Author Archive
CHHNP (Health and Harms) on BCAT
The Newtown Creek Community Health and Harms Narrative Project is the lead story on BCAT this month, to view the episode click here. If you or someone you know would like to have their voice included in the Community Health and Harms Narrative Project please contact us at newtowncreekstudy@gmail.com or (718) 577-1359.
the Wrong side of the tracks, a walk in Maspeth
Feel like taking a walk? I’ll show you something cool… Bring your camera- and ID
Anything you may experience, in situ, by following these walking directions is at your OWN RISK, and is offered by the Newtown Pentacle for documentary and entertainment purposes only. Remember- the rule we follow at the Newtown Pentacle is to NEVER trespass. Like Vampires, Newtownicans should wait to be invited into a house before they can do their work. To wit. Also, Please note — the opinions expressed in italics in this story are the author’s opinions and observations and not necessarily factual.
Over Hill and Dale, part 1- Maspeth Creek
check out the walk in a Google Map here.
-photo by Mitch Waxman
This is another Saturday or Sunday kind of photowalk thing. You really don’t want to be here during the week on foot. VERY dangerous place.
At 56th road, between 48th and 50th streets in Queens, is a non-existent crosswalk found at the confluence of 49th street and an active (street-grade level) railroad track. This is an insanely dangerous patch of road running through a literal industrial backwater.
Be ever so careful crossing here- remember that guy who got dragged a few months ago? That happened not too far from here. There are giant machines flying around at top speed all around you. Be wary. We’re going to walk part of the Maspeth Plank Road today, more or less.
-photo by Mitch Waxman
Incidentally, these rail tracks and buildings are the proposed site for the Maspeth Rail Tunnel.
WRONG- Christina from Forgotten-NY was kind enough to correct us here.
“I appreciate the walk through Maspeth however there is no planned tunnel construction Queens for the Cross Harbor Project. Phelps Dodge would be the site of an intermodal rail-to-truck facility. The tunnel is from NJ to Bklyn. Here is a map.”
-photo by Mitch Waxman
On your left is an enigmatic site that the DEP has labeled “the Maspeth Project”. This, of course, sets me off into endless speculations. As does the term “Maspeth Railroad Place site” that’s used to describe it.
from the DEC
Administrative Information
Site Name: Maspeth Project
Site Code: B00152
Program: Environmental Restoration Program
Classification: A
EPA ID Number:
Location
DEC Region: 2
Address: 57-15 49th Street
City: New York City Zip: 11378-
County:Queens
Latitude: 40.724616420
Longitude: -73.919630760
Site Type:
Estimated Size: 2.800 Acres
Site Description
The Maspeth Railroad Place site is located in an industrialized area of Queens County, New York. The site is approximately 3-acres in size, and can be found at 57-15 49th Street. The main site features include a fenced lot which constitutes the majority of the site. There are no perminent structures on the lot. The headwaters of Maspeth Creek are located approximately 100 hundred feet from the site. The site is currently vacant, though there is evidence of some trespassing. The site is surrounded by industrial/commercial properties on all sides. The site has had several industrial/commercial uses over the years, but is reported to have been most recently the site of a bus maintenance facility. A former chemicals blending operation was located immediately adjacent to the site, and there was some concern that wastes from that operation could have contaminated the site. The Remedial Investigation is complete, and the alternatives analysis has been submitted in draft form. The City of New York has amended the State Assistance Contract to include funds for removing an underground storage tank which was found during the site investigation. That work was conducted in the spring and summer of 2008. Work continues on finalizing the alternatives analysis.
Contaminants of Concern (Including Materials Disposed)
Type of Waste Quantity of Waste
BENZO(A)PYRENE UNKNOWN
BIS(2-ETHYLHEXYL)PHTHALATE UNKNOWN
XYLENE (MIXED) UNKNOWN
Site Environmental Assessment
The primary contaminants of concern at the site are petroleum related compounds. Preliminary data indicated the possible presence of a common plasticizer (bis-2-ethylhexyl pthalate) at elevated levels in groundwater and soils, however, more recent data indicated much lower levels than previously reported. The study is on-going, but some localized soils and groundwater contamination has been identified. Groundwater is above standards for petroleum compounds. The site has not been determined to be a significant threat to the environment.
Site Health Assessment
Soil and groundwater are contaminated with petroleum-related volatile and semi-volatile organic compounds. Exposure to contaminated groundwater is not expected because the area is served by public water. The area is heavily industrialized and the site is partially fenced, but tresspassers may be exposed to contaminated surface soil.
-photo by Mitch Waxman
from Serphin Maltese’s website
10/4/00 BROWNFIELDS GRANT TO HELP MASPETH
Wednesday, 04 October 2000 00:00
News Archives – 2000
Senator Serphin R. Maltese (Queens) announced a $412,500 grant from the Clean Water/Clean Air Bond Act will be used to investigate potential environmental contamination at the site of the Maspeth Project.
“On behalf of the residents and their families of the Maspeth and Queens communities, I wish to express our sincere appreciation to Governor Pataki for this vital brownfields funding. It will enable us to investigate and clean up property in many of our vibrant Queens neighborhoods,” said Senator Maltese.
“New York’s Brownfields Program is helping cities across the State revitalize our urban landscape by turning abandoned and underused properties into community assets,” said Governor Pataki. “This grant is a perfect example of how funding from the Clean Water/Clean Air Bond Act is fostering environmental renewal, creating economic opportunity and improving the quality of life of all New Yorkers.”
Senator Maltese explained that the brownfields grant will be used to investigate suspected contamination at a 2.8 acre site located at 57-15 49th Street in Maspeth. The property, which the City acquired after it was condemned, is located in a heavy manufacturing zone and has been vacant for many years. The site was previously used for bus maintenance and storage, a silkscreen printing facility and a graphic dye cutter operation. The City plans to use the site for a consolidated water and sewer maintenance facility for the NYC Department of Environmental Protection.
“New York’s Brownfields Program is one of the best-funded of its kind in the nation and it is helping bring jobs, parks and new housing to communities throughout the state at sites that previously were unusable,” said Senator Maltese.
The Clean Water/Clean Air Bond Act, proposed by Governor Pataki and approved by voters in 1996, authorizes $1.75 billion for several environmental programs. It includes $200 million for grants to municipalities for costs associated with the investigation and cleanup of brownfields, which are abandoned or underused properties where real or perceived environmental contamination hinders the potential for redevelopment.
For more on Serphin Maltese, click here.
-photo by Mitch Waxman
On your right- the Kosciuszko bridge in the background, with the Davis & Warshow warehouse in the foreground, and the Newtown Creek spreads greasily around you. Get your shots in this summer, Newtownicans, the bridge is scheduled to be replaced and then torn down.
-photo by Mitch Waxman
Maspeth Creek is a tributary of the Newtown Creek that makes its first noxious appearance here. It is the most polluted part of the Newtown Creek watershed. One wonders how long this waterway, which drew the Dutch here, will survive modernity. This, of course, is not the first indignity suffered by nature at the hands of municipal planners.
-photo by Mitch Waxman
Water quality is always terrible here, but I’ve seen it worse than this. There’s an outfall sewer directly below the camera’s POV. The smell is…
from the EPA
Address Maspeth Creek, Queens, NY
Categories Water, Sewage/Garbage, Health and Toxics Neighborhood Maspeth
Keywords CSO, Newtown Creek Owner/Occupant NYC Department of Environmental Protection – if you see discharge during dry weather call 311 with the outfall number ready
Location Details CSO Outfall NC-077 -discharges 288.7M gallons per year into English Kills -Tier 2 outfall -Ranked 25 out of over 400 in terms of volume -located at Maspeth Creek
-photo by Mitch Waxman
Did you know that one leg of the new City Water Tunnel number 3 runs from Maspeth to Red Hook? Eventually, it will be a subterranean conduit for drinking water running throughout the entire city, when completed in 2020.
-photo by Mitch Waxman
Advice:
Maspeth avenue is populated by many, many people who wouldn’t like you taking their picture, lords and ladies of Newtown. If you catch my drift, this is a good place to be covert with your camera. Not to imply that corruption and racketeering ever had anything to do with any of the neighborhoods surrounding the Newtown Creek- or that the New York City garbage hauling and trucking industries have ever been anything other than above board, but watch out for yourself here.
These days- in our modern New York- where there has been no police corruption since 1992, and crime has fallen an aggregate 79% in that period, people have gotten used to walking around like they’re safe or something.
-photo by Mitch Waxman
Proceeding around the bend from 49th street to 48 st, on your right will be a succession of recycling and garbage processing companies, and a huge sanitation garage dominates the end of the block at the turn to 58th road.
Be conservative with your camera here. Cop hassles are the last thing you’re worrying about around these parts- its private security and union guys. This is not the safe little world you know from television, this is the real world with its own set of rules- and you are a guest on these streets. Don’t fool around with these fencelines, urban explorer types. And look out for trucks.
-photo by Mitch Waxman
On your left are a series of faceless factories squatting squamously in the Newtown sun.
-photo by Mitch Waxman
At the end of 58th road are the remains of the Maspeth Avenue Bridge- a toll bridge whose owners were incorporated as early as 1836. Its the last visible remnant of the Maspeth Plank Road, which last crossed the Newtown Creek in 1875.
forgotten-ny went down the Newtown Creek a few years ago on the John J. Harvey fireboat- check it out.
from one of my earlier postings that connects up with this one-
The Night Soil and Offal Docks, and Jell-O
…over on the Greenpoint side when I read about “Conrad Wessel’s noxious and pestilential night soil and offal dock on Furman’s Island, along the Newtown Creek”. This reference was connected to Gov. Flower’s “smelling committee” which traveled up Newtown Creek in a steamboat during the summer of 1894 to confirm that the waterway did, in fact, smell. The Smelling Committee placed much blame for the miasma which permeated Long Island City, Dutch Kills, and Greenpoint at the doorstep of the bone boilers on Furman’s Island.
A muddy patch midway at the branch of Maspeth Creek with the main waterway, Furman’s (originally Smith’s) island was connected to the shore by a plank road. This plank road would later become Maspeth Avenue. At the corner of Gardner, where the Maspeth Tanks towered until just recently- was Peter Cooper’s Glue Factory. This picture is from the Brooklyn public library:
-photo by Mitch Waxman
To your right will be a gigantic Sanitation Garage, to your left is 47th street, in front of you is a patch of mud and the Newtown Creek and what remains of another world.
If you’re heading back to Greenpoint or Williamsburg- take 47th to Grand Avenue and make a right to go over the Grand Avenue Bridge.
Before Grand St. in Brooklyn was extended into Queens (where it becomes Grand Avenue), the Maspeth Avenue Bridge (along with Penny Bridge) served the 19th century multitudes traveling to and from the Cemetery Belt- specifically Calvary and Mt. Zion.
from another one of my earlier postings that connects up with this one-
Death was and is big business, and Long Island City was and is all about business. Ferry service ran from Manhattan and Brooklyn bringing the bereaved up Newtown Creek to the New Calvary Pier in Blissville.
The Long Island Railroad maintained a station at Penny Bridge carrying mourners from all points east. Funeral processions involved marching bands and extensive paegentry. A trip to the graveyard was like visiting a sculpture park for the whole family, with exquisite landscaping and an arboretum of exotic trees and flowering plants sprouting from a grassy hill. Clothes were crisply laundered in boiling water (using lye as a detergent), children ordered to behave or else . What a change, if only for a few hours, from the gaslit darkness of Manhattan’s tenement alleys. A beautiful day with the family, spent at the Newtown Creek.
-photo by Mitch Waxman
Take one last look, HEY- that’s the Empire State Building, isn’t that cool? Told you I’d show you something cool.
A Shunned House
A Shunned House -photo by Mitch Waxman
When I first began my doctor ordered regime of penitential exercise and clean living, I thought a long walk was to the other side of Astoria. Never a specimen of special fortitude or physical accomplishments- years of debauched revelry in Manhattan, and an overindulgent diet (shocking in retrospect)- had wrecked my body in an expert fashion. Setting out to correct the damage wrought by this neglect, I elected a regimen of walking and began bringing my camera with me.
A Shunned House -photo by Mitch Waxman
My ambles were short at first, contained entirely within the victorian lanes of Astoria. One afternoon, on the corner where the natural course of forty seventh street was severed by the Brooklyn Queens Expressway – I found the Shunned House. When built- the lane it sat on was called Oakley street, and later 17th avenue in the days of Long Island City’s independence. In 1852, this patch of land was the property of S.A. Halsey, and bordered the Charles Rapelye estate which is the site of a modern day public housing project.
Of course- I was hardly the first to find this enigmatic structure. Joey in astoria, and the Queens Gazette, and QueensCrap (and Aviator Rob) called the place “the Astoria Mystery Mansion. On the Joey in astoria post, a person calling himself “Matt” claimed the place as belonging to his own family and gave it an apocryphal history.
A Shunned House -photo by Mitch Waxman
I never cross a fenceline, of course, and restricted my photographic curiosity to the public sidewalks. Luckily, the sidewalk vantage point offered the panopticon a series of wonders.
The property was adorned with crude and somewhat degenerate statues, seemingly molded from concrete. Referentially, the sculptures were copies of Roman classics, and the motif of the lot was clearly Italian. The design of the Shunned House was italianate villa in inspiration, striving for taste and sophistication.
A Shunned House -photo by Mitch Waxman
In its time, the place must have had a unique charm. I am quite certain its former custodians, who must have labored tremendously to build and maintain the property, would be thunderstruck by its ruination. An encounter at a local cafe recently (spring 2009) revealed that the person I was engaged in casual conversation with was actually the real estate developer who had recently purchased the Shunned House, and who had executed its demolition. Developer X, as I’ll call him
A Shunned House -photo by Mitch Waxman
Located along Broadway in South Astoria, this cafe I frequent is a gathering place and watering hole for the stout Croats and Serbs who populate (along with a sizeable community of Brazilians) the immediate neighborhood. Many enjoyable evenings spent there have afforded me a certain intimacy with these southern slavs, and conversations between strangers often begin organically.
Developer X explained that the place was falling down, and a wreck, after years of exposure to New York’s weather. Also, in confidence, he related a tale and background story about the house’s history which it is not my business to repeat (like I’ve said before- I’m from Brooklyn). In 2008, fences were thrown up about the Shunned House, and the now isolated structure was doomed.
A Shunned House -photo by Mitch Waxman
The Shunned House was demolished in February of 2009, and had been erected in 1830. Yes, there was a camera directly in front of the walkway, but even so- there was always a feeling… an intuition that some clandestine set of eyes was watching from the shadowed interior. One wonders what Developer X might have unearthed, or set free, at the Shunned House.
Its a parking lot for trucks now.
That’s Just Grand
-photo by Mitch Waxman
In 1894, George Roeschman (an employee of Hardy, Voorhies and co.- a lumber yard on Grand St. in Williamsburg) was accosted by 3 men as he was trying to cross the Grand St. Bridge over the Newtown Creek. He was struck over the head, had a sack pulled over him, and roughly thrown to his fate in the inky waters. After scrambling up the slimy banks, Roeschman didn’t report the crime to Police officials immediately for fear of retribution by these highwaymen. Four bodies had recently been found along this branch of the Newtown Creek, all were victims of a similar modus operandi.
-photo by Mitch Waxman
In the same year, on October 16, the body of a 40 year old man was found nearby. His identity was never ascertained and he has lain in centuried silence at the City’s potter’s field since.
-photo by Mitch Waxman
Nearby, a scoundrel named Pete Hess and his friend Schulz once buried a baby, alive, in the mud of the Newtown Creek. Both men received lengthy stretches at Sing-Sing for the murder of “Baby Wertheimer”.
There is a long history of criminal derring-do associated with the Newtown Creek. Check out this NYtimes article from 1996 for the story of Captain Lau and the Barones.
Newtown Creek musings
enormous stitched panorama, Pulaski Bridge- photo by Mitch Waxman- (click images for larger views at flickr, worth it)
Over the last several weeks- I have been honored to encounter an interesting community of historians, photographers, and maritime enthusiasts. A lot of these people asked me how I got so into this whole history thing. My standard answer has been “Newtown Creek”.
My long suffering wife has often been reduced to a stupor by my endless musings over the deeper meanings represented by the curious location of some manhole cover I found on Northern Blvd, or speculations about the carefully obscured origins of our modern city.
If you are religious, pray for her strength and tenacity against these spouse inflicted irritations to her infinite patience, if you’re not a churchgoer- raise a glass in her name and toast- to our lady of the Pentacle.
Newtown Creek, NYC panorama, Queens museum of art- photo by Mitch Waxman
Since I found the place, (like most New Yorkers, I had no idea that Newtown Creek even existed a few years ago) the Newtown Creek has had some kind of hold on me. My actual first reaction was:
Putrid, this dripping eidolon of unwholesome revelation which sits between Brooklyn and Queens is an abomination- a comfirmation of all that is unclean- unholy- and detestable. A ghoulish shade of decay, antiquity, and dissolution hanging about it- the Newtown Creek has that awful bearing which, in any sane world, a merciful earth should not have to endure.
Newtown Creek- photo by Mitch Waxman
My inclinations and interests have always tended to touch upon those subjects ignored and shunned by the madding crowd. After all, have I wandered through nitre choked graveyards in winter, and amidst the cloaking shadows of the urban wastelands in the hellish inferno of a New York heat wave for any reason other than joy? What drew me to the story of the Newtown Creek, at first, was the quivering green immensity of the place- the horror- which is nepenthe to me. The esthetics of the place began to infiltrate and infect me.
Rail Bridge near the junction of the Dutch Kills and the Newtown Creek- 3 exposure HDR photo by Mitch Waxman
I started reading up on the Newtown Creek, and found the Newtown Creek Alliance, and saw youtube videos from Riverkeeper, and read the history (Greater Astoria Historical Society‘s LIC book is a must have), and followed Forgotten-NY around the place (via their gold standard website). I found my long walks less and less of a burden, and I became mezmerized by the idea of exploring this strange and horribly exciting place. Camera in hand, I set out on foot. If you want to see anything in New York, you have to be on foot.
Petro history- from Newtown Creek Alliance tour of the Newtown Creek- photo by Mitch Waxman
There is a beauty to this cradle of the industrial revolution that contemporary reading would call Dickensian. Its the wide open skylines (squat, most buildings are under 3 stories, and loading docks are set back from the street to allow trucks to berth), the maddening shadows dropping off the elevated highway whose roadways- in some places- are over 10 stories above, and the sudden drop-offs whenever fenced off bulkheads signal the presence of water. Its the supernal way that the oddly colored water dapples reflected orange or green light up into the underpinnings of those highways, or the constant appearances of rail tracks both active and abandoned. Perhaps- its just the counterpoint of a shining city hanging over the miasmic occlusion rising off of the Newtown Creek.
from Metropolitan Avenue Bridge- (click images for larger views at flickr, worth it)- photo by Mitch Waxman
Maybe its the sure knowledge that change and progress have arrived in Long Island City again, and that in the near future all of this will be gone- buried under towering apartment houses and obscured by cosmetic improvements meant to obscure the past and hide what it is that may still lurk down here.
LIE- stitched panorama photo by Mitch Waxman- (click images for larger views at flickr, worth it)
