Posts Tagged ‘Kill Van Kull’
desolate eternities
- photo by Mitch Waxman
Your humble narrator has been enlaced in several ventures which have required assiduous effort for the last several days. Promissory obligation and contractual agreement precludes revelation of the substance of these recent labors, but suffice to say that sartorial glee will abound about the Pentacle when announcements are uttered aloud.
Built in 1984, by Rayco Ship and Main Ironworks of Bourg, Louisiana as the Franklin Reinauer for Reinauer Transportation Companies of Staten Island, New York.
The Franklin Reinauer was the last tug built by the yard, after the construction of three push boats for another company, in 1985 the yard went out of business.
The tug is the second to bear the the name. The first tug that bore the name Franklin Reinauer was renamed as the Matthew Tibbetts.
She is a twin screw tug rated at 2,600 horsepower.
- photo by Mitch Waxman
Pictured in many poses and places in this posting, and presented perspicuously is the tugboat which men call the Franklin Reinauer. Often garish, the “colorway” of each tugboat company is designed to be instantly recognizable at distance. There is something lovely about the Reinauer company’s brand colors of scarlet and orange, which provides primal contrasts with the surrounding azure and cerulean waterscape of New York Harbor.
from fireboat.org
When the Coast Guard called for all assistance, some tugboats were already at the scene with others making ready to assist. The tugboat Franklin Reinauer, under Capt. Ken Peterson and followed by three other Reinauer tugboats, arrived at the Battery seawall around 1130. Peterson said he radioed the MCC aboard the pilot boat New York for permission to go to the Battery seawall to take on passengers. Seeing 10 other tugboats standing off the Battery, he radioed them to come to the seawall. “People started running for the boats and I got off and started directing traffic,” Peterson said. “The first day, we had 27 tugboats on the Battery wall and five at Pier 11.” Tugboats from Moran, McAllister, Turracamo, Reinauer, Penn Maritime, Skaugen PetroTrans, Weeks Marine and other companies responded and continued to arrive during the afternoon. “It quickly became a collaborative effort with Andy McGovern, Ken Peterson and me determining how to best employ all the resources,” Day said.
Fire-fighting efforts at Ground Zero relied heavily on water supplied by two city fireboats and a welcome addition, the ex-New York City fireboat John J. Harvey. Privately purchased by outbidding the scrap dealers in 1999, the boat had been repaired since then and docked at Hudson River Pier 63.
- photo by Mitch Waxman
Luck has placed me at enviable vantages all summer, and an enormous amount of time has been spent on and around the harbor, during which the Franklin Reinauer seemed almost a companion. Everywhere I went, it seemed the tugboat was there too. In the shots above, the Franklin Reinauer was maintaining a static position before the Pulaski Bridge on the Newtown Creek, undoubtedly awaiting the arrival of some stalwart steward of the drawbridge who would open the span and allow it further egress.
from wirednewyork.com
Newtown Creek is woven deeply into the city’s history. Until the Dutch arrived, the Maspetches Indians lived along its banks in what is now Maspeth, Queens. Some believe that Captain Kidd used a friend’s waterfront property there to stash his plunder. The creek was part of a boundary dispute from the mid- 1600′s to the mid-1700′s between Bushwick and Newtown, the precursors to Brooklyn and Queens.
But it was through commerce that the waterway came into its prime.
By the 1850′s, the creek was an industrial center that both fueled and paralleled the explosive growth of New York. Glue factories, smelting and fat-rendering plants, one of the earliest kerosene refinery and other smelly enterprises clustered along the shores of the creek and its little tributaries. The toxic sludge from these businesses got company in 1856, when the city decided to dump raw sewage directly into the water, a practice that continued for decades.
In the 1920′s and 30′s, the creek was widened to accommodate the growing traffic. In its heyday, the bridges that crossed it opened tens of thousands of times a year.
“Newtown Creek was a highway,” said Bernard Ente, a local historian. “It was just boats instead of trucks.” He estimated that 500 enterprises lined the creek at its peak. Large boats brought in raw materials and fuel and took out oil, fat, varnish, chemicals and metals.
- photo by Mitch Waxman
There it is again, this time in the legend choked waters off of Red Hook, and exiting the Erie Basin. A small number of Reinauer tugs and barges are often observed here at Erie Basin, which is known to most New Yorkers for the large Ikea store and NY Water Taxi Ferry service which docks here.
from pbs.org
From the mid-1800s to the mid-1900s, Red Hook’s port made it a thriving industrial neighborhood of mainly Italian and Irish American dockworkers. It was also home to one of the first Puerto Rican neighborhoods in New York City. By 1950, Red Hook had 21,000 residents, many of them longshoremen living in the Red Hook Houses, a public housing project built in 1938 to accommodate the growing number of dockworkers and their families. The neighborhood had a tough reputation—with such notorious figures as Al Capone getting their start there as small-time criminals—and its seedy side was immortalized in movies such as the On the Waterfront (1954), starring a young Marlon Brando.
When containerization shipping replaced traditional bulk shipping in the 1960s, many businesses at the Red Hook ports moved to New Jersey—as did the jobs. Unemployment increased quickly as industries abandoned Red Hook, and the neighborhood’s economy underwent a rapid decline. By the 1970s and ‘80s, it became known as being a crime-ridden, desolate neighborhood, severed from the rest of Brooklyn.
- photo by Mitch Waxman
Mundane and sometimes odd coincidences of geography, maritime, and industrial usage create an unbearable historical similarity between Red Hook and Greenpoint which are deeper and more meaningful than some merely visual verisimilitude. Just on the other side of Erie Basin is the legendary Gowanus canal, Newtown Creek’s superfund.
from brooklyncb6.org
The industrial businesses that exist in Red Hook rely on trucking as the primary way to move goods and freight into and out of the area. Heavy truck traffic has had a serious impact on the residential population and most likely contributed to infrastructure failures and the collapse of some of the older buildings in the area. The geological substrata of this coastal floodplain region contains a dense organic layer of red clay (hence the “red” in Red Hook) that exacerbates the longitudinal transmission of surface vibrations. For years efforts have been underway to reevaluate the existing Truck Route network with an eye toward minimizing its direct impact on the residential community while optimizing its intended industrial usage. The existence of truck-based solid waste transfer stations, that provide little by way of economic development of the community, has contributed to the problem of truck traffic in a major way.
- photo by Mitch Waxman
The Newtown Creek and Gowanus Canal have both been largely abandoned by those industrial forces which ruined their honor, but the tugboat has also and often been sighted in the place where these forces find modern occupation- the storied waterway called the Kill Van Kull.
Here is the Franklin Reinauer straddling this currently undefended border between New York and New Jersey.
from wikipedia
The name “Kill van Kull” has its roots in the early 17th century during the Dutch colonial era, when the region was part of New Netherland. The naming of places by early explorers and settlers during the era often referred to a location in reference to other places, its shape, its topography, and other geographic qualities. The area around the Newark Bay was called Achter Kol. The bay lies behind Bergen Hill, the emerging ridge of the Hudson Palisades which begins on Bergen Neck, the peninsula between it and the Upper New York Bay. Behind or achter the ridge, was a col or passage to the interior. Kill comes from the Middle Dutch word kille, meaning riverbed, water channel, or stream. During the British colonial era the bay was known as Cull bay.
Kill van Kull translates as channel from the pass or ridge. The name of the sister channel to the Kill van Kull, the nearby Arthur Kill, is an anglicization of achter kill meaning back channel, which would refer to its location “behind” Staten Island.
- photo by Mitch Waxman
Preparations for a vast undertaking, as mentioned in the first sentence of this evasive post, have finally been completed- a task which Sisyphus himself would have appreciated. Woe, that today I cannot accomplish my sincerest desire to announce these upcoming events. All a humble narrator can say at this moment would be:
Want to see something cool?
Bring a camera, and ID,
Follow me…
from wikipedia
Seagoing tugboats are in three basic categories:
- The standard seagoing tugboat with model bow that tows its “payload” on a hawser.
- The “notch tug” which can be secured in a notch at the stern of a specially designed barge, effectively making the combination a ship. This configuration is dangerous to use with a barge which is “in ballast” (no cargo) or in a head or following sea. Therefore, the “notch tugs” are usually built with a towing winch. With this configuration, the barge being pushed might approach the size of a small ship, the interaction of the water flow allows a higher speed with a minimal increase in power required or fuel consumption.
- The “integral unit,” “integrated tug and barge,” or “ITB,” comprises specially designed vessels that lock together in such a rigid and strong method as to be certified as such by authorities (classification societies) such as the American Bureau of Shipping, Lloyd’s Register of Shipping, Indian Register of Shipping, Det Norske Veritas or several others.These units stay combined under virtually any sea conditions and the “tugs” usually have poor sea keeping designs for navigation without their “barges” attached. Vessels in this category are legally considered to be ships rather than tugboats and barges must be staffed accordingly. These vessels must show navigation lights compliant with those required of ships rather than those required of tugboats and vessels under tow. Articulated tug and barge units also utilize mechanical means to connect to their barges. ATB’s generally utilize Intercon and Bludworth connection systems. Other available systems include Articouple, Hydraconn and Beacon Jak. ATB’s are generally staffed as a large tugboat, with between seven to nine crew members. The typical American ATB operating on the east coast, per custom, displays navigational lights of a towing vessel pushing ahead, as described in the ’72 COLREGS.
Harbor tugs. Historically tugboats were the first seagoing vessels with steam propulsion, providing freedom from the restraint of the wind. As such, they were employed in harbors to assist ships in docking and departure.
River tugs River tugs are also referred to as towboats or pushboats. Their hull designs would make open ocean operation dangerous. River tugs usually do not have any significant hawser or winch. Their hulls feature a flat front or bow to line up with the rectangular stern of the barge.
burst open
- photo by Mitch Waxman
Recent business, if you must ask, is the reason I found myself visiting …Staten Island… Kevin Walsh of forgotten-ny.com wanted, sensibly enough given the sylvan landscaping and thoughtful architecture of the place, to offer a walking tour of St. George as part of his ambitious schedule of “2nd Saturday” walking tours. As an accomplice in his fiendish revelations, I was forced to return to this place by land.
It is one thing to motor past …Staten Island… on a ship or highway, and another thing entirely to touch it with your feet. This is when you are helpless, a pedestrian lost in a land of motor vehicles and steep hills, and movement noticed behind dark curtains might said to be an implied rather than suggested hint of an occluded occupant.
from silive.com
For the past two days, visitors to a park in Staten Island’s Fort Wadsworth section have stumbled upon a gory mystery — a mutilated animal, possibly a dog or a goat, wrapped in a white sheet.
Parkgoers found two such animals in Von Briesen Park yesterday and this morning, city Parks Department officials confirmed.
The discovery has sparked speculation of ritual sacrifice and cult activity, and has led one Port Richmond woman to douse part of the ground where one animal was found with holy water, in an attempt to ward off what she believes is an evil presence.
- photo by Mitch Waxman
Overly sensitive to sleights, always ready to interpret malicious intent in an innocent gesture, your humble narrator nevertheless prides himself on what Brooklyn kids might call “spidey sense”. When certain instincts and triggers begin to fire off, the imperative to “get out of dodge” becomes overwhelming and flight ensues, if I am clever enough to acknowledge this “tingle”.
Every time I’m on the island which Richmond County squats upon, I start to tingle.
from silive.com
Staten Island ranks second in the overall suicide rate out of all five boroughs, behind only Manhattan, according to the most recent state Department of Health statistics.
In 2005, the most recent year available, there were 6.9 suicides on the Island per 100,000 people. Manhattan was the only borough that had more, with 7.6 suicides per 100,000; rates for the Bronx, Brooklyn and Queens were 4.8, 4.6 and 5.4, respectively.
Sudden changes in behavior or personality; feelings of desperation, helplessness, hopelessness, aloneness, loss and depression; previous suicide attempt; and most importantly, suicide statements expressing a desire or intention to die are all some of the warning signs that sometimes go overlooked, experts say.
- photo by Mitch Waxman
Over the years paying attention to this “tingle”, sometimes felt by Our Lady of the Pentacle instead of me, has aided me in avoiding multiple encounters with the Constabulatory, allowed me to escape a burning building twice, and facilitated in sidestepping some of the dire consequences of a degenerate youth. Additionally, I seem to know which days it would be fortuitous to call in sick to work, intuitively avoid traffic jams and transit logjams, and when some baser denizen of the NY streets sets their sights on me- I know it.
It has long been my belief that physical cowardice is a genetic inheritance, a gift from timorousness ancestors who managed to run away before the Vikings or Mongols found them.
from wikipedia
Snug Harbor was founded by the 1801 bequest of New York tycoon Captain Robert Richard Randall for whom the nearby neighborhood of Randall Manor is named. Randall left his country estate, Manhattan property bounded by Fifth Avenue and Broadway and Eighth and 10th Streets, to build an institution to care for “aged, decrepit and worn-out” seamen. The opening of the sailor’s home was delayed by extended contests of the will by Randall’s disappointed heirs. When Sailors’ Snug Harbor opened in 1833, it was the first home for retired merchant seamen in the history of the United States. It began with a single building, now the centerpiece in the row of five Greek Revival temple-like buildings on the New Brighton waterfront.
Captain Thomas Melville, a retired sea captain and brother of Moby-Dick author Herman Melville, was governor of Snug Harbor from 1867 to 1884.
In 1890, Captain Gustavus Trask, the governor of Snug Harbor, built a Renaissance Revival church, the Randall Memorial Chapel and, next to it, a music hall, both designed by Robert W. Gibson.
Approximately 1,000 retired sailors lived at Snug Harbor at its peak in the late 19th century, when it was among the wealthiest charities in New York. Its Washington Square area properties yielded a surplus exceeding the retirement home’s costs by $100,000 a year.
- photo by Mitch Waxman
There are places which terrify, and intimidate. …Staten Island… with it’s hoary past and terrifying implications of Old World conspiracy- accomplishes both for me. I prefer to focus on what floats past the place, observing from the safety of running water, rather than delve too deeply into the rumors of those things which have been witnessed in the trees near Willowbrook.
from artsjournal.com
All “aged decrepit and warn-out sailors” were accepted. Even some blacks. Eventually the Harbor also allowed steamboat sailors and inland sailors from lakes and rivers too, but they were no doubt frowned upon as not being adventurous enough. Once, while trying to affix a sculpture to one of the walls, we found a sealed-off compartment containing a book of photographs of hundreds of inmates (as the retired seamen were called). Here and there were some dark faces. All races and nationalities were welcomed. Only “habitual alcoholics and those with contagious disease or immoral character were banned.”
tentacled starers
- photo by Mitch Waxman
The courthouse in Staten Island, found in St. George near the Borough Hall, has always filled me with some nameless dread- an unknowable and substantive certainty that behind it’s gabled window sashes, there exists a brain blasting horror and existential truth which would shatter my sanity were the curtains to shift and reveal what lurks within.
Since childhood, when school trips or camp outings would bring me to this jutting littoral outcrop from my homeland of infinite Brooklyn, I’ve always maintained that there is just something wrong about the place.
If you think about it, the decline of New York City as an industrial and cultural leader began when the Verrazano Narrows Bridge was completed.
from nyc.gov
Borough Hall was designed by Carrere & Hastings, one of the most influential firms in this country in the early twentieth century. John Carrere (1858-1911) and Thomas Hastings (1860-1929) both attended the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris and worked at the firm of McKim, Mead & White. They started their firm in 1885. Carrere, a resident of Staten Island, helped select the dramatic hilltop site of Borough Hall, and was involved with the plan and development of the Civic Center. The firm designed the Richmond County Courthouse next door, the Ferry Terminal (burned) and the St. George Branch Library.
- photo by Mitch Waxman
It must be admitted that …Staten Island… is actually quite lovely in spots and that the prejudice I bear the place is entirely between my own ears. Another perfectly lovely community in the United States- Boulder, Colorado- also receives an unreasoning enmity from your humble narrator. No reasonable explanation can be offered except that both make me itchy and uncomfortable, representative of a way of life unattractive to my personality and tastes. Funny thing is, half of my old neighborhood from Brooklyn moved out here, including my own parents.
If you’re from …Staten Island… and reading this, just chalk it up to inter borough antagonism, and allow me to just rattle on…
from wikipedia
McKim, Mead & White was a prominent American architectural firm at the turn of the twentieth century. The firm’s founding partners were Charles Follen McKim (1847–1909), William Rutherford Mead (1846–1928) and Stanford White (1853–1906). The firm was a major training ground for many other prominent architects -partners, associates, designers and draftsmen.
McKim and Mead joined forces in 1872 and were joined in 1879 by White who, like McKim, had worked for architect Henry Hobson Richardson. Their work applied the principles of Beaux-Arts architecture, the adoption of the classical Greek and Roman stylistic vocabulary as filtered through the Parisian Ecole des Beaux-Arts, and the related City Beautiful movement after 1893 or so, which aimed to clean up the visual confusion of American cities and imbue them with a sense of order and noble formality.
Mead was the last of the firm’s founding partners to die in 1928, after McKim (1909), and White (1906). The firm retained its name after the death of Mead, until partner James Kellum Smith’s death in 1961. The firm – primarily Smith – designed the prominent National Museum of American History in Washington DC, one of the firm’s last works, opening in 1964. McKim, Mead & White was also involved with an urban renewal project at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn in the 1950s and designed three buildings as part of the project: DeKalb Hall, ISC Building and North Hall.
In 1961, McKim, Mead & White was succeeded by the firm Steinman, Cain, and White, which by 1971 had become Walker O. Cain and Associates.
- photo by Mitch Waxman
Perhaps it’s just a psychic charge which the place has carried since the maritime days, when old sailors who had capsized into Snug Harbor would dialogue with the locals in area taverns, exchanging wild stories of the south seas for a shot of whiskey or a glass of beer. Squid like monstrosities worshipped like heathen gods, or a 50 foot shark which bit the prow from a boat, Fijian mermaids, and even stranger reports entered the folkloric gene pool here and mixed in with the hybrid pestilence of both English and Dutch superstitions. Isolation too, held special horrors for …Staten Island…
from wikipedia
Stanford White (November 9, 1853 – June 25, 1906) was an American architect and partner in the architectural firm of McKim, Mead & White, the frontrunner among Beaux-Arts firms. He designed a long series of houses for the rich and the very rich, and various public, institutional, and religious buildings, some of which can be found to this day in places like Sea Gate, Brooklyn. His design principles embodied the “American Renaissance”.
In 1906, White was murdered by millionaire Harry Kendall Thaw over White’s affair with Thaw’s wife, actress Evelyn Nesbit, leading to a trial which was dubbed at the time “The Trial of the Century”
- photo by Mitch Waxman
Rumors abound as to the mission of a certain Catholic Lay organization, based in a dormitory skyscraper on 34th street and Madison in Manhattan- and why certain members of that group (who believe even the Knights of Loyola to have lost their way) seem to spend quite so much of their time on …Staten Island…
One theory which has gained my attention suggests that the Masonic Treasures of Garibaldi still lie extant and occluded in the vast acreage of the place, and that the Holy See wishes to see these relics returned to Roman hands. However, one cannot trust in conspiracy, although… Garibaldi did conspire to overthrow the papal states here, and later succeeded in doing so… But that doesn’t prove anything!
from wikipedia
Thaw was born on February 12, 1871 to Pittsburgh coal and railroad baron William Thaw. Violent and paranoid from a very young age (his mother claimed his problems had started in the womb), he spent his childhood bouncing from private school to private school in Pittsburgh, never doing well and described by teachers as unintelligent and a troublemaker. Still, as the son of William Thaw, he was granted admission to the University of Pittsburgh, where he was to study law, though he apparently did little studying. After a few years he used his name and social status to transfer to Harvard University.
Thaw later bragged that he had studied poker at Harvard. He also went on long drinking binges, attended cockfights, and spent much of his time romancing young women. He was expelled after being picked up for chasing a cab driver through the streets of Cambridge with a shotgun, though he claimed it was unloaded.
Thaw has been credited with the invention of the speedball, an injected combination of morphine and/or heroin along with cocaine sometime between 1896 and 1906. He was also reported by newspapers at the time of his trial to have once consumed an entire bottle of laudanum in a single sitting and carry a special silver case full of syringes and other parts of a large “outfit” of injecting equipment.
- photo by Mitch Waxman
The woodlands of …Staten Island… betray it’s nature to visitors who observe the glacial erratics and kettle ponds which would be recognizable to the antediluvian dwellers of the place some 14,000 years ago. The predatory bipeds referred to as the “Clovis Culture” left behind evidence of their presence, and then dropped off the map entirely. The next direct evidence of occupancy, this time of recognizable humans, was some 5,000 years ago. What happened during the nine millennia between 3,000 and 12,000 B.C.? How does it relate to the stories told by the old mariners at Snug Harbor?
from wikipedia
The towns and villages of Staten Island were dissolved in 1898 with the consolidation of the City of Greater New York, with Richmond as one of its five boroughs.
The construction of the Verrazano Bridge, along with the other three major Staten Island bridges, created a new way for commuters and tourists to travel from New Jersey to Brooklyn, Manhattan, and areas farther east on Long Island. The network of highways running between the bridges has effectively carved up many of the borough’s old neighborhoods.
The Verrazano had another effect, opening up many areas of the borough to residential and commercial development, especially in the central and southern parts of the borough, which had previously been largely undeveloped. Staten Island’s population doubled between from about 221,000 in 1960 to about 443,000 in 2000.
Throughout the 1980s, a movement to secede from the city steadily grew in popularity, reaching its peak during the mayoral term of David Dinkins. In a 1993 referendum, 65% voted to secede, but implementation was blocked in the State Assembly.
time stained
- photo by Mitch Waxman
Business carried me to… Staten Island… recently, and as always the charms of the place were lost upon my dross sensibilities. To one of my peculiar fascinations, the two most interesting things about the place are what’s floating around it on the Kill Van Kull, and the queer but persistent rumors that when Garibaldi hid from the Papists on Staten Island in the last century, he was in possession of certain Masonic treasures which did not make the return trip to Italy with him and that said antiquities might lie extant still somewhere on the Island.
It’s actually a lovely part of the City of Greater New York, of course, which I bear an unreasoning prejudice against… I’m all ‘effed up.
from wikipedia
The Kill Van Kull is a tidal strait between Staten Island, New York and Bayonne, New Jersey in the United States. Approximately 3 miles (4.8 km) long and 1,000 feet (305 m) wide, it connects Newark Bay with Upper New York Bay. The Robbins Reef Light marks the eastern end of the Kill, Bergen Point its western end. Spanned by the Bayonne Bridge, it is one of the most heavily travelled waterways in the Port of New York and New Jersey.
- photo by Mitch Waxman
The maritime culture of Staten Island, once a thriving and all encompassing economy, has been reduced but it still quite active. The looming question of the landmarked Bayonne Bridge, which is now considered to be an impediment to further expansion and modernization of the portages at Newark and Elizabeth continues. The latest plan I was privy to described a process which would scrub the current roadway and build a newer deck that would allow egress to the gargantuan class of ships called “Panamax” which will dominate the transoceanic shipping trade within a few years.
An inability to access the docks in New Jersey would result in Asian and European cargo being unloaded in another state and municipality, which would drive a stake directly into the heart of our local maritime industry, and chart out a declining future for the Port of New York.
from wikipedia
Seagoing tugboats are in three basic categories:
The standard seagoing tugboat with model bow that tows its “payload” on a hawser.
The “notch tug” which can be secured in a notch at the stern of a specially designed barge, effectively making the combination a ship. This configuration, however, is dangerous to use with a barge which is “in ballast” (no cargo) or in a head or following sea. Therefore, the “notch tugs” are usually built with a towing winch. With this configuration, the barge being pushed might approach the size of a small ship, the interaction of the water flow allows a higher speed with a minimal increase in power required or fuel consumption.
The “integral unit,” “integrated tug and barge,” or “ITB,” comprises specially designed vessels that lock together in such a rigid and strong method as to be certified as such by authorities (classification societies) such as the American Bureau of Shipping, Lloyd’s Register of Shipping, Indian Register of Shipping, Det Norske Veritas or several others. These units stay combined under virtually any sea conditions and the “tugs” usually have poor sea keeping designs for navigation without their “barges” attached. Vessels in this category are legally considered to be ships rather than tugboats and barges must be staffed accordingly. Such vessels must show navigation lights compliant with those required of ships rather than those required of tugboats and vessels under tow. Articulated tug and barge units also utilize mechanical means to connect to their barges. ATB’s generally utilize Intercon and Bludworth connection systems. Other available systems include Articouple, Hydraconn and Beacon Jak. ATB’s are generally staffed as a large tugboat, with between seven to nine crew members. The typical American ATB operating on the east coast, per custom, displays navigational lights of a towing vessel pushing ahead, as described in the ’72 COLREGS.
- photo by Mitch Waxman
Enthusiasts and colleagues always try to disabuse me of my dislike for the Island, and it’s rich history does tantalize. Vanderbilts, and Kreischers, and Willowbrook, and Snug Harbor are oft mentioned but the modern island- with it’s hideous modernist residences and consumerist population- causes me to shrink away and shun it’s charms. As mentioned, this is dictionary prejudice, and I’m not trying to start a fight with my counterparts in the antiquarian community of the Island.
Better that I stick to Richmond Terrace, with it’s spectacular maritime theatrics, than delve too deeply into the place lest I betray a mind closed to possibilities.
from nan.usace.army.mil
The Kill van Kull deepening project is part of the overall NY & NJ Harbor Deepening (50 feet) $1.6 billion project to deepen certain channels to 50 feet in order to allow the safe and economically efficient passage of the newest container ships serving the Port of NY & NJ. The first Corps contract was awarded in March 2005 for the Kill Van Kull Channel, S-KVK-2. Dredging for this contract started west of the Bayonne Bridge and worked east through the channel. Since the area along Bergen Point is made up of diabase rock, drilling and blasting was required.
Happy Birthday, Bayonne Bridge
- photo by Mitch Waxman
A Sunday, the first day that the Bayonne Bridge opened for use to the general public was 28,856 days ago, on November 15th, 1931 at 5 A.M.
from a Newtown Pentacle posting of June 26, 2009 (where a few of these photos first appeared)
The fourth largest steel arch bridge on Earth with a height of 150 feet over the water, it connects Bayonne, New Jersey’s Chemical Coastline with Staten Island. It’s primary mission is to allow vehicular traffic access to Manhattan via the Holland Tunnel…
The Bayonne Bridge was designed by a man who helped design the Hell Gate rail bridge on the East river- and was principal designer for the Verrazano bridge over the Narrows, The George Washingston Bridge over the Hudson River, the Bronx Whitestone Bridge over the East River, the Throgs Neck Bridge over the East River. He was brought in to simplify the design of mighty Triborough- which is actually a bridge and highway complex spanning multiple waterways and islands. A swede, Othmar Amman worked for Gustavus Lindenthal(designer of the the Queensboro and Hell Gate Bridges), and took over as head bridge engineer at the New York Port Authority in 1925. He also directed the planning and construction of the the Lincoln Tunnel.
He was Robert Moses’s “guy”.
- photo by Mitch Waxman
A brutal beauty, the elegant parabola of the Bayonne Bridge is not likely to remain unaltered at its centennial.
from wikipedia
The Bayonne Bridge is the fourth longest steel arch bridge in the world, and was the longest in the world at the time of its completion. It connects Bayonne, New Jersey with Staten Island, New York, spanning the Kill Van Kull.The bridge was designed by master bridge-builder Othmar Ammann and the architect Cass Gilbert. It was built by the Port of New York Authority and opened on November 15, 1931, after dedication ceremonies were held the previous day. The primary purpose of the bridge was to allow vehicle traffic from Staten Island to reach Manhattan via the Holland Tunnel.
- photo by Mitch Waxman
A new class of titan ship, the Panamax class cargo carrier, would be stymied from entering Newark Bay and the elaborate port infrastructure which lines its shores by the shallow height of the bridge’s roadway.
from nycroads.com (be sure to click through, and check out the historic photo of the bridge under construction)
Ground was broken for the Bayonne Bridge on September 1, 1928. The span is comprised of a two-hinged, spandrel-braced trussed arch in which the bottom chords form a perfect parabolic arch. As the span’s primary structural members, these manganese-steel chords carry most of the dead load and uniform live load, which is then transferred to the concrete abutments. The span’s top chords (which were constructed from a lighter silicon steel) and web members are stressed by live loads and temperature.
- photo by Mitch Waxman
Humorless, the suggestion to lower the water falls on deaf ears amongst those stern and hardened engineers employed by the Port Authority.
from panynj.gov
Initially, the bridge was planned for motor vehicles, bicycles, and pedestrians only. Accordingly, a suspension bridge design was developed since this type of bridge offered the most economical way to engineer a single span across the Kill Van Kull for motor vehicles. However, the suspension scheme was abandoned when the Port Authority commissioners insisted that considerations be made for at least two rail transit tracks to be added at some future date. (Studies showed that adapting a suspension design for rail traffic would be cost-prohibitive.) With rail traffic in mind, the bridge’s chief designer, Othmar H. Ammann, began developing a scheme that spanned the Kill Van Kull with a single, innovative, arch-shaped truss. As with the suspension bridge scheme, Ammann worked on the arch design in partnership with architect Cass Gilbert. The arch bridge that emerged promised to be a remarkably efficient solution, well suited to the site from both an engineering and aesthetic standpoint.
- photo by Mitch Waxman
One can only hope that the solution to the Bayonne Bridge’s height issue can be solved in as elegant a fashion as Othmar Ammann’s original design.
from panynj.gov
In 1931 the Port Authority built the Bayonne Bridge, which connects Bayonne, New Jersey and Staten Island, New York and sits at the entrance of the Port Authority’s maritime facilities over the Kill Van Kull. Due to the increasing size of vessels, the 151-foot airdraft (the distance from the water’s surface to the underside of the bridge roadway) of the bridge presents a navigational challenge to some vessels today – a challenge that is expected to increase as larger ships transit the Panama Canal after its expansion in 2015. The Port Authority recognizes the importance of developing and maintaining a world class port with deep and clear channels for vessels and the infrastructure to support the movement of cargo.
In order to address this navigational challenge, in 2008 the Port Authority commissioned the United States Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) to complete an analysis of the commercial consequences of and the national economic benefits that could be generated by a potential remedy of the Bayonne Bridge’s airdraft restriction. The final report concludes that despite the high cost of possible solutions, the national economic benefits (i.e. the transportation cost savings to the nation) that would result from implementing a remedy would far outweigh the costs. The total project cost of modifying or replacing the bridge could range from $1.3 billionto $3.1 billion and could take ten years or more to complete.
