Archive for the ‘Pickman’ Category
lively antics
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Shackled by impotent pride and stalled ambitions, your humble narrator can often be observed scuttling along area sidewalks, a strange old man identified by malign aspect and the odd omnipresence of a camera. A great dread is experienced when someone on the street perceives my phantasmic presence, and I am forced into an encounter with someone who is unashamedly alive. Just such an encounter was had near Hells Gate on the East River, near Astoria Park, at the end of June 2010.
from nycgovparks.org
Although widely known for its beautiful pool, the oldest and largest in the city, Astoria Park offers more than aquatic pleasures. Outdoor tennis courts, a track, a bandstand, multiple trails, basketball courts, and playgrounds lure visitors from the five boroughs and beyond. And the views! Sitting on the edge of the East River and resting between the Triborough Bridge and Hell Gate Bridge, the park offers shoreline sights and sounds that make the benches along its perimeter popular spots year-round.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This gentleman informed me that he was an ethnic musician, and made his living playing hellenic folk music at area “tavernas” and at weddings. The instrument he carried was crafted by his ancestors, and he carried it with him to America when he arrived here in the early 1960’s. He did tell me his name, but I did not write it down. It might have been Peter. Perhaps George.
also from nycgovparks.org
Due to its proximity to Hell Gate, a turbulent area in the East River, this playground has been named for the monster Charybdis. According to Greek mythology, Charybdis was the daughter of Poseidon, the god of the sea. As a young nymph, she flooded lands to add to her father’s kingdom until Zeus, the supreme ruler of the gods, turned her into a monster.
Charybdis and her partner Scylla are personifications of the violent waters in the Straits of Messina, which separate Sicily from the Italian peninsula. Charybdis was said to dwell under a fig tree on the Sicilian shore and, three times each day, drink from the strait and spit the water back into the strait several hours later, creating perilous whirlpools and terrifying sailors. In The Odyssey, by Homer, the hero survived Charybdis’s wrath by clinging to a tree for hours until she spit out the water and his raft floated to the surface.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Practiced, his hands flew along the fret boards, and he demonstrated musical forms that are typical of the island cultures of the Hellenic Republic which is known as Greece to the english speaking world. His serenade was lilting, thrilling, and reminded me of the Greek musical genre called Rembetiko.
from wikipedia
The melodies of most rebetiko songs are thus often considered to follow one or more dromos or dromoi (gr. δρόμος, plural δρόμοι). The names of the dromoi are derived in all but a few cases from the names of various Turkish modes, known in Turkish as makam.
However, the majority of rebetiko songs have been accompanied by instruments capable of playing chords according to the Western harmonic system, and have thereby been harmonized in a manner which corresponds neither with conventional European harmony, nor with Ottoman art music, which is a monophonic form normally not harmonized. Furthermore, rebetika has come to be played on instruments tuned in equal temperament, in direct conflict with the more complex pitch divisions of the makam system.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
He described the instrument he wielded as being well over a century old, and suggested that it had certain supernatural powers against which the female gender possesses no defense. He also claimed he could calm stormy seas with it, but one thing life in Astoria has taught me is that when a Greek guy is telling a good story well – just go with it.
from wikipedia
This is the classical type of bouzouki that was the mainstay of most Rebetiko music. It has fixed frets and it has 6 strings in three pairs. In the lower-pitched (bass) course, the pair consists of a thick wound string and a thin string tuned an octave apart. The conventional modern tuning of the trichordo bouzouki is Dd-aa-dd. This tuning was called the “European tuning” by Markos Vamvakaris, who described several other tunings, or douzenia, in his autobiography. The illustrated bouzouki was made by Karolos Tsakirian of Athens, and is a replica of a trichordo bouzouki made by his grandfather for Markos Vamvakaris. The absence of the heavy mother of pearl ornamentation often seen on modern bouzoukia is typical of bouzoukia of the period. It has tuners for eight strings, but has only six strings, the neck being too narrow for eight. The luthiers of the time often used sets of four tuners on trichordo instruments, as these were more easily available, since they were used on mandolins.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Charming guy, he was intent on hanging out at the park and mentioned something about the fishes wanting to hear some Rembetiko as I was taking my leave of him.
from wikipedia
Greek emigration to the United States started in earnest towards the end of the 19th century. From then onwards, and in the years following the Asia Minor Disaster, until immigration became restricted in the mid-1920s, a great number of Greeks emigrated to the United States, bringing their musical traditions with them. American companies began recording Greek music performed by these immigrants as early as 1896. The first Greek-American recording enterprises made their appearance in 1919. From the latter years of the second decade of the century there exist a number of recordings that can be considered as rebetiko, a few years before such songs began to appear on recordings in Greece.
The music industry in the United States came to play a particular role from the mid-1930s onwards in recording rebetiko lyrics which would not have passed the censors in Greece. This phenomenon came to repeat itself during the period of the Greek military junta of 1967–1974. A notable example of American recording studios permitting some ‘bolder’ lyrics can be found in the LP “Otan Kapnizei O Loulas”, ie “When They Smoke The Hookah”, released in 1973. Releasing this album in Greece, with to its overt references to various aspects of drug use, would have been impossible at that time. It is worth noting, however, that the censorship laws invoked in Greece by Metaxas were never officially revoked until 1981, seven years after the fall of the junta. A further characteristic of American Greek recordings of the time was the continued recordings of songs in the Anatolian musical styles of rebetiko, which continued to be recorded in the United States well into the 1950s. Even songs originally recorded with typical bouzouki-baglamas-guitar accompaniment could appear in Anatolian garments.
After WWII, beginning in the early 1950s, many Greek rebetiko musicians and singers traveled from Greece to tour the United States, and some stayed for longer periods. Prominent among them were Ioannis Papaioannou, Manolis Hiotis, Vassilis Tsitsanis, Iordanis Tsomidis, Roza Eskenazi, Stratos Pagioumdzis, Stavros Tzouanakos and Ioannis Tatasopoulos, of whom the latter three died in the United States.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Clearly he was amused by the kayakers from the LIC Boat House as they passed by, and he launched into a wild melody on his centenarian instrument.
a fun story about Hells Gate from 1899 can be accessed here at nytimes.com– here’s the headline:
A HELL GATE SEA SERPENT.; Valiant Bowery Boatmen Bring Its Headless Body Ashore
wonderful epics of a nameless city
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This is not the world you know, this unmentioned and currently undefended border between Brooklyn and Queens, where the requiescant waters of the Newtown Creek gurgle and splash. Beyond the Pulaski Bridge- where an observable and otherworldly colour stains animal, and structure, and vegetable- the heavy industries which conspire to sustain the shining city of Manhattan spread out under the Newtown sun.
from nycedc.com
The Newtown Creek according to the Army Corps of Engineers (ACE) had a listing of 26 piers with a total of 8,483 feet of berthing space. However, only 16 piers with a total of 4,986 feet of berthing space are in use by 12 firms. Furthermore, six firms are using their 1,952 feet of pier berthing space and waterfront facilities occasionally only. The waterfront activity is primarily for ship and barge.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Along its path, the bulkheaded shorelines of the Newtown Creek reveal the rotted timber and risible decay associated with exposure to the poisons and refuse of the vast human hive, and its associated infestations. The waters have been observed, personally, to host a surprising variety of life forms- including a dizzying array of non vertebrates. Within the cemented and artificial shores, internal voids and long abandoned pipelines shelter teeming populations of rodent forms, and unguessable possibilities present themselves when discussing what else may be hiding down there, in flooded cellar and forgotten basement.
from wikipedia
The creek begins near the intersection of 47th Street and Grand Avenue on the Brooklyn-Queens border 40°43′06″N 73°55′27″W at the intersection of the East Branch and English Kills. It empties into the East River at 40°44′14″N 73°57′40″W (2nd Street and 54th Avenue in Long Island City) opposite Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan at 26th Street. Its waterfront, and that of its tributaries Dutch Kills, Whale Creek, Maspeth Creek and English Kills, are heavily industrialized.
The creek has no natural waterflows. Its outgoing flow of 14,000 million gallons/year consists of combined sewer overflow, urban runoff, raw domestic sewage, and industrial wastewater. Being estuarine, the creek is largely stagnant. Since there is no current in the creek, sludge has congealed into a 15-foot thick layer of “black mayonnaise” on the creek bed.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Just after passing the yawning mouth of the malign Dutch Kills, one encounters a scrap metal operation, which operates a car shredding operation. The great mill utilizes the “Newtown Creek Dock” and is owned and operated by the Hugo Neu Schnitzer East Co.
In a nutshell, the way that things work is:
Hugo Neu Schnitzer East Co. (HNSEC from this point) receives the metal glass and plastic collected by the DSNY and private contractors at its Hunts Point bulkheads in the Bronx, New Jersey, and Brooklyn…
- HNSEC then barges certain materials to Newtown Creek, where bulk metal is separated from the less valuable plastic and virtually worthless glass.
- A preliminary sorting of plastic and glass is performed, while the bulk metal is loaded onto barges.
- The metals are shipped by barge to other facilities, and offered for sale on the worldwide commodities markets.
According to those principalities who authored and designed this system, it reduces the per ton cost of processing the waste stream as well as reducing the reliance on automotive conveyance for it and nourishes the maritime industry.
from a nytimes.com article of 2004
One of the toughest challenges with recycling has always been finding markets for the recycled goods, whose resale can then help defray the costs of the program. In announcing a 20-year recycling contract yesterday, the Bloomberg administration said it had solved that problem by encouraging a company to find those markets.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As is the way of things, Hugo Neu merged with Sim Group in 2005, and formed one of the largest recycling conglomerates in the world. According to our friends at Habitatmap, whose stout adherence to the scientific method and stalwart advocacy of the unvarnished truth has both terrified and impressed your humble narrator, the composite company- SimsMetal- is the largest single source of air pollution to be found along the modern Newtown Creek.
from simsmm.com
Sims Metal Management was originally established in 1917 by Albert Sims, a Sydney-based recycled metals dealer. The business was incorporated as Albert G. Sims Limited in 1928 and was renamed Simsmetal Limited in 1968.
In 1970, it merged with Consolidated Metal Products Limited and the merged ASX-listed company was named Sims Consolidated Limited. In 1979, Sims Consolidated Limited was acquired by Peko-Wallsend Limited and subsequently delisted. Sims Consolidated Limited was then acquired by North Limited (previously known as North Broken Hill Holdings Limited, and then North Broken Hill Peko Limited) in 1988. In 1989, North Limited sold the business to Elders Resources NZFP Limited, a diversified resources company.
In 1990, Carter Holt Harvey Limited made a successful takeover bid for Elders Resources NZFP Limited and divested that company’s non-forestry businesses, which included Sims. Sims changed its name to Simsmetal Limited in 1990 and relisted on the ASX in 1991. Simsmetal Limited changed its name to Sims Group Limited in 2003.
Sims Metal Management’s corporate strategy includes leading industry consolidation through acquisitions. Over a number of years, with experience gained from numerous international acquisitions, Sims Metal Management has established strict acquisition criteria. The acquisition criteria require that any acquisition target holds the number one or number two market position, delivers access to domestic and international customers, offers a sound platform for future growth and, above all else, will likely enhance shareholder value. The acquisition criteria have underpinned Sims Metal Management’s strong track record of international expansion.
In October 2005, Sims Group Limited merged with the recycling businesses of Hugo Neu Corporation, a privately owned U.S. corporation. The merger created a new ASX listed company named Sims Group Limited, which is traded under the ASX code “SGM.”
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I am told by knowledgeable sources that much of this scrap metal will eventually find its way to the mercantile courts of far away Asia, with the bulk of it headed to the smokestacks of China. This is less recycling and waste disposal than it is mining, if one actually takes a step back and looks at it.
from wikipedia
The scrap industry contributed $65 billion in 2006 and is one of the few contributing positively to the U.S. balance of trade, exporting $15.7 billion in scrap commodities in 2006. This imbalance of trade has resulted in rising scrap prices during 2007 and 2008 within the United States.[2] Scrap recycling also helps reduce greenhouse gas emissions and conserves energy and natural resources. For example, scrap recycling diverts 145,000,000 short tons (129,464,286 long tons; 131,541,787 t) of materials away from landfills. Recycled scrap is a raw material feedstock for 2 out of 3 pounds of steel made in the U.S., for 60% of the metals and alloys produced in the U.S., for more than 50% of the U.S. paper industry’s needs, and for 33% of U.S. aluminum. Recycled scrap helps keep air and water cleaner by removing potentially hazardous materials and keeping them out of landfills.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Frequently observed on the East River, these barges of shredded steel and metal maintain a regular schedule back and forth from the Newtown Creek. This particular barge is the 886 gross ton Cape Lucy, a 146 foot long freight vessel operated by the Inland Barge Corporation, and constructed by Bethlehem Steel in 1953.
Always fascinated by minutia, your humble narrator wonders if this barge is a “leave behind” from the construction of the Pulaski Bridge by the self same Bethlehem Steel in 1953.
from nyc.gov
In 1881, the New York City Department of Street Cleaning was created in response to the public uproar over litter-lined streets and disorganized garbage collection. Originally called the Department of Street Cleaning, the agency took over waste responsibilities from the New York City Police Department. In 1933, the name was changed to the Department of Sanitation.
Throughout the 1880’s, 75% of NYC’s waste was dumped into the Atlantic Ocean. In 1895, Commissioner George Waring instituted a waste management plan that eliminated ocean dumping and mandated recycling. Household waste was separated into three categories: food waste, which was steamed and compressed to eventually produce grease (for soap products) and fertilizer; rubbish, from which paper and other marketable materials were salvaged; and ash, which along with the nonsalable rubbish was landfilled. The Police Department, under the direction of its Commissioner, Theodore Roosevelt, enforced the recycling law.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Heavy equipment and esoteric machinery is always on display at this location, and it attracts no small amount of attention from area photographic enthusiasts. Proximity to the Newtown Creek Waste Water Treatment Plant Nature Walk, with its wide open sight lines and panoramic scope, no doubt aids in the fame of this place. These shots, however, were captured from onboard a boat which was plying the volatile surface of the Newtown Creek.
from wikipedia
Critics dispute the net economic and environmental benefits of recycling over its costs, and suggest that proponents of recycling often make matters worse and suffer from confirmation bias. Specifically, critics argue that the costs and energy used in collection and transportation detract from (and outweigh) the costs and energy saved in the production process; also that the jobs produced by the recycling industry can be a poor trade for the jobs lost in logging, mining, and other industries associated with virgin production; and that materials such as paper pulp can only be recycled a few times before material degradation prevents further recycling. Proponents of recycling dispute each of these claims, and the validity of arguments from both sides has led to enduring controversy.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Weirdly organic, the Sennebogen hydraulic loaders which effortlessly move the scrap from land to barge seem to be a favored item for the scrap industry to purchase (and Sims Metal in particular), valued for its mechanical advantages and engineering accumen. Sennebogen, like the fabled Steinway clan which has left such an indelible stamp on the surrounding communities, is a German corporation operated by a single family and founded by an enigmatic sire.
from sennebogen-na.com
RICHMOND, CA – The existing pedestal crane at the 18-acre Sims Metal Management scrap metal yard in Richmond, California had become a bit of a production liability for Jesse Garcia, Sims NW Equipment Manager. Repairs to the pedestal crane were difficult and Garcia often found himself having to lease replacement equipment to keep up production on the yard’s shear when the crane went down. When it came time to replace the crane, Garcia chose a SENNEBOGEN 840 R special, a purpose-built material handler that gives him the mobility and problem-free reliability and uptime he was seeking.
“Metal on metal”
“A scrap yard is a tough environment – it’s constant metal on metal. You need dependable equipment that is built for this application. SENNEBOGEN machines are purpose-built for handling scrap metal, they’re not just retrofitted excavators,” says Garcia. “Our tracked SENNEBOGEN 840 R special is perfect for this application. We can move it in and out for quick, easy maintenance, and should the shear go down, we can utilize it elsewhere in the yard.”
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Forgotten by modernity, even your humble narrator had to consult with one of the “Rabbi’s” to double confirm that this dock was originally the location of the “Manure Dock”, where Manhattan’s human waste products, animal carcasses, and organic waste would be barged to.
Journalists of the era referred to it as the “Offal dock“.
Some of the redolant cargo would be shipped untreated to points East by the LIRR to be utilized as fertilizer on the bountiful farms which once typified the eastern counties, and some percentage of it was processed by local commercial rendering operations owned by the likes of Conrad Wessel and Peter Cooper who saw the rotting filth as a raw material for various food products- aspic, isenglass, and gelatin amongst others. The remnants of that process, which involved the usage of high pressure steam and other state of the art victorian technologies, were further processed into glues, waxes, and potent acids.
from wikipedia
Where a cargo is coarser in size than minerals, commonly for scrap metal, then an orange-peel grab may be used instead of a shell. These have six or eight segments of “peel” independently hinged around a central core. They are better able to grab at an uneven load, rather than just scooping at small pieces. If the load is made of long thin pieces, a grab may also be able to carry far more than a single “grabful” at one time.
Although orange-peel grabs may be hung from cables on a jib, they’re also commonly mounted directly onto a jib. This is more suitable for grabbing at awkward loads that might otherwise tend to tip a hanging grab over. They may also use hydraulics to control the segments rather than weight and hoist cables.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The concept of recycling is nothing new, here in the megalopolis of New York, and then as now- it was the Newtown Creek and its surrounding communities that absorbed and absolved Manhattan’s sins. The stink, as reported in the late 19th century, that arose from this section of the Creek was legendary even to those hardened by close quartered tenement conditions and the press of an unventilated and crowded city which counted its draft animals in the hundreds of thousands.
Imagine a hot August day in Manhattan, 100 years ago, and that same day… on a slick of oily water some 4 miles long that defined the undefended border between the cities of Long Island City, Newtown, Greenpoint, Bushwick, and Williamsburg.
Pictured above is the DonJon towing Tug Peter Andrew, part of the DonJon Marine fleet that handles the metal and other recyclables trade from Newtown Creek to and from the Newtown Creek to the other links in the waste stream scattered about the New York Harbor archipelago. Photo is from last year, and was shot on the East River.
from donjon.com
Donjon Marine Co., Inc. offers the marine community full-service solutions to meet your every need in the field of marine salvage, dredging, material recycling and related services. Founded in 1964 by Mr. J. Arnold Witte, Donjon’s President and Chief Executive Officer, Donjon Marine’s principal business activities were marine salvage, marine transportation, and related services. Today Donjon Marine is a true provider of multifaceted marine services. Donjon’s controlled expansion into related businesses such as dredging, ferrous and non-ferrous recycling and heavy lift services are a natural progression, paralleling our record of solid technical and cost-effective performance.
black seas of infinity
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Conversations with area wags and a wide spread network of personal friends have all pointed to a spate of dream disturbances plaguing the artistic class and those “sensitive” citizens of this Newtown Pentacle (specifically- reports have been made from Astoria, Woodside, Sunnyside, Jackson Heights, Elmhurst, Dutch Kills, Long Island City, Blissville, Maspeth, Ridgewood, Bushwick, East Williamsburg, Greenpoint).
Perhaps it is just the psychic ripple of the Hiroshima bomb, echoing through time and space, but it is nevertheless observed that a remarkable concurrence of isolated reports of nightmares and bizarre dreaming has reached and- indeed been experienced at Newtown Pentacle HQ in the last two weeks.
Such hive mind events are jungian in nature, and signal a massing of the collective unconscious, an expectation of some dire or portentous event unfolding. Accordingly, this anonymous poll (as best as I can tell it is, anyway) is offered, in an effort to document this curious pattern. If you have a moment, please offer a click to the answer below that best describes your recent experiences.
If you want to go into any detail, please feel free to send a missive here, with instructions as to whether or not it may be shared with your fellow lords and ladies… A common thread and shared imagery has been reported from unrelated sources, but I don’t want to color any possible responses by stating it quite yet.
torment of the Brachyura
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Your humble narrator is a carnivore, as mentioned in the past, despite a somewhat advanced state of understanding of the realities of feedlot and abattoir.
Human beings are ultimately predatory apes, and the greasy taste of flesh is prized by most. Displays of comestible items are commonly observed amongst the human hives, but when one is moving through a neighborhood whose residents enjoy exotic fare- like Manhattan’s famous Chinatown in this case – the careful observer might be rewarded with visions of the fanciful or alien.
from wikipedia
Homo Necans: the Anthropology of Ancient Greek Sacrificial Ritual and Myth is a book on ancient Greek religion and mythology by Walter Burkert, which won the Weaver Award for Scholarly Literature, awarded by the Ingersoll Foundation, in 1992. The book’s core thesis is that when paleolithic man became a hunter, in spite of the generally omnivorous orientation of the great apes, lack of a predator instinct was made up for by turning patterns of intra-species aggression against the prey: Homo necans means “man the killer”. Thus, the animal hunted by ancient man automatically acquired aspects of an equal, as if it were of one of the hunter’s relations. In a first attempt at applying ethology to religious history, Burkert confronts the power and effect of tradition in uncovering traces of ancient hunting rituals so motivated in historical animal sacrifice and human sacrifice (by his thesis unified as deriving from the same fundamental principle) in specific historical Greek rituals with relevance to human religious behaviour in general. Burkert admitted that a decisive impulse for the thesis of Homo Necans derived from Konrad Lorenz’ On Aggression (1963).
The thesis set out in the first chapter, “Sacrifice, hunting and funerary rituals”, is an extension of the hunting hypothesis, which states that hunting as a means of obtaining food was a dominant influence on human evolution and cultural development (as opposed to gathering vegetation or scavenging). The guilt incurred in the violence of the hunt was reflected in sacred crimes, which through rituals of cleansing and expiation served to unify communities.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A carnivorous glutton your humble narrator may be, but empathy and indignation arose in him when confronted with this display.
Sure that this is a time tested and necessary technique intended to display the freshness and nutritional validity of this cast of crustaceans, demanded by clientele, a certain bile nevertheless rises. Western prejudice no doubt colors my point of view, as the same overt revulsion does not rise at the sight of a counter of European butchers meat.
Paradoxical, but to my reasoning, there isn’t a display of crucified and disemboweled cows overhanging the refrigerated section at the supermarket. Vegan friends would disagree, but I guess it depends on your point of view, and “Krabs ain’t Kosher” either.
from wikipedia
Crabs make up 20% of all marine crustaceans caught, farmed, and consumed worldwide, amounting to 1½ million tonnes annually. One species accounts for one fifth of that total: Portunus trituberculatus. Other commercially important taxa include Portunus pelagicus, several species in the genus Chionoecetes, the blue crab (Callinectes sapidus), Charybdis spp., Cancer pagurus, the Dungeness crab (Metacarcinus magister) and Scylla serrata, each of which yields more than 20,000 tonnes annually.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It really was just the simple fact that the Cast of Crabs in the bushel bucket beneath this macabre marquee were subtly scuttling which disturbed me and drew this comment.
I am also aware, of course, that given the chance- those in the basket would consume those above them with abandon.
from wikipedia
The problem of animal suffering, and animal consciousness in general, arises primarily because animals have no language, leading scientists to argue that it is impossible to know when an animal is suffering. This situation may change as increasing numbers of chimps are taught sign language, although skeptics question whether their use of it portrays real understanding. Singer writes that, following the argument that language is needed to communicate pain, it would often be impossible to know when humans are in pain. All we can do is observe pain behavior, he writes, and make a calculated guess based on it. As Ludwig Wittgenstein argued, if someone is screaming, clutching a part of their body, moaning quietly, or apparently unable to function, especially when followed by an event that we believe would cause pain in ourselves, that is in large measure what it means to be in pain.[98] Singer argues that there is no reason to suppose animal pain behavior would have a different meaning.
vital principles
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This is Mosco Street, corner of Mulberry. Once upon a time, this was one of the Five Points.
from forgotten-ny.com
The notorious Old Brewery was located on Cross Street just southwest of Five Points at Anthony (now Baxter) and Orange (now Worth) Streets. It was renamed Park Street in the late 1800s. The city replaced the crowded tenements in the area partially due to the pleas of reformer Jacob Riis; the street was named for Columbus Park, which replaced the slums.
Today, Cross/Park Street, which in the 1840s had run continuously from Reade Street near Elm (now Lafayette) to Mott, has been mostly wiped out, first by Columbus Park and then by the New York County Courthouse in 1926. The last remaining section, between Mulberry and Mott Streets, was renamed Mosco Street in 1982 for Lower East Side community activist Frank Mosco.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Fascinated by the municipal powers that were, this is where the other half lived, and the reason that grandparents all over Brooklyn and Queens admonished their successors to avoid “downtown”. A shudder would rifle through my own grandfather whenever the subject of dining in Chinatown or Little Italy would come up, and he wanted nothing to do with the Lower East Side. There was a reason that he settled the family in the then tony city of Brooklyn, with its vast oceanic skies and its convention of siting structures in the center of a “lot” to facilitate and provide yard space.
from r2.gsa.gov
Named for the points created by the intersection of Park, Worth, and Baxter streets, the neighborhood was known as a center of vice and debauchery throughout the nineteenth century. Outsiders found Five Points threatening and fodder for lurid prose. Describing a visit in 1842, Charles Dickens wrote: “This is the place: these narrow ways diverging to the right and left, and reeking every where with dirt and filth. Such lives as are led here, bear the same fruit here as elsewhere. The coarse and bloated faces at the doors have counterparts at home and all the wide world over. Debauchery has made the very houses prematurely old. See how the rotten beams are tumbling down, and how the patched and broken windows seem to scowl dimly, like eyes that have been hurt in drunken frays. Many of these pigs live here. Do they ever wonder why their masters walk upright in lieu of going on all-fours? and why they talk instead of grunting?”
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Despite the reputation and hazards of Manhattan’s immigrant neighborhoods, it was still a difficult endeavor to get my Grandmother and her sisters to leave the city for the “country”.
The grand nature of early 20th century architecture in the outer boroughs, as extensively commented on by our friends at Forgotten-ny and other antiquarian blogs, was necessitated by the reluctance felt by a generation of immigrants to leave “the city”. The reason that apartment houses in old LIC, and the entire East River coast of Brooklyn in fact, are so wonderfully appointed and decorated was to overcome this notion.
Migration south and east toward the Jamaica Bay, and points north and due east were also marked by distinctive and monumental structures- look at Ocean Parkway or the Grand Concourse for existing contemporaneous parables- compare with Long Island’s Sunrise Highway and the New Jersey Turnpike for modernity’s version.
from urbanography.com
When the landfill started to decay in the 1820’s the wood frame houses began to tilt over and sink. It became infested with mosquitoes and disease; the decent residents moved out, those who remained became impoverished and victims of slum lords, gangs and ruthless politicians looking for easy votes. Personal safety was compromised and a person was in constant threat of being robbed or worse. Beginning with the “Old Brewery” – a building that was converted to an apartment house, the floors were partitioned into small flats, rented to the poor and seedy characters. Each room had whole families, cooking, eating, and sleeping in this one room. It was a ghastly sight with squalid living conditions. The same situation prevailed throughout the district – the lower floors usually for drinking, dancing, gambling, and riotous behavior. Many people were robbed, beaten or shanghaied. In the cellars (they were called “cellar dwellers”) were the “oyster saloons,” which were kept open all night luring fresh, unsuspecting victims. This neighborhood was a dangerous place to live in and visit.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This court house, to the best of my ability to scry the past, was pretty close to the site of the famous Five Points House of Industry, which should have stood in the spot where the small tree at the center of the shot stands.
A work house in the Dickensian caste and set piece for the movie and broadway adaptations of “Lil Orphan Annie“, it was a bleached presbyterian home for wastrel children who were called “Street Arabs” by the monied middle class which was horrified by the depravity of the early capitalist system. Simply put, it was an orphanage with a built in factory wherein the kids would earn their supper. Stories of the sometimes nefarious methods used by the kids otherwise, whether street performance, or joining a gang, made such institutions seem like the only hope for the children of Five Points. Despite the denominational nature of the institution, it was operated in a non sectarian manner due to the largely catholic population it served.
from How the Other Half Lives by Jacob Riis at wikisource
Two powerful agents that were among the pioneers in this work of moral and physical regeneration stand in Paradise Park to-day as milestones on the rocky, uphill road. The handful of noble women, who braved the foul depravity of the Old Brewery to rescue its child victims, rolled away the first and heaviest bowlder; which legislatures and city councils had tackled in vain. The Five Points Mission and the Five Points House of Industry have accomplished what no machinery of government availed to do. Sixty thousand children have been rescued by them from the streets and had their little feet set in the better way. Their work still goes on, increasing and gathering in the waifs, instructing and feeding them, and helping their parents with advice and more substantial aid. Their charity knows not creed or nationality. The House of Industry is an enormous nursery-school with an average of more than four hundred day scholars and constant boarders–“outsiders” and “insiders.” Its influence is felt for many blocks around in that crowded part of the city. It is one of the most touching sights in the world to see a score of babies, rescued from homes of brutality and desolation, where no other blessing than a drunken curse was ever heard, saying their prayers in the nursery at bedtime. Too often their white night-gowns hide tortured little bodies and limbs cruelly bruised by inhuman hands. In the shelter of this fold they are safe, and a happier little group one may seek long and far in vain.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
You’ll really need to click through to the larger incarnation of this and the following shot. These are stitched panoramas, meaning that I took a series of photos from a single point, and used photoshop to blend them together into something that would normally require an extremely wide angle lens to capture otherwise. At flickr, you can view the “all sizes” versions and see the gargantuan originals. The above image is composed of 13 fifteen megapixel images, for instance.
You’re looking at the complex of courthouses and municipal buildings which the City erected over its shame, which is referred to as Foley Square or the Civic Center in modernity. Dead center of the shot is what I believe to be the actual Five Points.
also from How the Other Half Lives by Jacob Riis at wikisource
. . . Blocks were rented of real estate owners, or ‘purchased on time,’ or taken in charge at a percentage, and held for under-letting.” With the appearance of the middleman, wholly irresponsible, and utterly reckless and unrestrained, began the era of tenement building which turned out such blocks as Gotham Court, where, in one cholera epidemic that scarcely touched the clean wards, the tenants died at the rate of one hundred and ninety-five to the thousand of population; which forced the general mortality of the city up front l in 41.83 in 1815, to 1 in 27.33 in 1855, a year of unusual freedom from epidemic disease, and which wrung from the early organizers of the Health Department this wail: “There are numerous examples of tenement-houses in which are lodged several hundred people that have a pro rata allotment of ground area scarcely equal to two-square yards upon the city lot, court-yards and all included.” The tenement-house population had swelled to half a million souls by that time, and on the East Side, in what is still the most densely populated district in all the world, China not excluded, it was packed at the rate of 290,000 to the square mile, a state of affairs wholly unexampled.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This stitched panorama, which accomplishes something beyond the scope of the human visual range, is a complete circle of my vantage point on the corner of Baxter and Worth streets. Worth is at the left and far right of the composition, Baxter at the center and Columbus Park in the mid right.
from wikipedia
Foley Square is a green space in lower Manhattan, New York City. The space is formed by the intersection of Duane Street, Lafayette Street, Centre Street and Pearl Street, and — by extension — the surrounding area in lower Manhattan on the site of the historic Five Points neighborhood and is named after a prominent Tammany Hall district leader and local saloon owner, Thomas F. “Big Tom” Foley (1852-1925). Originally, the land that forms Foley Square was in the middle of Collect Pond, which was one of the original fresh water sources for the City of New York, but was drained and filled-in in 1811, by which time it had become severely polluted and implicated in typhus and cholera outbreaks.
Foley Square is dominated by its surrounding civic buildings, including the classic facades and colonnaded entrances of the 1933-built United States Courthouse, fronted by the Triumph of the Human Spirit Memorial by award-winning artist Lorenzo Pace, the New York County Supreme Court, the Church of St. Andrew, the Thurgood Marshall United States Courthouse (known before 2003 as the Foley Square Courthouse), where the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit is based, the New York County Municipal Building, the Foley Square Federal Office Building and the Jacob K. Javits Federal Building and Court of International Trade.
