eero-saarinens-bell-labs-... Got to spend the night in the building, and the most interesting part was wandering around into the offices that still had writing on the chalkboards/whiteboards lamenting the closure of the building and Bell Labs/Lucent. It was an amazing experience!

andyjohnson0 4y ago

Pictures of the building back in 2013 when it was empty and still awaiting redevelopment: https://metropolismag.com/projects/eero-saarinens-bell-labs-now-devoid-life/ https://metropolismag.com/projects/eero-saarinens-bell-labs-...

walrus01 4y ago

For anyone interested in this in general, googling "history of Bell Labs" has a number of fascinating pages to read. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_Labs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_Labs https://www.wired.com/2014/09/coupland-bell-labs/ https://www.wired.com/2014/09/coupland-bell-labs/ I was following the re-use of this building into modern smaller office spaces shortly before covid19 hit the commercial real estate market. I hope they're doing OK. Spaces were getting leased and companies were moving in and then a vast number of things shifted to remote work/full work-from home, and I'm not sure to what extent they've really recovered. I have a theory that the original placement of Bell Labs, back in the day, was chosen by the higher ranking executives to be conveniently close to their large homes in some leafy suburbs out in that particular part of NJ. It's not really what you could call a hotbed of tech innovation and local commute-distance talent pool nowadays, compared to locating a company in some retrofitted space in NYC.

jmartrican 4y ago
Many of the developers that work in the city live near this area. A lot of software developers live in Monmouth and Middlesex counties in NJ.
- roflyear 4y ago
  Correct. Cheaper and you can have a yard.
TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
> chosen by the higher ranking executives to be conveniently close to their large homes in some leafy suburbs out in that particular part of NJ Edison, NJ is not far away and was definitely a hotbed of tech in the late 1800s and early 1900s (Thomas Edison).
- evanelias 4y ago
  Minor correction: although Edison had his first lab in Menlo Park (today's Edison NJ) for ten years, he later moved to a larger campus in West Orange NJ in order to be closer to NYC, and spent four decades there. They're about 25 miles apart, in different counties. But yes, lots of tech history throughout NJ!
  - graderjs 4y ago
    Sorry, probably a stupid question but isn't Menlo Park in Cali...where FB is??
    - TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
      There’s more than one Menlo Park in the US. We’re talking about the one in New Jersey: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menlo_Park,_New_Jersey https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menlo_Park,_New_Jersey In 1876, Thomas Edison set up his home and research laboratory in Menlo Park, which at the time was the site of an unsuccessful real estate development named after the town of Menlo Park, California.[4] While there, he earned the nickname "the Wizard of Menlo Park".[5] The Menlo Park lab was significant in that it was one of the first laboratories to pursue practical, commercial applications of research.[6] It was in his Menlo Park laboratory that Thomas Edison invented the phonograph and developed a commercially viable incandescent light bulb filament. Christie Street in Menlo Park was one of the first streets in the world to use electric lights for illumination.

toddm 4y ago

Note that this building is also known as the HQ for Lumon in the show Severence: https://www.fastcompany.com/90762774/jessica-lee-gagne-severance-cinematographer-most-creative-people-2022 https://www.fastcompany.com/90762774/jessica-lee-gagne-sever...

lotsofpulp 4y ago
What an awful mobile website experience. You scroll down and the video stays locked and auto playing on top.
- blamazon 4y ago
  Such annoyances seem to be table stakes for modern media conglomerate sites these days. It's profoundly embarrassing to our species that even a publication like Fast Company purporting to be at the front edge of tech, business, and design, gives in to so much bloatware.
blamazon 4y ago
I went on a kick looking up Severance locations recently, the 'Perpetuity Wing' is the Hudson River Museum in Yonkers, NY, and is worth a visit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hudson_River_Museum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hudson_River_Museum It's interesting in general how that show was produced in the 'tri-state area'. (Not sure how else to call this - the urbanized junction of NJ/NY/CT radiating outwards from NYC)
- uni_rule 4y ago
  "Tri-state area" is more succinct than "New York City Metropolitan Area" and more people will understand it than the "Mid-Atlantic Region" (which is also physically a slightly different region).
graderjs 4y ago
It's funny: I'm partitioning a LaCie hard-drive while watching Severance

lordleft 4y ago

I work at AT&T Labs. We often drive over to Bell Works for our lunch break; it's a lovely mixed used space, and also a chance to keep in touch with a part of AT&T history.

DIARRHEA_xd 4y ago

I take Everett Rd to work every day. The revamp and surrounding developments have pushed the whole population of deer curbside. I have had 3 near collisions in the past year. My friends, about the same. Be warned

eschulz 4y ago

https://bell.works/chicagoland/explore/ https://bell.works/chicagoland/explore/

dnamlin 4y ago

The square footage of this building is double that of Meta's MPK 20/21 complex, and comparable to the entire Googleplex. It wasn't even headquarters for Bell Labs. A reminder....all glory is fleeting!

walrus01 4y ago
all glory to the hypnotoad
blamazon 4y ago
"And on the pedestal, these words appear: My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings; Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
googlryas 4y ago
SV seems to have a little more depth to it. Were there many other high tech companies in the Holmdel region back in the 80s, or was this a little island of the future in a land of farms and Springsteen?
- a-dub 4y ago
  > SV seems to have a little more depth to it. there would have been no need for silicon if it hadn't been for the things invented at bell labs.
  - googlryas 4y ago
    By depth I meant depth of the job market and community. As in, there is more than just one big employer, which is why I was asking if there were any other big tech companies in/near Holmdel than Bell
    - a-dub 4y ago
      oh. well i think if you had a job at bell labs, depth of job market wasn't a concern. as i understand it was in a class of its own.

mradek 4y ago

Used to go there daily for a project a few years ago. Pretty interesting campus and spent some time walking the hallways. They had some ancient looking computers which was interesting.

jmartrican 4y ago

Don't sleep on NJ. It has "the highest number of millionaires both per capita and per square mile in the U.S., and hosting more scientists and engineers per square mile than anywhere else in the world."

roflyear 4y ago
NJ is expensive as all hell but it is also a safe, enjoyable place to live. Lots to offer.
- throwaway74829 4y ago
  It's absolutely lovely. The wealthier pockets remind of a less mountainy Switzerland.
- subpixel 4y ago
  I am one of those kids from a nice part New Jersey who left and will never back. We are legion.
  - mikeweiss 4y ago
    Curious... Where do you live now and why would you never come back?
    - orangepurple 4y ago
      Not OP but... there's the debt problem. https://www.njspotlightnews.org/2022/05/nj-state-owes-bondholders-more-than-48-billion-up-4-billion-last-fiscal-year-among-most-indebted-states/ https://www.njspotlightnews.org/2022/05/nj-state-owes-bondho...
      - deltree7 4y ago
        That's as dumb as saying US has the highest debt among all countries and don't live there. Probably good to pick Somalia because they have low debt

planetsprite 4y ago

New Jersey's Googleplex The Gabagoogleplex

notacop31337 4y ago
A+

rdm70 4y ago

Back around 83 I got to do a project at this facility working with a guy who built prototypes of consumer products. I was in middle school. The project was to make a wireless joystick for the apple 2. You could go to the basement and fill out an order sheet and get any kind of electronic component. The order was filled on the spot while you stood there. I didn’t know anything about the assembly written for the project. The mentor did all that. However I got to do all the wire wrapping and some of the other bits. It worked! Good times. No doubt this is one of the reasons I ended up as an engineer…

rrdharan 4y ago

I interned at Lucent in 2000 and had a desk / cube in this building: http://www.extropia.com/hacks/webcal/WCfacility.html http://www.extropia.com/hacks/webcal/WCfacility.html It was my first “real” office job and I just assumed all office buildings were that grandiose! Only later did I realize how fortunate I was.. Anyway I occasionally visit it now as Bell Works and am glad it has found a second life - hopefully one that lasts at least as long as its first incarnation.

roflyear 4y ago
It's kind of out in the boonies but well worth the visit. Awesome building.
rrdharan 4y ago
p.s. I wrote that code in about a day, and then spent a month trying to figure out how to deploy it on the IBM-managed Windows NT IIS machines with only some ancient Perl available (5.005 maybe?) and no option to upgrade. IIRC it involved printf-over-email debugging where the IT folks would try and deploy it, email me the errors, I’d iterate and we’d repeat. Was a pretty valuable experience in some ways - good taste of enterprise computing realities…

dr_ 4y ago

I grew up near here and visit once in a while when I come to see my rents. It’s a nice, large space. The holmdel public library has actually moved into it. Not a huge fan of the surrounding McMansions they’ve built, but Bell Works itself is a good place to grab a bite, go for a walk, grab a drink - and of course to work. Always wondered if the Holmdel area could’ve been SV, but I don’t think there was the same level of entrepreneurial risk taking as there was in the Valley.

aj7 4y ago

It’s basically a food court with aspirations.