Archive for the ‘Long Island City’ Category
Magic Lantern Show in Ridgewood
Your humble narrator will be narrating humbly on Friday, February 24th at 7:30 P.M. for the “Ridgewood Democratic Club, 60-70 Putnam Avenue, Ridgewood, NY 11385” as the “Newtown Creek Magic Lantern Show” is presented to their esteemed group. The club hosts a public meeting, with guests and neighbors welcome, and say that refreshments will be served.
The “Magic Lantern Show” is actually a slideshow, packed with informative text and graphics, wherein we approach and explore the entire Newtown Creek. Every tributary, bridge, and significant spot are examined and illustrated with photography. This virtual tour will be augmented by personal observation and recollection by yours truly, with a question and answer period following.
For those of you who might have seen it last year, the presentation has been streamlined, augmented with new views, and updated with some of the emerging stories about Newtown Creek which have been exclusively reported on at this- your Newtown Pentacle.
For more information, please contact me here.
interest and speculation
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A humble narrator can never be 100% sure about anything, as I live in a hallucinatory dreamscape of thwarted ambition where angles that appear obtuse are often in fact acute, but this would seem to be the head of a tunnel boring machine at the Sunnyside Yards. The device is of Byzantine complexity and cyclopean size, but sits suspended.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
These shots are from the middle of January, the 18th to be exact (which is also Robert Anton Wilson’s birthday), and were captured at a fortuitous moment when the burning thermonuclear eye of god itself was hanging low in the sky.
A video of the second avenue subway project’s tunnel crew bursting through the the skin of the earth is extant upon the interwebs, and I believe this to be the front of that mechanism which has been grinding out its subterranean course for the last several years.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It is a rare thing to see equipment like this out in the open, let alone suspended above the ground by steel spars erected by the estimable engineers of Bay Crane. A mere week later, the device was entirely disassembled into constituent parts, no doubt to allow it to be easily shipped off to the location of its next task.
hideous complexity
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Just a quickie today, a shot taken from some point in space which straddles the borderline of Brooklyn and Queens (although this one is slightly more in Brooklyn) taken from the Greenpoint Avenue Bridge. Apologies for the brevity, but a humble narrator is busy staggering across the boroughs today, and in the midst of preparing for a series of meetings and presentations. Be back tomorrow with something more substantial.
wondering uneasily
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Each one of the DE30AC Long Island Railroad engines one typically observes at the ancient Long Island City station at Hunters Point is rated to 3,000 Horsepower. So says the google.
As a humble narrator is given to literal interpretations of statements like this, an idea occurred, which might present an answer to the so called “hum” which bedevils area residents.
Horses.
from wikipedia
The LIRR chartered the New York and Jamaica Railroad on September 3, 1859, and a supplement to the LIRR’s charter passed March 12, 1860 authorized it to buy the NY&J and extend to Hunters Point. The LIRR carried through with the NY&J purchase on April 25, along with the purchase of a short piece of the Brooklyn and Jamaica at Jamaica, and the next day it cancelled its lease of the Brooklyn and Jamaica, but continued to operate over it.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Logistical conundrums abound in this scheme of mine, mastering a team of 3,000 horses for instance, would be hubris enough to make a Roman blush.
A thousand pounds of horseflesh each, the 3,000 strong equine army would each require some 10-12 gallons of water and 1-1.5% of it’s body weight in food per day (US Army daily forage rations were given as 12 lbs of oats and 14 lbs of hay per 900 lb. horse). Marvelously enough, the mountains of manure generated by the animals could act as fertilizer for roof top farms which could in turn grow the food.
It would be a virtuous circle for all, except for the customers of the LIRR itself, who will be moving to Syosset at no more than 3mph.
from wikipedia
The DE30AC and DM30AC locomotives replaced aging GP38s, Alco FA1/FA2s, F7As and F9As, and MP15AC and SW1001 locomotives, with GP38s used to push and pull diesel trains and other locomotives used to provide HEP for the trains. The bodies of the DE30AC and the DM30AC are similar; the difference is the ability of the DM30AC to use electric third rail while the diesel engine is off, enabling the locomotive to use the East River Tunnels into New York Penn Station. DM30ACs have third rail contact shoes, permitting direct service from non-electrified lines in eastern Long Island via the western electrified main lines all the way to Penn Station. A few such trains a day run on the Port Jefferson, Oyster Bay, and Montauk Branches. The engines’ naming scheme: DM = Dual Mode, DE = Diesel Engine, 30 = 3000 hp, AC = Alternating Current traction motors.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Oh, and there’s also something like ten trains that use this station daily, so that’s actually 30,000 horses. That’s the estimated equine population of New Hampshire.
Imagine all the primate jobs this scheme would generate as well, hundreds if not thousands of green jobs- Veterinarians, Agriculturists, Teamsters, Roof-top Botanists.
from wikipedia
Long Island City station was built on June 26, 1854, and was rebuilt seven times during the 19th Century. On December 18, 1902, both the two-story station building, and an office building owned by the LIRR burned down. The station was rebuilt on April 26, 1903, and was electrified on June 16, 1910.
Before the East River Tunnels were built, the Long Island City station served as the terminus for Manhattan-bound passengers from Long Island, who took ferries to the East Side of Manhattan. The passenger ferry service was abandoned on March 3, 1925, although freight was carried by car floats (see Gantry Plaza State Park) to and from Manhattan until the middle twentieth century. Today ferry service is operated by NY Waterway.
strange delicacies
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Fascination with the once upon a time community known as Blissville haunts my dreams.
Unaccountably, given the corrupted environment and largely abandoned to industry character of this corridor in western Queens, there are still proud and ancestral residents of this neighborhood which borders the sanguine Newtown Creek. First Calvary consumed most of the neighborhood in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, as it grew by acquisition and through the action of wills and estate transfers.
Greenpoint Avenue, as is slouches roughly toward the Newtown Creek, is the central artery of the place.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Traffic choked, this part of Greenpoint Avenue was once home to fine hotels and numerous inns, public houses, and bars. The teeming multitudes of largely Catholic Lower Manhattan, whether denizens of the fabled “Five Points” or from the savory upscale districts in New York, came here for funerary rites at First Calvary. Before embarking on the long journey back to Manhattan, a major endeavor involving ferries and horse drawn trolleys, they would often tilt a glass to their fallen comrade or family.
The last of these comfort stops is still in operation, the Botany Bay public house at Bradley Avenue.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There were two major “trolley” roads (not steam or electric at first, but rather horse drawn) which serviced this area, providing access for the New Yorkers to arrive at Blissville. The Greenpoint based one would find its passengers at a ferry stop which connected Grand Street in Manhattan with the foot of Greenpoint Avenue in Brooklyn. This is the reason why Greenpoint avenue is so wide, it originally carried two lanes of traffic with the center given over to the “road”.
It’s also the reason why GPA near the East River hosts so many grand and significant structures, it was a sort of “Parisian Avenue”.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The second “road” followed Borden Avenue from its foot at the Long Island Railroad ferry in Long Island City to its intersection at Greenpoint Avenue. A point of interest about this line was that it was owned and operated by the notorious Mayor of Long Island City, Patrick J. Gleason, known as Battle Ax. The LIRR ferry connected the line with Turtle Bay in Manhattan, but the Brooklyn based one was far more popular.
Obviously, the Catholic population around Manhattan’s Grand Street was quite a bit larger than that of the less populated area around 34th street.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There are quite a few run down relicts found along this stretch of road, an area that time seems to have forgotten. Worm eaten pilasters and hints of former glory adorn these structures, some of which date back to the years directly following the Civil War. Modern structures are strictly utilitarian, boxes of brick and rebar.
Sources in the construction industry, some who are even responsible for erecting these architectural abominations, have hinted to me in the past that jobs in this area always yield surprise and sometimes engender astonishment. Foundations of much earlier structures, unknown pipelines, and even underground voids of astonishing size and workmanship.
Credulous, I must accept the descriptions offered to me that the whole area is thoroughly tunneled out. Sometimes I wonder, and tremble at the suggestions made by anonymous sources that some of these tunnels are quite freshly dug, however.
The Newtown Pentacle 