City Incinerator

1451 Federal Street

Located on Federal Street west of the Cooper River, this now unused edifice is passed by thousands of cars daily as they make their way over the drawbridge from East Camden into the center of Camden. The municipal trash incinerator was built river in the late 1920s or early 1930s, and maintained by Camden's Department of Public Works.

The incinerator attracted the attention of the press at least twice in the past century. The first time was in late 1941, when City Commissioner Henry Magin suffered a fatal heart attack while inspecting the facility.

The other time that the incinerator received a lot of media attention was in the early 1990s, when several city employees, members of the Public Works department, including department director Wilbert Fountain, were convicted of accepting bribes to allow the illegal dumping of construction debris on site. Soon afterward, the city abandoned the complex, which has since stood vacant.