Right before Chapel Street hits the Mill River on the east side of New Haven, piles of refuse—entire desks crumpled like sheets of paper, metal barrels dinged up like old cars and many more scraps that are no longer identifiable—create a minor mountain range. Monsters prowl it—large-toothed cranes and magnets, bristling with spiky metal shards and rolling slowly through the valleys, scanning for prey.
Alderman-Dow Iron & Metal Co. is New Haven’s oldest scrap yard, and it’s been in the Alderman family for four generations. Max Alderman, a Jewish immigrant from Russia, founded it in 1895 after arriving in New Haven. “Like a lot of immigrants, he found getting work difficult,” Norman Alderman says of his grandfather. “He started with a pushcart, going around in the neighborhood looking to buy any recyclables—rags, papers, tires as well as metal.”
These days, Alderman-Dow only scraps metal, which is a more complicated and finicky process than the heavy machinery throughout the yard suggests. The company begins by buying scrap from both private citizens and corporations, and then there’s the long work of differentiating and preparing the different metals before selling them by the lot. The standard example of a scrap puzzle, according to Norman and his son Ian, who also works at Alderman-Dow, is a kitchen sink.
“If you go underneath your sink, your faucet is attached to a copper tube, which might have a bronze valve, an aluminum handle and a steel nut. It’s all scrap… It all can be recycled. But it needs to be sorted, processed and prepared. And that’s what the scrap dealer does,” Norman says. “The man who buys the copper does not want the steel screw or the aluminum. It’ll ruin his melt.”
Scrap dealing has long been an essential cog in the machinery of industry, but only recently has the work tapped into a cultural trend: recycling. “Scrap dealers are the original recyclers,” Norman says. “We were doing it long before it was popular.” Ian says that Alderman-Dow used to stress its transport abilities, advertising that they could haul whatever you were finished with. But now the emphasis is on conservation and reuse, which is crucial in a market where 75% of the steel we use is recycled.
Inside the main warehouse, there are piles of scrap waiting to be pulled apart and sorted—copper, aluminum, steel, zinc, lead, tin. Piles of air conditioner grills, warped from use, slouch beside buckets filled with wires and cases of doorknobs. A path winds through the space, and as you walk deeper in, you find mounds of metal that have been catalogued and cleaned. Crisp shavings of aluminum, curlicues of steel and rosy, gleaming sheets of copper all catch the light like piles of treasure.
Renewal and fresh opportunity are essential to Alderman-Dow. Ian says that his great-grandfather Max Alderman’s story has inspired them to hire other immigrants looking to settle in New Haven. The employees of Alderman-Dow have come from all over, from Puerto Rico to Turkey. “In the current political climate, I’m very proud of the fact that we are an immigrant business,” Ian says. “We, as immigrants, have made a business that can afford other immigrant families the opportunity to make their way in this country.”
Thinking back to his great-grandfather, Ian continues. “Legend has it that his Jewish status did not allow for him to do many things other than touch trash when he first came to the country… Luckily for us, [he] was a very industrious man, and decided he would make a business from the things he was allowed to touch.”
Written and photographed by Sorrel Westbrook.
