Archive for June 2011
unending steps
– photo by Mitch Waxman
By email, I was contacted by a personage who claimed that the long desired location of a certain interment at First Calvary Cemetery in Queens- the burial site of “he who must not be named“- was in his possession. Further, it was asserted that while anonymity and certain other odd conditions were required, the occluded information so long sought would be mine for the taking.
A meeting was hastily arranged at St. Patrick’s Old Cathedral on Manhattan’s Mulberry street, and your humble narrator scuttled off to the Bloody Sixth Ward and the House of Dagger John.
What greeted me was not to my liking.
from saintpatrickscathedral.org
The recent elevation of New York as an Episcopal see with its own bishop inspired the increasing Catholic population to build the original Cathedral of New York under the name of Ireland’s patron saint, Saint Patrick. The site chosen belonged to the corporation of Saint Peter’s Church and was located on Mulberry Street in lower Manhattan. The cornerstone was laid in June 1809.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As is habit and curse, an early arrival was attempted and achieved, and a hidden vantage point amongst the venerable pews was attained. The odd fellow who had contacted me described his aspect and appearance accurately, and recognition was instant when he strode confidently into the ancient church. He did not arrive alone, as he had implied in his missives, however.
The disturbing aspect of his companions, leathery creatures best described as men, and the hushed instructions he seemed to be offering them, brought me to a peak of nervous excitedness and a panic set in upon me. Stupidly, I had walked directly into a spiders web, lured in by forbidden fruit.
Had some sort of diabolical plot, hatched by those malign forces whose secretive occupations and desires and unguessed at existence has been inadvertently hinted at and offended by this- your Newtown Pentacle, been set in motion to snare and silence me?
from wikipedia
Until 1830, the Cathedral was the ending place of the annual St. Patrick’s Day parade. After that, it ended on Ann Street at the Church of the Transfiguration, whose pastor, Father Varela, was Cuban, but was a fervent nationalist and the chaplin of the Hibernian Universal Benevolent Society. Eventually, the parade moved uptown to pass in front of the new St. Patrick’s Cathedral.
In 1836, the cathedral was the subject of an attempted sack after tensions between Irish Catholics and anti-Catholic Know-Nothing nativists led to a number of riots and other physical confrontations. The situation worsened when a brain-injured young woman wrote a book telling her “true” story – a Protestant girl who converted to Catholicism, and was then forced by nuns to have sex with priests, with the resulting children being baptized then killed horribly. Despite the book being debunked by a mildly anti-Catholic magazine editor, nativist anger at the story resulted in a decision to attack the cathedral. Loopholes were cut in the church’s outer walls, which had just recently been built, and the building was defended from the rioters with muskets.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As previously described, vast physical inadequacy and cowardice are my hallmarks. The least of all men, my only recourse is flight, and I seem to have descended into some sort of fugue state.
I remember leaving the sepulchral darkness and unnatural cool of the old Cathedral, but from the moment that the burning thermonuclear eye of god itself shone upon me, it’s a total blank.
My next conscious memory is that of having arrived back at HQ in Astoria some hours later with blistered feet and chafed thighs, and an odd crusty residue around my eyes reminiscent of the dehydrated tears which adorn the occulum of a recently awakened sleeper.
During this multi hour episode, I seem to have been taking hundreds of pictures as I scuttled instinctually and inexorably homeward.
I’ve pieced my somnambulist route together from the shots on my camera card and for some reason, seemed to be subconsciously following an ancient street car route, the one that went to Calvary via Williamsburg as I later scried.
In 1850 a line of two horse stages was running from Grand Street ferry past the Dutch Church on the Old Woodpoint Road out to Newtown. Grape arbors extended from Leonard Street to Humboldt Street.
Martin J. SUYDAM ran a stage from Peck Slip and Grand Street. Ferries through Grand Street and Metropolitan Avenue to Newtown.
The Grand Street and Newtown Railroad Co., was chartered in 1860. At the foot of the street was the office of the Houston Street Ferry Association and later of the Nassau Ferry Co. A long wooden stairway led from the ferry to the American Hotel, latter, #2 & 4, kept by Jackson HICKS.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Some sort of odd symmetry presents itself, of course, in this dreamt of photowalk. The vast numbers who lie within the emerald devastations of Laurel Hill made the same journey themselves, although most did not take the Williamsburg Bridge- rather a connecting ferry and streetcar line which would have joined some forgotten 19th century Manhattan pierage (near its own Grand Street) with the gentry of Brooklyn. Don’t forget, in the 19th century, Manhattan was a pestilential hell hole of factories and open sewers populated by a starving horde of refugees- Brooklyn was in it’s own golden age.
The Bridge didn’t come along until 1883 after all, and First Calvary was nearly full by then.
I suppose there are and have been worse conditions of life, but if I stopped short of savage life I found it hard to imagine them. I did not exaggerate to myself the squalor that I saw, and I do not exaggerate it to the reader. As I have said, I was so far from sentimentalizing it that I almost immediately reconciled myself to it, as far as its victims were concerned. Still, it was squalor of a kind which, it seemed to me, it could not be possible to outrival anywhere in the life one commonly calls civilized. It is true that the Indians who formerly inhabited this island were no more comfortably lodged in their wigwams of bark and skins than these poor New-Yorkers in their tenements. But the wild men pay no rent, and if they are crowded together upon terms that equally forbid decency and comfort in their shelter, they have the freedom of the forest and the prairie about them; they have the illimitable sky and the whole light of day and the four winds to breathe when they issue into the open air. The New York tenement dwellers, even when they leave their lairs, are still pent in their high-walled streets and inhale a thousand stenches of their own and others’ making. The street, except in snow and rain, is always better than their horrible houses, and it is doubtless because they pass so much of their time in the street that the death rate is so low among them. Perhaps their domiciles can be best likened for darkness and discomfort to the dugouts or sod huts of the settlers on the great plains. But these are only temporary shelters, while the tenement dwellers have no hope of better housing; they have neither the prospect of a happier fortune through their own energy as the settlers have, nor any chance from the humane efforts and teachings of missionaries, like the savages. With the tenement dwellers it is from generation to generation, if not for the individual, then for the class, since no one expects that there will not always be tenement dwellers in New York as long as our present economical conditions endure.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As evidenced in the shot above, I seem to have proceeded south along Mulberry Street, past the high walls of the Old Cathedral which were erected by Dagger John and the Hibernians to protect the sanctuary from the violent attentions of Nativist rioters during those starry years when this neighborhood was known as “the bloody sixth ward”.
from History of the Second company of the Seventh regiment By Emmons Clark, courtesy google books
The Sixth Ward was noted for its disorderly character, and the frequent skirmishes which took place within its borders, with the consequent black eyes and bloody noses, gave it the well-known sobriquet,—”the Bloody Sixth.” On the first day of the election, in the spring of 1834, it was said that the anti-bank, Democratic, and Irish citizens of the Sixth Ward, had blockaded the polls and prevented the Whigs from voting. On the second day, the Whigs from other districts rallied in large numbers to the Sixth Ward, resolved to break the blockade and give their friends an opportunity to cast their ballots. The result was a series of engagements, in which both parties maintained their positions in the field until the polls closed for the day. A ship, mounted on wheels and adorned with Whig banners, was drawn through the ward, and used to convey voters to the polls, and this insulting invasion of the Democratic stronghold increased the excitement.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This grand walk carried me, in a seemingly dream like state, through the lower Manhattan neighborhoods known to Dagger John and his compatriots as either “Jewtown” or “the Ghetto”, over the Bridge, into Williamsburg, through Bushwick and then Maspeth in Brooklyn and Queens respectively, into Berlin and then Blissville in the Creeklands, and ultimately Calvary Cemetery itself. Over the next few days, and from the comfort and safety of a well fortified Newtown Pentacle HQ (which sports a cadre of Croatian Varangians dedicated to my health and well being, should these malign forces decide to visit… as well as other… more esoteric defenses) I’ll be presenting the fruits of this journey. As mentioned, I somehow kept shooting the whole way.
from wikipedia
Basil II’s distrust of the native Byzantine guardsmen, whose loyalties often shifted with fatal consequences, as well as the proven loyalty of the Varangians, led him to employ them as his personal bodyguards. This new force became known as the Varangian Guard (Greek: Τάγμα των Βαράγγων, Tágma tōn Varángōn). Over the years, new recruits from Sweden, Denmark, and Norway kept a predominantly Scandinavian cast to the organization until the late 11th century. So many Scandinavians left to enlist in the guard that a medieval Swedish law from Västergötland stated that no one could inherit while staying in “Greece”—the then Scandinavian term for the Byzantine Empire. In the eleventh century, there were also two other European courts that recruited Scandinavians: Kievan Rus’ c. 980–1060 and London 1018–1066 (the Þingalið). Steven Runciman, in The History of the Crusades, noted that by the time of the Emperor Alexios Komnenos, the Byzantine Varangian Guard was largely recruited from Anglo-Saxons and “others who had suffered at the hands of the Vikings and their cousins the Normans”. The Anglo-Saxons and other Germanic peoples shared with the Vikings a tradition of faithful (to death if necessary) oath-bound service, and after the Norman Conquest of England there were many fighting men who had lost their lands and former masters and looked for a living elsewhere.
Additionally, for those who might be interested in a FREE boat tour of Newtown Creek on City of Water Day – which is Saturday, July 16th- this web page bears monitoring.
athwart the desert
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Many things find a piquant and interested perch in my thoughts.
Autocthonic, these wonderings are often based on observations of a block or two of grandiose structures which seem out of place in modern context, Greenpoint Avenue between Manhattan Ave. and the East River is just one.
There is a distinct and obviously missing element which once defined its “reason for being”, and like many of the other occlusions which abound along the coastline of North Brooklyn and Western Queens- the answer is presented by First Calvary Cemetery.
from the “DIGEST OF SPECIAL STATUTES By THE CITY OF NEW YORK” courtesy google books
1865: This act incorporates the Green Point and Calvary Railroad Company, and authorizes the construction of a railroad, to be operated by horse power only, from at or near the Green Point and Tenth street ferry, at the foot of Green Point avenue, in the city of Brooklyn, thence along Green Point avenue to Green Point avenue plank road, across the bridge over Newtown creek; thence easterly along said road to the easterly side of Calvary cemetery at or near the point where the, said road intersects the main road leading from Calvary cemetery to Hunter’s Point; thence to Central avenue; thence along Central avenue and Commercial street to Franklin avenue, to Freeman street, to Washington street, to the place of beginning.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It’s no accident that Almiralls chapel is clearly visible from the paramount of Greenpoint Avenue at Manhattan Avenue.
It’s a latecomer to the scene of course, having been built in the early years of the 20th century, but in 1865 when the Streetcar Line described above was mandated there were 1,000 interments a day going on at Calvary. Some portion of those were the graves which were being uprooted over in Manhattan of course, when cemeteries there were outlawed by the Rural Cemetery Act of 1848, but the majority of the dead coming to Queens were from a sausage grinder called the Five Points and the Tenth Street Ferry was how you got from points A to B for the funerals.
from “A history of the city of Brooklyn By Henry Reed Stiles” courtesy google books
The Green-point Ferries are from the foot of Green-Point Avenue, Brooklyn, E. D., to the foot of East Tenth and East Twenty-Third streets, New York. The first named route was established in 1852 (lease dated 1850), by the efforts of Mr. Neziah Bliss, of Green-Point; and was soon transferred to Mr. Shepard Knapp, being now held by G. Lee Knapp. The Twenty-Third street route was established in 1857, and held by St. Patrick’s Cathedral, per G. Lee Knapp. Rent of the Tenth street ferry, $1,300, and of the Twenty-Third street, $600 per annum, both expiring in 1874.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It’s not the facts of the Ferry or Streetcar that make me curious, of course.
What I’ve been wondering about lately is how the ethnic neighborhoods in the boroughs came to be. Everybody started in Manhattan on the Lower East Side, yet the Jews of Bayard Street and the Italians of Mulberry found a path to Williamsburg and Greenpoint (Tenth Street Ferry?), while the Catholic Germans found their way to Ridgewood and Astoria (86th Street Ferry?). The Irish were everywhere, but made colonies of Woodside and Rockaway.
What natural synergies drew large populations of ethnic brethren to these neighborhoods?
Work was certainly a factor (garment and stone industries in the industrial mills of Newtown Creek and Williamsburg, etc.), but I’m wondering if it wasn’t the lost Ferry and Streetcar connections which allowed and encouraged these ethnic populations to agglutinate.
from “The Sun’s guide to New York” in 1892 courtesy google books
Tenth Street Ferry Branch (color cream): Runs from foot Chambers St., cor. West (ferry to Pavonia Ave., Jersey City and Erie R. R. Depot), through West to Charlton, to Prince, to Bowery, to Pitt St., to Ave. C, to foot E. 10th St. (Tenth St. Ferry to Greenpoint Ave., Brooklyn), returning by E. 10th St., to Ave. D, to E. llth St., to Ave. C, to E. 3d St., to 1st Ave., to Houston St., to West, to Chambers, cor. West.
Project Firebox 24
– photo by Mitch Waxman
On the corner of Vernon Avenue at 38th, in venerable Ravenswood, stands this soldier of the city.
Clearly overburdened by duty, task, and “what could happen”- it nevertheless stands a lonely vigil as the throbbing harmonics of Big Allis wash over and through it.
What sights has it known, here in the fortress neighborhood of western Queens, and what stories might it tell?
lined with sorrow
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One of my little phrases, that I bandy about as if I know what I’m talking about, is “Newtown Creek is where the Industrial Revolution actually happened”.
Ruminating on this, literally this morning, I started putting this post together, picking a random and unremarked spot along Newtown Creek (which I had ok photos of, naturally) and shining a light on it. The semi modern history of this spot, an auto impound lot which was a “Gaseteria” facility more recently than it was the Ditmas Oil Terminal, which lies along the English Kills tributary of the Newtown Creek isn’t that hard to find out.
Child’s play, if the child happens to be 40 and change years old, and refers to himself constantly as your “humble narrator”, that is.
from nyc.gov
During the early nineteenth century, the portion of present-day Brooklyn between the village of Williamsburgh and New town Creek was a rural farm area dotted by small settlements. Beginning in the second decade of the nineteenth century, at the time the ferries to Manhattan were initiated, the Williamsburgh and Jamaica Plank Road was established on the route of the present-day Metropolitan Avenue.
Around the same time, the Newtown and Bushwick Turnpike, also known as the North Road to Newtown, was built on the present-day Meeker Avenue. The turnpike crossed Newtown Creek at a site where a ferry had operated since the late 1600s; in 1836 a toll bridge was built which came to be known as the “Penny Bridge” after the fee charged to pedestrians. Bushwick Avenue, which connected with Humboldt Street, was an important north-south route.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This part of the English Kills canal follows the grid of the surrounding Brooklyn streets and looks nothing like the vernal wonderland of salt marsh and game laden grasses described by the Dutch and so carefully mapped by the English. This is the work of 19th century engineers, who were trying to put nature right, imposing right angles and impossible angles upon the water. It’s not too far from the intersection of Metropolitan and Grand Avenues in East Williamsburg.
It’s also pretty close to where the Bushwick Chemical Works of M. Kalbfleisch & Sons once stood, if it’s not the actual spot.
from “A history of American manufactures from 1608 to 1860” via google books
The Bushwick Chemical Works—M. Kalbfleisch & Sons,
Situated in the Eastern District of Brooklyn, a few miles from New York, are among the most important and extensive Chemical manufactories in the United States. The Works are composed of numerous buildings of various sizes, the largest being from one hundred and sixty to two hundred feet in length, and from sixty to seventy feet in width. Among them is a Glass House and Pottery, in which are made all the Retorts and Bottles used in manufacturing and packing the Acids and other products of the Chemical Department. The whole group of structures, with their extended walls, spacious roofs, and lofty chimneys, covers an area of over five acres, and presents an imposing appearance even at a distance. The interior appointments and equipments are of a character corresponding with the extent of the buildings. One of the chambers, for manufacturing Sulphuric Acid, is two hundred and seventeen feet long by fifty feet wide, no doubt the largest in existence, and is a model in every particular. Among the noticeable objects that attract the attention of visitors, are three Platina Stills, imported from France, at a cost of about fifteen thousand dollars each.
The products of these Works include a great number of those articles recognized as standards in the commerce of the world. Of Sulphuric Acid they have a capacity for producing three hundred thousand pounds weekly, and of Muriatic Acid, about three hundred and fifty carboys weekly.
Besides these, they manufacture Aquafortis, Muriate of Tin, Strong Ox. Muriate Tin, Soda Ash, Aqua Ammonia, Tin Chrystals, Nitrate of Iron, Sulphate of Zinc, and other officinal chemicals. The firm employ constantly from seventy to eighty workmen, for whom they have provided comfortable dwellings in the vicinity of the Works. The Office and Salesrooms are in the City of New York, at the corner of Fulton and Cliff streets.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Like the precursor of Phelps Dodge over on the Queens side of the Creek (which was known first as Nichols and then as General Chemical) M. Kalbfleisch & Sons manufactured the wonder chemical of the early 19th century- sulfuric acid.
The chemical itself had been around in one form or another for centuries, but its manufacture was the provence of jewelers and alchemists, and its manufacture was a particularly ugly process and produced limited quantities of the stuff. It required large glass or earthenware vessels to distill, which were prone to breakage, which is bad when acid is involved.
One would either burn sulfur and saltpeter along with sodium nitrate and combine the ashes with water, or distill the stuff from a mixture of ferric sulfate and silica. The former mixture is also known as Brimstone, and the latter as Oil of Vitriol to esotericists.
from America’s Successful Men of Affairs , An Encyclopedia of Contemporaneous Biography via google books
MARTIN KALBFLEISCH, chemist, a native of Flushing, Netherlands, born Feb. 8, 1804, died in Brooklyn, N. Y., Feb. 12, 1873. In 1822, the youth sailed to the island of Sumatra, but finding that the Asiatic cholera was raging there, he promptly returned with his ship to Antwerp Thence he went to Havre, France, and spent four years in commercial enterprise. In 1826, he came to the United States with small means but splendid pluck.
In New York city, hard work as a clerk and chemist brought him a little money and, in 1835, he started a manufactory of colors and chemicals in Harlem. After several changes of location, the business, which had prospered under his energetic management, was finally moved to Metropolitan Avenue in Brooklyn.
The works now occupy eleven acres of ground on Newtown creek.
Mr. Kalbfleisch was a man of clear head, strong common sense and ability. He served in various public offices in Brooklyn and was elected Mayor in 1861. In 1862, his fellow citizens sent him to Congress and in 1867 and 1871 again made him Mayor.
Later, they offered him the nomination for Governor of the State on the same ticket with Horace Greeley.
In 1854, he was married to Elizabeth Harvey. Eleven children were born to them: Elizabeth W., wife of Robert Robinson; Frederick W. Kalbfleisch; Helen M., wife of Rodney Thursby; Edward L. G., Charles H., Albert M., and Franklin H. Kalbfleisch; Josephine M. L., wife of Robert S. Fleet; Isabella G., wife of James E. Weaver; and John and George Kalbfleisch.
He retired from business in 1868 in favor of his sons, who thereupon organized the firm of Martin Kalbfleisch’s Sons, which controlled the business until 1886.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The sulfuric acid part of the industrial revolution started when a fellow in Great Britain named Roebuck figured out that he could produce the stuff by the pound, and then the ton, using an innovative series of lead tanks to distill the acid. The method spread and evolved, and even today, sulfuric acid accounts for nearly 40% of total U.S. chemical industry volume output.
Manufacture of sulfuric acid has advanced considerably, of course, since the days of M. Kalbfleisch & Sons. The company itself seems to have suffered a premature decline, due to mismanagement (and I’ve found hints of some sort of Standard Oil interference with it as well but nothing I could back up). The fellow who got the property in receivership was a manufacturer of electrical glass, the sort of material you see on high tension wire connections.
Who can guess, all there is, that might be buried down there?
from A history of the city of Brooklyn, By Henry Reed Stiles via google books
maniacal force and fury
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Special Note: I’m going to fill in for Newtown Creek Alliance’s Michael Heimbinder at the DEP speaker series tomorrow night at the Newtown Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant. Mike has a family obligation to fulfill, and Shawn Shaffner of the POOP project asked me to sit in his chair. For more on the (free) event in Greenpoint, Brooklyn on Thursday the 23rd of June, click here. The official press release text follows:
Newtown Creek: Past, Present, and Future
When: Thursday, June 23rd, 6:30-8:30pm
Where: Newtown Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant Visitor Center, 329 Greenpoint Ave.
Join us for the NYC Dept of Environmental Protection’s speaker series where we will be hearing from Michael Heimbinder (Founder and Executive Director, HabitatMap), Kate Zidar (Coordinator, SWIM Coalition) and Paul Parkhill (Director, Place in History). The panel discussion will be moderated by Shawn Shaffner of the The People’s Own Organic Power Project.
Now, on with the Pentacle:
As mentioned in yesterday’s post, I had participated in Working Harbor Committee’s “student cruise” (an effort to introduce the concept of maritime career opportunities to kids from the landlocked core of the City who might otherwise never consider such a path) and found myself with several hours to kill before a second Working Harbor trip in the evening which would be leaving from South Street Seaport and Pier 17.
Luncheon at “the Frying Pan” was achieved, and your humble narrator found himself enjoying the Hudson River Park’s amenities and scenic possibilities. When I lived in Manhattan, of course, I seldom left the apartment except for the bacchanal nights spent at certain favorite bars.
For most of the 1990’s my place was Hogs and Heifers, which was opened by a buddy of mine in a desolate and dangerous stretch of the west side known as the “meat packing district”.
from wikipages.com
The bar was started by Michelle Dell’s husband, Allan Dell, in 1992, when the Meat Packing District was known for transvestite hookers and crack, not fancy restaurants and clubs. Dell slowly built the business, and in the process helped to turn around an entire neighborhood, turning Hogs and Heifers into a major tourist destination, and the Meat Packing District into one of the hottest club and restaurant destinations in the world.
Allan Dell died on June 7th, 1997, at age 31. Michelle Dell continues to operate the bar as its sole proprietor, as well as operating the much larger location, opened in 2005, in Las Vegas, NV.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A friend of mine from art school, who was a confidant and companion of the infamous Lydia Lunch, gave this neighborhood the unforgettable motto “we’ve got the reddest, we’ve got the rawest, just step inside” and the place was no joke “back in the day”. The high line was the worlds longest homeless camp, and the baser elements of New York society stalked the streets untrammeled by the attentions of police or polite society. Things have changed here, as everywhere else, in the Shining City.
Debauchery and drunkenness is much beloved by the uniformed services of our City, and the early bar soon became a magnet for off duty cops, firefighters, and representatives of the various trade unions. After 911, however, I found myself going there less and less. Not to run away from what had happened of course, but simply speaking- my life had changed when Our Lady of the Pentacle arrived on the scene and my nightlife activities had been tapering off anyway as age began to set in.
from wikipedia
The West Side Highway (officially the Joe DiMaggio Highway) is a mostly surface section of New York State Route 9A (NY 9A) that runs from West 72nd Street along the Hudson River to the southern tip of Manhattan. It replaced the West Side Elevated Highway, built between 1929 and 1951, which was shut down in 1973 due to neglect and lack of maintenance, and was dismantled by 1989. The term “West Side Highway” is often mistakenly used, particularly by the news media traffic reporters, to include the roadway north of 72nd Street which is properly known as the Henry Hudson Parkway.
The current highway, which was completed in 2001, but required some reconstruction due to damage sustained in the 9/11 attacks, utilizes the surface streets that existed before the elevated highway was built: West Street, Eleventh Avenue and Twelfth Avenue. A short section of Twelfth Avenue still runs between 129th and 138th Streets, under the Riverside Drive Viaduct.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Of course, the demographics of the neighborhood began to change as well, as the success of Hogs had spawned dozens of other- more upscale- watering holes which catered to an entirely different population of fashionable and moneyed customers. You didn’t see Celebrities slumming anymore, they came here instead “to be seen”.
Basically, it just stopped being fun in the meat packing district, in the same manner that the Lower East Side ceased in the late 80’s. In my mind, Manhattan as a whole is no fun anymore, just expensive.
Recently, I noted that a fruit cart on Park Avenue in the lower 20’s was selling oranges at $1 each. A dollar for an orange?
from wikipedia
In 1900, Gansevoort Market was home to 250 slaughterhouses and packing plants, but by the 1980s, it had become known as a center for drug dealing and prostitution, particularly transsexuals. Concurrent with the rise in illicit sexual activity, the sparsely populated industrial area became the focus of the city’s burgeoning gay BDSM subculture; loosely embracing the business model of disco impresario David Mancuso, over a dozen sex clubs — including such notable ones as The Anvil, The Manhole, and the heterosexual-friendly Hellfire Club — flourished in the area. At the forefront of the scene was the members-only Mineshaft on Little West 12th Street. A preponderance of these establishments were under the direct control of the Mafia or subject to NYPD protection rackets. In 1985, The Mineshaft was forcibly shuttered by the city at the height of AIDS preventionism.
Beginning in the late 1990s, the Meatpacking District went through a transformation. High-end boutiques catering to young professionals and hipsters opened, including Diane von Furstenberg, Christian Louboutin, Alexander McQueen, Stella McCartney, Theory, Ed Hardy, Puma, Moschino, ADAM by Adam Lippes, Jeffrey New York, the Apple Store; restaurants such as Pastis and Buddha Bar; and nightclubs such as Tenjune, One, G-Spa, Cielo, APT, Level V, and Kiss and Fly. In 2004, New York magazine called the Meatpacking District “New York’s most fashionable neighborhood”.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I’ve been watching the so called Freedom Tower rising from the pit of national despair, an aspirant memorial and architectural experiment. Like the towers that were raised by the Rockefellers in the 70’s or the Newsboy Governor’s Empire State Building, it’s meant to connote that no matter how hard times get, NYC will always grow higher and farther than any other city.
What is odd for me, however, are the throngs of tourist pilgrims who make a point of visiting the construction site. During this Hudson walk, I was diverted from my path by the construction project and I found myself taking a sit down break on the gated wall in front of St. Paul’s on Church and Vesey.
Amazing, the numbers of foreign tourists, who make their way here from across the globe.
from wikipedia
The design of 1 WTC generated controversy due to the limited number of floors in the previous design (82) that were designated for office space and other amenities. The overall office space of the entire rebuilt World Trade Center will be reduced by more than 3,000,000 square feet (280,000 m2) as compared with the original complex. The floor limit was imposed by Silverstein, who expressed concern that higher floors would be a liability in another major accident or terrorist attack. In a subsequent design, the highest space that could be occupied became comparable to the original World Trade Center.
An unofficial movement to rebuild the lost towers instead of building a single tower, called The Twin Towers Alliance, collected more than seven thousand signatures supporting the rebuilding of the Twin Towers. Developer Donald Trump proposed a twin building design called World Trade Center Phoenix (Twin Towers II). The twin design would look similar to the original twin towers, but the buildings would be considerably taller with improved safety measures and would feature much larger windows.
Former New York Governor George Pataki faced accusations of cronyism for supposedly using his influence to get the winning architect’s bid picked as a personal favor for a close friend.
The base of the tower (fortified because of security concerns) has also been a source of controversy. A number of critics (notably Deroy Murdock of the National Review) have suggested that it is alienating and dull, and reflects a sense of fear rather than freedom, leading them to dub the project “the Fear Tower”.
In May 2011, detailed floor plans of the tower were displayed on New York City’s Department of Finance website resulting in an uproar from the media and citizens of the surrounding area who questioned the potential use of the plans for a future terrorist attack. New York Police Department Chief Ray Kelly described One World Trade Center as “the nation’s number one terrorist target”.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
My own travels in Europe have often been illuminating, for when these folks are comfortable in their own environment, they discuss the United States in the same context as they would Nazi Germany and I’ve been told by English, Dutch, and Frenchman alike that “we had it coming”.
I find it paradoxical, as there is some truth to their point of view- the same Rockefeller money that built the first World Trade Center was generated by Standard Oil, whose worldwide operations supported and in many cases created the oppressive North African and Arabian governments which would prove to be so friendly to the petrochemical industry back in the 1950’s.
Conversely, the so called “American hegemony” which allowed the petrol companies to guarantee cheap energy to the “west” also created the longest period of peace in European history. The economics of maintaining a large military, or not, is what allowed the shattered landscape of post war Europe to be rebuilt- and many of the modern European birthrights- free or relatively cheap higher education, great roads, and universal health care- are what you can have if you don’t have to maintain a standing army.
from wikipedia
The “Seven Sisters” was a term coined in the 1950s by Italian businessman Enrico Mattei to describe the seven oil companies which formed the “Consortium for Iran” and dominated the global petroleum industry from the mid-1940s to the 1970s. The group comprised Standard Oil of New Jersey and Standard Oil Company of New York (now ExxonMobil); Standard Oil of California, Gulf Oil and Texaco (now Chevron); Royal Dutch Shell; and Anglo-Persian Oil Company (now BP).
In 1973 the members of the Seven Sisters controlled 85% of the world’s petroleum reserves but in recent decades the dominance of them and their successor companies has been challenged by the increasing influence of the OPEC cartel and of state-owned oil companies in emerging-market economies.
The Newtown Pentacle 