Archive for May 2014
bleeding hands
Astoria flava.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Spotted this painting nearby Welling Court in old Astoria, part of a vast installation of murals and street art that adorns the industrial walls of an ancient lane which has definitely seen better days. One loves the Mexican influence (which seems a bit more Maya than Aztec to my eyes).
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Advertisements for the services of the Universal Assistance Crew abound. I’m trying to think up a mission to hire the UAC for, perhaps I’ll employ them as protestors or something. Either way, they claim that they will do any and everything you might need them to.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Mighty Triborough, spanning Astoria park on its way to the Shining City. Something curious is noticed around the footings of Triborough, btw. A complete and utter lack of graffiti, which is remarkable in itself.
There are two public Newtown Creek walking tours coming up,
one in LIC, Queens and one in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.
Glittering Realms: Brooklyn’s Greenpoint with Atlas Obscura, on Saturday May 17th.
Click here for more info and ticketing.
Modern Corridor: Queen’s LIC with Brooklyn Brainery, on Sunday May 18th.
Click here for more info and ticketing.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
beckoning beyonds
Confused paranoia and insensate musing, in today’s post.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
My feet hurt, as does a knee or two.
Worries abound, all sorts of existential threats present themselves daily. The neighbors are worrisome and curious, and many of them were born to foreign communists. Some hail from terribly artificial nation states whose judicial system is built around medieval religious law, like Italy. There are public defecators and licentious drunks without, a riot of noise erupts constantly, and my dog has been curiously alert and watching the western sky of late. This Russia/Ukraine thing is also noisome, but we need the Russians, just in case Earth is ever invaded by an alien army.
For the same reason, we must preserve the felid specie of Tigers – for service as shock troops on the front lines of a true world war.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Surely, the universe has never been more unsettling than at the present moment, one can sense that the gears of fate and the clockwork of dharma spin inexorably toward doom, with a state of jellyfish like psychic dissolution awaiting the human infestation. Fearfully, willingly, entering into a dark age of ignorance and intolerant barbarism simply in the name of forgetting the horrible truths of our time.
How one longs for the good old days of centuries past. Things are so much worse now than they were a mere hundred years ago, during the opening shots of the “World War,” don’t you think?
Note: One prefers referring to WW1 to as “Phase One of the second Thirty Years War.” The First World War was merely a consolidation and clearing away of the medieval system, removing the decayed Austro Hungarian, Chinese, and Turkish Imperial players from the chess board and making room for the modern big guns to step up in Phase Two.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Alright, a hundred years back is a bad example. Let’s do two hundred years then, in… 1814…
OK, 1714… 1614… Jeez… 1514, well, let’s just say things in the present might not be as dire, loathsome, or squamous as we might believe them to be. Things could be a lot worse. An invasion fleet of alien starships could be driving asteroids at us from just beyond Mars, shelling our cities and killing the oceans. There could be bacterial analogues, born in the horrible mouldering slopes of an alien world, festering in the throats and orifices of our livestock or offspring.
Of course, were some star born army of conquerors to arrive upon the earth with lascivious or malicious intent, tiger riding Russian troops will be there to answer them.
I think that’s fairly obvious.
There are two public Newtown Creek walking tours coming up,
one in LIC, Queens and one in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.
Glittering Realms: Brooklyn’s Greenpoint with Atlas Obscura, on Saturday May 17th.
Click here for more info and ticketing.
Modern Corridor: Queen’s LIC with Brooklyn Brainery, on Sunday May 18th.
Click here for more info and ticketing.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
demon beckoned
1854, lords and ladies, 1854.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Kerosene was “invented” by a Canadian named Abraham Gesner. He received the patents for the stuff, and coined the name (like a lot of 19th century industrial product names, we use the trademarked nomen as the descriptor for the entire category. It’s the same shorthand we use for facial tissue as being “Kleenex” or photocopying as “Xerox”) for a distillation of coal oil. Gesner was looking for a way to get an angle on the lamp oil trade. In 1854, lamp oil was produced from animals, in particular from fish and especially whales. When the time came to set up shop and build a factory to produce his coal oil, it was along the Newtown Creek that Abraham Gesner built the first large scale Kerosene works in North America – in what we call Queens.
from wikipedia
Gesner’s research in minerals resulted in his 1846 development of a process to refine a liquid fuel from coal, bitumen and oil shale. His new discovery, which he named kerosene, burned more cleanly and was less expensive than competing products, such as whale oil. In 1850, Gesner created the Kerosene Gaslight Company and began installing lighting in the streets in Halifax and other cities. By 1854, he had expanded to the United States where he created the North American Kerosene Gas Light Company at Long Island, New York. Demand grew to where his company’s capacity to produce became a problem, but the discovery of petroleum, from which kerosene could be more easily produced, solved the supply problem.
Abraham Gesner continued his research on fuels and wrote a number of scientific studies concerning the industry including an 1861 publication titled, “A Practical Treatise on Coal, Petroleum and Other Distilled Oils,” which became a standard reference in the field. Eventually, Gesner’s company was absorbed into the petroleum monopoly, Standard Oil and he returned to Halifax, where he was appointed a Professor of Natural History at Dalhousie University.
via Wikipedia
This was Gesner, who kind of looked a bit like General Zod in my opinion.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The North American Kerosene Gas Light Company, later the New York Kerosene Company, would eventually be acquired by Charles Pratt and folded into his growing Astral Oil empire (Pratt’s own Kerosene refinery was centered at Bushwick Inlet at the border of Greenpoint and Williamsburg) and would became a part of Standard Oil when Pratt joined forces with John D Rockefeller. The Gesner works are often mentioned by environmental officials, but no one ever gets specific about where they were. You’d think the first large scale petroleum refinery in the United States would have left behind a plaque or something, but welcome to Queens.
from 1909’s “The Journal of Industrial and Engineering Chemistry, Volume 1”, courtesy google books
X
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A bit of work has gone into screwing down the exact location of the facility around Newtown Pentacle HQ in recent days, and I can tell you that the footprint of the North American Kerosene Gaslight Company was incorporated into what we now refer to as Pratt’s Queens County Oil Works – which is in Blissville and across the street from Calvary Cemetery. Equidistant from the Greenpoint Avenue and long demolished Penny Bridges, this is the site of the Blissville Seep, which I’ve been rattling on about for a few years now.
from a December 2011 posting at this, your newtown pentacle
Sadly, oil is seeping out of a bulkhead on the Queens side of the Newtown Creek.
Famously, the Greenpoint Oil Spill (click here for a link to newtowncreekalliance.org for more) occurred just across the water from this spot, but every indication points to this as being a separate event. The former site of Charles Pratt’s Queens County Oil Works, which was an approximately 18 acre parcel which would later be called the “Standard Oil Blissville works”, the sites occupation in modernity has little or nothing to do with petroleum.
also, from 1921′s Welding engineer, Volume 6, courtesy google books
There are two public Newtown Creek walking tours coming up,
one in LIC, Queens and one in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.
Glittering Realms: Brooklyn’s Greenpoint with Atlas Obscura, on Saturday May 17th.
Click here for more info and ticketing.
Modern Corridor: Queen’s LIC with Brooklyn Brainery, on Sunday May 18th.
Click here for more info and ticketing.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
hellish ooze
Paranoids and conspiracists rejoice at the Newtown Creek.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Those who have had the scales cast off from before their eyes, when they’re not telling you that the Queen of England is a star born reptile or that the moon landings were faked, will inform petitioners about the Rockefellers. The family is reported to be illuminati, in cahoots with the Bilderbergers, agents of Lucifer itself, and or working with space aliens to reduce 99% of humanity down to the status of a herd animal. Your humble narrator is a paranoid, but ain’t that far gone yet. I do give them credit for a lot of what’s wrong on my beloved Newtown Creek, however.
from 1882’s “Annual Report, Volume 2 by New York (State) Dept. of Health,” courtesy google books
X
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Just mentioning the name of the sire, John D Rockefeller, in connection with his Standard Oil company (which by 1892 had a stranglehold on oil refining around the Creek and owned 95% of the petroleum industry by 1911), has caused several well meaning folks to pull me to the side and ask that I not mention his name for fear of repurcussions. It seems that the grand kids and great grandchildren of the old man are funders of and heavily involved in water based non profits, and they worry about me rocking the boat, donations wise. Greater good, I’m told.
Still, its John D’s legacy that’s oozing out of the bulkheads on Newtown Creek to this very day.
from 1870’s “The Insurance Times, Volume 3,” courtesy google books
X
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Thing is, unlike most involved in the “environmental” scene, I’m decidedly not anti-business and I am certainly not some vegan muffin eating virgin who thinks that oil companies are necessarily evil. The fact is, you can’t blame a drug dealer for selling their wares to an addicted clientele, and you also can’t point your accusing finger at an oil company if you’re thrusting an arm out of an automobile window to do so.
I will concede, however, that since the Rockefellers and Pratts originally marketed their kerosene businesses as selling “illuminating oil,” that they might accurately be described as illuminati. The jury is out on the Queen of England and her House of Saxe Coburg being lizards, although it would explain a lot of things.
from 1910’s “Seventh International Congress of Applied Chemistry, London, May 27th to June 2nd, 1909 Section 3a, Metallurgy and Mining,” courtesy google books
X
There are two public Newtown Creek walking tours coming up,
one in LIC, Queens and one in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.
Glittering Realms, with Atlas Obscura, on Saturday May 17th.
Click here for more info and ticketing.
Modern Corridor, with Brooklyn Brainery, on Sunday May 18th.
Click here for more info and ticketing.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
courage and action
Hey, that’s the Reformed Church of Newtown over there, the big white thing.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Just the other day, your humble narrator answered a question put to him by the long suffering Our Lady of the Pentacle with a sorrowful exhalation. Her query was “where are you going?” and my answer was simply “Newtown, the center of Newtown.” Quite used to such archaisms at this stage of the game, she said “Elmhurst?” and I said “yes, Elmhurst.”
Off I went and before long – one arrived at the navel, as it were, of ancient Queens.
from “Historic Churches of America” by Nellie Urner Wallington, courtesy google books
Of the Dutch Reformed families in early New York many removed from time to time beyond the limits of New Amsterdam securing for themselves broader sections of land for tillage and among them a number of such families settled in Long Island where they formed the hamlet of Newtown. Unable to support a minister and to maintain a church building of their own they joined hands with others of the same faith at Flushing and for a number of years worshipped there until December 2 1731 when a meeting of the resident members in Newtown was called to form plans for the establishment of a church organisation of their own and to devise means for the erection of a house of worship upon land contributed by Peter Berrien.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Just the facts – original structure built in 1731, but most of what we see here today was started in 1831. A “Historic Place,” there were later additions (a chapel, I’m told) constructed on in the 1850’s (which was repositioned on the lot at least once).
It’s on Broadway, at Corona Avenue.
You can’t miss it, as it’s the giant white thing on your left as you head east. The Internet makes some big deal out of the church offering Chinese language services, as well as English, but if you live in Queens – you know that sort of thing is usual, and not strange or unique in the slightest.
from “three years in north america” by James Stuart, courtesy google books
Mr. Schoonemaker is the minister of the Dutch Reformed church at Newtown, a very respectable person, who had succeeded his father in the ministry of the same church. The Dutch clergy in the neighbourhood of New York still retain the original appellation of Dominie, and Mr. Schoonemaker was, I observed, generally called in conversation the Dominie, or Dominie Schoonemaker. There was also an Episcopalian church at Newtown, and the number of carriages waiting during the period of divine service at this trifling village of 600 or 800 people ,was probably as great as at all the churches in Edinburgh put together; but no one coming from the country to the village ever thinks of walking. I remember mentioning to a lady in Long Island, how different were the habits of people in Great Britain in this respect, on which she remarked, that before she had children she used to walk; but upon questioning her how far she used to walk she admitted that a mile was her limit.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It also wouldn’t be Queens if there wasn’t a graveyard nearby, and the Newtown Reformed has (what I’m told) around 111 people in their ground. There’s some pretty famous and historic names associated with this church – Duryea, Bragaw, Luyster amongst them.
The first baptisms were performed here on April 27, 1736. Ceremonies were performed upon and for Janetie Kounoven Luyster and Abram Luyster Lent, who seem to be cousins.
Everybody seems to have been cousins back then, of course.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Interesting Newtown Trivia is offered – the original church building was used as gunpowder store by His Majesty’s troops during the American Insurrection and Mutiny of the 1770’s. Much ado was raised by the colonists, and appeals to the military from His Majesty’s subjects pled that the explosives be moved from the church, amidst fear of lightning strike or fire.
Check out this wonderful piece from an April 2, 1928 edition of the “The Daily Star” found over at fultonhistory.com for similar bits and pieces, and the perspectives of a century ago.
X
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Anyway, that’s what the big white thing in Elmhurst is.
Back to your day to day and ho hum.
– also – Don’t forget to throw black beans over your shoulder tonight while uttering “haec ego mitto; his redimo meque meosque fabis.” It’s time for the Lemuralla again.
from nycago.org
The Reformed Church of Newtown was founded in 1731 by Dutch-speaking farmers and tradesmen. New York had originally been “New Amsterdam,” a Dutch Colony, and although the early members of Newtown were from a variety of ethnic backgrounds, they held their services in the Dutch language still common in the community then called “Newtown.” Later, some developers changed the name of the area to Elmhurst, but the church retained its original name, a name still carried also by the local high school and subway station. Some things did change, though. The original Federal-Greek Revival building, completed in 1735, had survived the struggles of the colonial days and the disruptions of the Revolutionary War days (during which the British seized it for use as an armory), but it was replaced in 1832 by the present Georgian-style sanctuary. On the church grounds is a historic cemetery. In 1975, the church was cited by the New York Historical Trust, and in 1980, the church was added to the National Registry of Historic Places.
There are two public Newtown Creek walking tours coming up, one in LIC, Queens and one in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.
Glittering Realms, with Atlas Obscura, on Saturday May 17th.
Click here for more info and ticketing.
Modern Corridor, with Brooklyn Brainery, on Sunday May 18th.
Click here for more info and ticketing.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
The Newtown Pentacle 