Archive for the ‘Calvary Cemetery’ Category
danger widespread
- photo by Mitch Waxman
Note: For the first section of this walk, click here for the “maddeningly untransmissable” posting of May 3.
As mentioned in prior postings, those principates and potentates who occupy the proletarian palaces of Albany have prescribed that the process of replacing the 1939 vintage Kosciuszko Bridge with a modern design will begin a full year earlier than originally planned. Paramount, concern and attentions have been devoted to recording a pictorial record of the place as it exists today with the hope that future generations will be able to realize the pulsating horror envisaged by use of the acronym “DUKBO” (Down Under the Kosciuszko Bridge Onramp).
- photo by Mitch Waxman
Swirling, ever swirling, the steel and concrete of the footbridge which carries pedestrian traffic from the street grid of Celtic Park to the colour stained creekland hosts a resident troll, but also offers egress to the eastern border of venerable Calvary- a street known as Laurel Hill Blvd. Gentle elevation is encountered here, and the motion followed is of a clockwise bent.
- photo by Mitch Waxman
A severe fence, composed of tiny chain links, encompasses the walkway and suggests that one has entered a bizarre corridor. Cellular telephone signals seem to drop off on the bridge, isolating one from the omnipresent cloud of telecommunication radiation, but the singular device carried by your humble narrator utilizes the AT&T network so this is not that unusual. Michael Faraday himself could not have imagined a surer form of electromagnetic cage, one suspects.
- photo by Mitch Waxman
A rotunda is observed at the masonry abutment which supports the steel truss, which offers a startling view of both Calvary Cemetery and the skyline of that Shining City which lies to the north and west. Careful observers will notice that a hole exists in the mesh at an optimum viewing angle, no doubt due to the labor of some photographer from the wicked past. This is not the work of your humble narrator, it should be pointed out, although this aperture has suffered my exploitation on more than one occasion.
- photo by Mitch Waxman
Beyond the emerald devastations of Calvary, whose consecrated loam and forbidden secrets lie obfuscated and reveal themselves only to the most dedicated seekers, the wholesome spire of St. Raphael’s and the fearsome Sapphire Megalith of Long Island City struggle for attention with the shield wall of a spectacular entertainment called Manhattan. The elevation enjoyed by Laurel Hill, which is in actuality a foothill of and part of the sloping eastward ascent leading to the Maspeth Plateau, allows one a perspective normally denied to all but roofers and chimney sweeps.
- photo by Mitch Waxman
Gaudy, modern Manhattan is merely window dressing for the wonders of New York City, a painted temple whore squamously squatting in the harbor which is designed to entertain and enthrall foreign travelers, aspirant bourgeois, and the credulous. To experience the reality of New York, with it’s terrors and tragedies and naked truths and miracles- one must come to the so called “Outer Boroughs”. Here, in places like this DUKBO, there are no flashing neon lights and truth is manifested in cement, marble, and steel.
- photo by Mitch Waxman
Tomorrow, we descend into the gentle valleys of DUKBO on the Queens side of the fabled Newtown Creek, and visit a location or two which will be obliterated by the construction of the new bridge, while pondering upon that which what might rise from the ashes. What unknown and unsuspected treasures might the ground imprison here, which has been unturned since 1939? Who can guess, all there is, that might be buried down there? Timorous and possessed of a weak constitution, your humble narrator nevertheless endures such journeys for the interest of both the prosaic and prurient at this, your Newtown Pentacle.
maddeningly untransmissible
- photo by Mitch Waxman
A curious thing happens when one exits the former Celtic Park at 43rd street in Queens, and crosses beneath a titan viaduct carrying the Long Island Expressway near its singular junction with the Brooklyn Queens Expressway. First, one realizes the enormity of having entered DUKBO (Down Under the Kosciuszko Bridge Onramp), and secondarily the realization that this is not the safest path for a pedestrian to have chosen becomes readily apparent.
- photo by Mitch Waxman
This is a “back door” to the massive truss bridge, thrice damned, which spans the Newtown Creek and has done so since 1939. Any driver with NY plates on their vehicle, ones worth their salt at least, has several of these short cuts etched into their mind. Taking Hunters Point Avenue to Skillman Avenue when exiting the Pulaski Bridge in order to avoid the traffic at Queens Plaza is another one of the Creek specific ones, but there are hundreds of similar opportunities to shave a few minutes off of a drive found all over the megalopolis.
- photo by Mitch Waxman
Recent announcements by the elites of Albany have made it clear that the Kosciuszko Bridge replacement project has had its timeline amplified, and work will begin on the endeavor in 2013 rather than the following year. Accordingly, your humble narrator has been attempting to spend a whole lot of time in the neighborhood of late, with the goal of recording everything in the place during its final days.
- photo by Mitch Waxman
One of the features here that I will sorely miss is this lovely little footbridge which carries pedestrian traffic from the 43rd street sidewalk over to the head of Laurel Hill Blvd., which runs alongside Calvary Cemetery’s eastern wall. As far as I’ve been able to discern, this structure is unnamed, here is where it might be found on a google map. If anyone reading this post works for an “official” agency and has information on the structure which you can share, please email me here, and let me know if you’d like to stay anonymous.
- photo by Mitch Waxman
As you can see, the foot bridge spirals over the onramp of the Kosciuszko fed by the Long Island Expressway’s “Queens Midtown Expressway” section, and said road channels Brooklyn bound traffic onto the truss bridge. In my estimation, the foot bridge is just wide enough to accommodate an automobile, although the turns would be tricky to negotiate in anything larger than a compact. Perhaps this is what it was originally intended to do, or it might just be a feature designed to allow emergency access to police.
Unlikely, but long have I wondered why the foot bridge is so over built. Look at all that steel.
- photo by Mitch Waxman
An access hatch is visible beneath the brick and mortar abutment which is freestanding from the LIE ramps, and evidence of some regular habitation is readily apparent. Someone is indeed living under, or actually within, this little footbridge.
One can imagine few places less peaceful to exist, at the locus point of the BQE and LIE at the foot of the Kosciuszko, within a masonry cairn.
- photo by Mitch Waxman
Habit and expectations demand that this person be labelled a “troll”, after the mythical creatures which European folklore describe as living beneath bridges. Odds are that this would be a cruel description for whomever it might be that calls this his or her “little hole in the wall”. Of course, this somewhat circular apartment offers one of the finest city views in all of Queens, and easy access to the B24 bus.
What tales might this individual describe, living across the way from Calvary Cemetery?
- photo by Mitch Waxman
All around the Newtown Creek, hidden amongst the bridges and rails tracks and amongst weed choked lots and abandoned industrial buildings, live an undocumented population. The odd thing is that they have jobs, or seem to, and just don’t mind a little discomfort if it means not paying rent. Once, it would have made sense to me to try and help out somehow, but age and experience have taught me to be afraid of people who brave such hardships.
Whoever this troll is, it is probably best to leave them alone, as the NY State DOT will be evicting them before long in any case.
You may think this is callow, or callous, or claim it to be madness.
This is not madness, this is DUKBO.
constantly consulting
- photo by Mitch Waxman
Gilman, Gilman, Gilman.
Idiotic, your humble narrator cannot break loose of the compulsion which drives me toward destruction, which will be the result of locating a certain grave amongst Calvary Cemetery’s emerald devastations. Weak of will and enslaved by fevered thoughts, once more do my feet fall upon a carpet of grass fed by a morbid nutrition, stumbling across and into the city of the dead. On the subject at hand, which is the attempt to locate a tiny needle in a gigantic hay stack- a needle not even certain to still exist in this age- let’s recap:
As mentioned in the post “Searching for Gilman“:
“Somewhere in the viridian depths of Calvary Cemetery lies an unremarked merchant from Massachusetts, who died in an accident along the delirious Newtown Creek in 1931. No obituary I can find discusses him, and Gilman slid unnoticed into the hallowed loam of Calvary’s charitable sections. His anonymity came to an end when, according to neighborhood sources and contemporary diarists, a relict 3 masted schooner arrived at the Penny Bridge docks and ordered an eccentric monument be erected on Gilman’s resting place. The captain of that black ship, a leathery bastard named Marsh, collected Gilman’s belongings and sailed via Newtown Creek to the East River, turning North toward Hell Gate- ultimately disappearing into the mists of Long Island Sound heading for New England.”
from epa.gov
The first survey of Newtown Creek was completed by Dutch explorers in 1613-1614, and the Dutch acquired the area from the local Mespatches tribe shortly thereafter. Initially, the Newtown Creek area was used primarily for agriculture, but following the Revolutionary War, it became industrialized with glue and tin factories, rope works, tanneries, and the Sampson Oil Cloth Factory operating along Newtown Creek and its tributaries. There was a shift to shipbuilding in the Pre-Civil War Period. Following the Civil War, textile manufacturing and oil refining replaced shipbuilding along Newtown Creek and its tributaries.
- photo by Mitch Waxman
It has been established, circumstantially, that the accident which claimed Gilman was definitively in Blissville, and happened westward of Penny Bridge but east of the Greenpoint Avenue crossing. Additionally, disturbing intonations that the packs of feral dogs which were contemporaneously described as endemic to the area avoided the cadaver, but that the local rodent population did not find itself constrained from feasting.
from the posting “A World Yet Inchoate“:
“Enigma, my search for the elusive final resting place of the Massachusetts based dealer in far eastern art has taken me to distant and forgotten sections of the City of Greater New York. I have consulted with asiatic mystics in Manhattan’s Chinatown, visited a heretical Kabbalist in Brooklyn, and have drawn the ire of certain extant allies of the dead man whose influence and reach extend into the federal government and modernity itself who wish me to remain silent on the subject.”
from 1892′s History of the Catholic Church in the United States, By John Gilmary Shea – courtesy google books
The burial place for the Catholic dead of the great city now required, apparently, a vast extent of ground. The little plot around St. Peter’s Church had been the first, but a nook in Trinity Church yard held, and still holds, some Catholic dead. Then the ground around St. Patrick’s Cathedral was used, and in time a cemetery was purchased on Eleventh Street. These had all proved insufficient. Bishop Hughes looked beyond the limits of the city for a spot not likely to be reached for many years by the rapid growth of population, yet comparatively easy of access. Thirty acres of the Alsop farm, on Newtown Creek, Long Island, were purchased, and the ground was solemnly blessed by Rt. Rev. Bishop Hughes, as Calvary Cemetery, July 27, 1848, and in a few days the first interment took place. The cemetery has been enlarged by subsequent purchases, till it now contains more than a hundred acres.
- photo by Mitch Waxman
Problematic in locating even a general area to search within, for the obsequious and gauche monument which the eponymous Capt. Marsh installed within the cemetery in remembrance of the fallen Gilman would have been in one of the so called “poor sections” of the polyandrion. Imagine, the sheer volume of dead bodies shipped out from Manhattan in that era, reported at the time as nearly one hundred on an average day (and far higher in times of fever, plague, and riot). These poor, or charity, sections saw hundreds of interments per week. Could it be possible that the monument to Gilman actually adorned his own grave, or that it might somehow still exist within the walls of Calvary?
from the posting “marble glories“
“Of course, this is a Roman Catholic cemetery, which suggests that the multitudes who lie here were sealed off- magickly- by the sacrament of “Extreme Unction” from suffering such macabre experiences as walking about the earth seeking living victims in some post mortem half life. The heritage of the Catholics extends back through time to the Dagon devotees of Syria and the tomb worshipping Etruscans, and the Romans spent enough time in Egypt and North Africa to have picked up and incorporated many of the Magicks they found into the syncretic system of beliefs and rites known as and inherited by modernity as Catholicism. The mysteries of the church are many, and varied, and more has been forgotten or lost over the centuries than any single lifetime can recover.”
from 1890′s HOW THE OTHER HALF LIVES, By JACOB A. RIIS -courtesy google books
Life in the tenements in July and August spells death to an army of little ones whom the doctor’s skill is powerless to save. When the white badge of mourning flutters from every second door, sleepless mothers walk the streets in the gray of the early dawn, trying to stir a cooling breeze to fan the brow of the sick baby. There is no sadder sight than this patient devotion striving against fearfully hopeless odds. Fifty “summer doctors,” especially trained to this work, are then sent into the tenements by the Board of Health, with free advice and medicine for the poor. Devoted women follow in their track with care and nursing for the sick. Fresh-air excursions run daily out of New York on land and water; but despite all efforts the grave-diggers in Calvary work over-time, and little coffins are stacked mountain – high on the deck of the Charity Commissioners’ boat when it makes its semi-weekly trips to the city cemetery.
dared consciously
- photo by Mitch Waxman
Loathsome, the only place one such as myself can truly feel at peace is amongst the emerald devastations of First Calvary Cemetery, in the company of the tomb legions. Lousy, my thoughts grow increasingly unordered and chaotic, as melancholy and regret rule my every step. Lost, revelation is sought, as I struggle not to say that forbidden name.
And over all, the thing which cannot possibly exist in the Sapphire Megalith watches bemusedly.
- photo by Mitch Waxman
Morose, peregrinations of primal fear rack my mind, remembering that “as above, so below” can have many meanings. Monstrous, the consequences of uttering those hateful syllables eat at my thoughts in the manner and urgency of an addiction. Montresor would understand the compulsion, and the nagging hunger to abandon all caution and restraint.
Perhaps I should join with some cult of Arabian Hasish eaters, or develop a taste for the distillates of the poppy, just in the name of finding some relief.
- photo by Mitch Waxman
Violent and horrible, the reprisals for resuming the quest would be Jovian in character, striking from the heights with demoniac fury. Vengeance, previously forsworn by those powers and potentates who conspire and corrupt as they sail the endless sea, will undoubtedly be horrible. Victory for them would come if their overt warnings and admonitions were ignored.
The spring has brought violets to the surface, here in Calvary, and their nepenthe like perfume has emboldened me to take a foolish chance.
- photo by Mitch Waxman
Let them come, for I care not anymore. Lovers of that unholy thing which cannot possibly persist in the cupola of the Sapphire Megalith, these unholy acolytes can stay my tongue no longer with their threats. What can they take which has not already been lost, stripped away, or erased? At long last, the question must be asked out loud, and damned be the consequences.
Also, from newtowncreekalliance.org
- photo by Mitch Waxman
Earth Day BYO Picnic Lunch at the Newtown Creek Nature Walk
Sunday, April 22nd at 1 p.m.
Come join in for this casual celebration of the victory that is the Newtown Creek Nature Walk. Bring your own brown bag lunch and join the Newtown Creek champions who worked hard for years to win this unique waterfront park.
Sunday, April 22nd at the Newtown Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant Nature Walk between 1pm – 2pm.
Finally,
Obscura Day 2012, Thirteen Steps around Dutch Kills
April 28th, 10 a.m.
Your humble narrator will be narrating humbly at this year’s Obscura Day event on April 28th, leading a walking tour of Dutch Kills. The tour is already two thirds booked up, so grab your tickets while you can.
“Found less than one mile from the East River, Dutch Kills is home to four movable (and one fixed span) bridges, including one of only two retractible bridges remaining in New York City. Dutch Kills is considered to be the central artery of industrial Long Island City and is ringed with enormous factory buildings, titan rail yards — it’s where the industrial revolution actually happened. Bring your camera, as the tour will be revealing an incredible landscape along this section of the troubled Newtown Creek Watershed.”
For tickets and full details, click here :
obscuraday.com/events/thirteen-steps-dutch-kills-newtown-creek-exploration
raptured vision
- photo by Mitch Waxman
My habit is to be early to appointments, public meetings, or gatherings. On this particular day, a Newtown Creek Alliance meeting was set to occur in hoary Greenpoint at the modern Newtown Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant, and a humble narrator decided to make use of being better than an hour early by strolling through the engineered hillocks of First Calvary Cemetery here in Queens.
Late afternoon was giving way to sunset, and my path took me from the secondary gates near the former Penny Bridge toward the main entrance at Greenpoint Avenue.
- photo by Mitch Waxman
Unlike many of my sojourns around the place, no goal governed my steps- I wasn’t “looking for someone”. Instead, a peaceful and contemplative mood governed my steps and allowance was made for serendipity. That’s the spire of St. Raphael’s on Greenpoint Avenue in the distance, by the way.
Amongst the marble and granite, however, a surprising monument was discovered.
- photo by Mitch Waxman
Weathered and unmarked, this anonymous cruciform was found. Appearing to be a wooden cross with white bronze worked onto its surface, it was frankly a stunning moment for me to discover this artifact here. Partially because of its modest and quite staid appearance- understatement and tasteful discretion hardly define the monuments at Calvary- but mostly because of the incredible value that the metal would bring to the Crows (metal collectors and scrappers) who harvest such materials for sale to the scrap industry.
It was stunning to find such a thing can remain hidden in this place which has suffered so much from their attentions.
