Take a Virtual Immersion Tour of the Paint Factory

The Tarr and Wonson Paint Manufactory is one of the most well-known sights on the north shore of Massachusetts. The historic birthplace of marine bottom paint, it is a favorite subject of painters and photographers, but if you didn’t work there, you probably never went inside—it wasn’t a tourist attraction, it was a factory.
After the property was purchased for Ocean Alliance with a grant from the Annenberg Foundation, Iain Kerr and our friend, photographer Jonah Gouin, wanted to change that, so Jonah used virtual immersion technology to give you a look inside and outside these iconic buildings. Choose one of nine starting points on the “Plan” and move around the room up, down and around, starting here:

This virtual tour is a great historic reference image compilation that allows us to zoom in and zoom out and capture important aspects of the site that might be lost in regular still photos or a set of measurements.  One of the first things we did when we bought the site was to have every aspect of every building laser measured–when you add hundreds of still photos and this virtual tour to these laser measurements we feel that we have the site very well-documented.
In the case of the buildings that have been taken down, they are priceless reference images for future rebuilding. You’ll see under one building the remains of the art show that was put up underneath the building. The tour of the smallest brick building is the “Before” because it is the first to be finished and now houses our offices. Work will resume this spring for Phase 2.