Archive for the ‘Astoria’ Category
Big Allis is not in the Land of the Lost… or how I learned to stop worrying and love Ravenswood #3
16% percent of the electricity consumed by New York City is generated at the junction of Vernon and 36th avenues in Queens where the gargantuan Big Allis power plant is found.
The first million kilowatt facility in the entire country, built at the behest of Consolidated Edison, Ravenswood number three first went online in 1965. Upon activation, the cyclopean dynamos of Big Allis were reduced to slag by volcanic emanations issuing from within its massive, natural gas driven turbines.
Six months later, a rebuilt system managed to withstand a full hour and twenty-seven minutes of these cosmic stresses before it too went out of commission for a further four months. The problem was diagnosed by experts and teams of engineers to be the responsibility of a malfunctioning bearing which was producing disharmonious vibrations.
After the blackouts of the late seventies, it seemed that Big Allis had finally been tamed by the tireless labor of the indomitable employees of Consolidated Edison. Perfected, the plant was sold by ConEd to the Keyspan Energy Corporation, which then sold it in 2008 to the TransCanada company for 2.9 billion dollars.
photos by Mitch Waxman
As always, if something you read here is contradicted by something you know, please leave a comment or contact us. Corrections and additions are always welcome.
The Horrors of Hallet’s Cove
On the Queens waterfront, at the junction of Broadway and Vernon Boulevard, can be found the Socrates Sculpture Garden, a very modern warehouse store, and dozens of derelicted industrial mills which define Hallet’s Cove and hint at its hidden past.
quote from myastoria.com:
and from wikipedia:
This area (between the nineteenth century’s American Civil war and the second thirty years war -called World Wars 1 and 2), along with the nearby Newtown Creek, was the busiest industrial manufacturing zone to be found in the entire world.
Today, its an abandoned patch of corrupted ruins whose ancient poisons and toxic filth leech through glass strewn mud into the East River.
I rarely cross a fence line, but this structure seemed to be calling out to me.
Once, this structure had been a metal finishing plant of some kind, but today it serves as a garbage dump for surviving area businesses.
The building is marked as condemned by the inspectors of the New York City Fire Department with a squared X, and apparently for good reason.
Spoke to a Fireman in a bar one night about what the squared x means. Won’t be crossing that mark again.
It disappeared in the spring of 2009, this place on Hallet’s Cove.
What remains is a brick lot with a fence around it.
The Newtown Pentacle 