Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category
Linkage, and its Gettysburg Address day
It’s the Eastern Orthodox feast day of Obadiah, and the anniversary of Christopher Columbus stepping his european foot on Puerto Rico.
Lostcity has been drilling down through the years on the enigmatic origins of the Brooks Restaurant in Long Island City.
The Light at the End of the Tunnel?
I am ashamed. For years, I’ve told myself: “One day, I’m going to get to the bottom of the mystery of 1890 Brooks Restaurant in Long Island City, and uncover its shrouded history.” But sloth and inertia took over, and now intrepid reader Ian Schoenherr is having all the “Eureka!”s.
via Lost City: The Light at the End of the Tunnel?.
just a warning, the bulleted links below lead to BRUTAL nature photos and GRAPHIC footage, if you’d rather not think about such things or are squeamish, feel free to skip these links:
- timesonline.co.uk has an incredible series of photos documenting a fight between a herd of hippos and a crocodile. Click here.
- I confess to participation in the debates over which top predator might win in a fight over another apex niche animal, and have done my level best to warn others of the horrible realities of chimpanzee attack– well before the famed mauling in New England, and it gives rise to a notion that Mankind’s innate desire to deforest and exterminate all other life forms upon the earth may be something necessary. Believe it or not, this stuff came up while researching Flushing Creek.
Today is the anniversary of the Gettysburg Address, as well.
Here’s the little 10 sentence speech that Lincoln was rumored to have scribbled down on the back of an envelope.
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate…we can not consecrate…we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government: of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
Flushing Creek 2
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A new friend, whose family could trace ancestry back to the colonial settlers of Flushing, was searching for the spot where her forebears had settled on the Flushing Creek (or river, depending on who you ask). Armed with serious historian muscle, and having hired an experienced mariner to shepherd the journey, She mentioned to a mutual colleague that there was room for one more on the ship, and proffered that He join her party. Busy with professional obligation, this colleague of ours suggested your humble narrator ride along, which is how I ended up leaving the strict borders of the Newtown Pentacle and found myself on Flushing Creek.
from wikipedia
The current site of the airport was originally used by the Gala Amusement Park, owned by the Steinway family. It was razed and transformed in 1929 into a 105-acre private flying field. The airport was originally named Glenn H. Curtiss Airport after the pioneer Long Island aviator, and later called North Beach Airport.
The initiative to develop the airport for commercial flights began with a verbal outburst by New York mayor Fiorello La Guardia (in office from 1934 to 1945) upon the arrival of his TWA flight at Newark — the only commercial airport serving the New York City region at the time — as his ticket said “New York”. He demanded to be taken to New York, and ordered the plane to be flown to Brooklyn’s Floyd Bennett Field, giving an impromptu press conference to reporters along the way. At that time, he urged New Yorkers to support a new airport within their city.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Factual inconsistencies and wild conjectural fantasies aside, one of the stated goals of this project is documentarian in nature (in the notion that someone in the future will be looking for photos of “Queens in the Past”), and the vantages of the northern Queens shoreline are largely blockaded and hidden from land. I leapt at the opportunity. The security apparatus and extensive fencing of (starting at the east river) an electrical power plant, a sewage treatment plant, prison complex, and airport enforce a cordon (and appropriately so) of the shoreline from the landward side- at least.
note:
Your humble narrator takes a lot of heat from the Urban Explorer types for the “Do Not Trespass” mantra here at Newtown Pentacle. Its my firm belief that – like a vampire- you have to be invited in before you can really do your work. The nervous thrills experienced in penetrating an abandoned factory or condemned hospital or active rail trackbed are outweighed by both the physical and legal dangers to yourself, and exhibit a real lack of empathy toward the poor bastards at NYFD who will have to figure out a safe way to rescue you. I’ve described the attention paid me by radio patrol car police officers as I squat down on the Hunters Point Avenue Bridge trying to get a picture of pollen settling into sticky waters at the Dutch Kills, and been chased for blocks by a hysterical Greek woman screaming “terrorist” at me around Ditmars. I roll under a flag of “if you can see it in a public place, you can take a picture of it, as long as you don’t imply some editorial meaning to it that wasn’t there” and “ask”. I do take a lot of pictures I don’t run, though, and often slightly obscure locations if the subject is so wildly and criminally vulnerable that I had time to set up a tripod and shoot dozens of photos.
And… I never show anyone the images, of all the dead things.
from nytimes.com, an article from 1895
A number of Long Islanders have been quietly considering for some time the feasibility of cutting a ship canal from Newtown Creek to Flushing Bay, and have now reached the conclusion that the work should be done.
Best – photo by Mitch Waxman
The aura of Flushing Creek, as viewed from the water, might best be described as “Dickensian”. The modern steel highways, sweeping in elegant curves over the storied waters, produce tenebrous shadows pregnant with sinister implication. What horrors may have transpired here, under sodium light, fills your humble narrator with wonder. Heavy industry, like this concrete company, seems to dominate this part of Flushing Creek. It all feels somewhat atavist, yet, these are the sort of “mills” that built New York City.
from osc.state.ny.us
Flushing, named for the Dutch village of Vlissingen, was the first permanent settlement in Queens, and was founded in 1645. In 1657, the town fathers issued the “Flushing Remonstrance,” which defied Governor Peter Stuyvesant’s demand that the town expel Quakers, Jews, and other religious groups. Flushing was the first town in the Western hemisphere to guarantee religious freedom for its residents.
The Flushing Railroad, which later became part of the Long Island Rail Road, opened in 1854, as urbanizing influences gradually penetrated the more rural portions of Queens. Urbanization accelerated in the early 20th century, when the Queensborough Bridge opened in 1909 and the subway system was extended to Flushing in 1928. In the 1930s, a former ash dump on the west side of the Flushing River became the site of the 1939 World’s Fair and, later, the third-largest park in New York City—Flushing Meadows Corona Park.
The park hosted the 1964 World’s Fair.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Built by Robert Moses to house the 1939 Worlds Fair, Flushing Meadows Corona Park cuts the Flushing Creek from its original flow. From 1946 to 1951, the United Nations General Assembly was held at the New York City Pavilion, said Pavilion is now the Queens Museum of Art. Said Museum houses the Panorama of the City of New York, and the United Nations meet in a house that Rockefeller and Le Corbusier built over in Manhattan.
Here’s the scoop of Nelson Rockefeller and LeCorbusier from a Newtown Pentacle posting of June 23, Adventures upon the East River 3
LeCorbusier is responsible- ideologically and in some cases literally- for the ring of poverty surrounding Paris, the council housing of London, the housing complexes of Chicago, and of course- New York’s rather disastrous experience with “the projects”. He was the Ayn Rand of architecture.
here’s what he wanted to do in Paris, from wikipedia:
Theoretical urban schemes continued to occupy Le Corbusier. He exhibited his Plan Voisin, sponsored by another famous automobile manufacturer, in 1925. In it, he proposed to bulldoze most of central Paris, north of the Seine, and replace it with his sixty-story cruciform towers from the Contemporary City, placed in an orthogonal street grid and park-like green space. His scheme was met with only criticism and scorn from French politicians and industrialists, although they were favourable to the ideas of Taylorism and Fordism underlying Le Corbusier designs. Nonetheless, it did provoke discussion concerning how to deal with the cramped, dirty conditions that enveloped much of the city.
here’s what his politics were, also from wikipedia:
Le Corbusier moved increasingly to the far right of French politics in the 1930s. He associated with Georges Valois and Hubert Lagardelle and briefly edited the syndicalist journal Prélude. In 1934, he lectured on architecture in Rome by invitation of Benito Mussolini. He sought out a position in urban planning in the Vichy regime and received an appointment on a committee studying urbanism. He drew up plans for the redesign of Algiers in which he criticised the perceived differences in living standards between Europeans and Africans in the city, describing a situation in which “the ‘civilised’ live like rats in holes” yet “the ‘barbarians’ live in solitude, in well-being.”[10] These and plans for the redesign of other cities were ultimately ignored. After this defeat, Le Corbusier largely eschewed politics.
Until he designed the United Nations Secretariat, a 39 story building and complex located in Turtle bay, Manhattan. This part of Manhattan is not part of the sovereign territory of the United States, incidentally, its legally international territory and not subject to the laws of New York City or the USA unless the U.N. says so. Here’s the proviso:
United Nations, Pub. L. No. 80-357, 61 Stat. 756 (1947): “Except as otherwise provided in this agreement or in the General Convention, the federal, state and local courts of the United States shall have jurisdiction over acts done and transactions taking place in the headquarters district as provided in applicable federal, state and local laws.”
Interesting note:
The land that the complex sits on was purchased from William Zeckendorf (a mid 20th century real estate baron) in a deal brokered by the Chase Manhattan Bank. Chase, of course, was the instrument of future New York Governor and United States Vice President Nelson Rockefeller. Grandson of John D. Rockefeller, and inheritor (with his brothers) of the Standard Oil fortune. The Rockefellers had already offered some of their own land-the house that Standard Oil built- and Rockefeller family castle,in Westchester, for use as the potential seat of a world government- but it was “too far away” for the diplomats. So, he had his father- John D. Rockefeller Jr. buy Turtle Bay and donate the land to the city for the UN.
The area called Turtle Bay was where the Draft Riots of 1863 started, and it was a neighborhood of tenements, butchers, slaughterhouses, and dangerous organized crime controlled docks which handled the traffic coming to and from Long Island City via rail and barge. The United Nations building was completed in 1950.
1950 is also when the decline of the economic infrastructure of North Brooklyn and Western Queens, especially the area around the Newtown Creek in Queens and Red Hook in Brooklyn, began in earnest. Connected? Maybe.
from time.com
“What do you want to go to Flushing Meadow for, honey?” a Manhattan taxi driver asked a TIME researcher last week. “I’m going to the United Nations,” she said. “Well,” he said with a wink, “that used to be quite a lovers’ lane in my day.”
Tugboat transit at Hells Gate
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Hanging out at Astoria Park, waiting for the Greater Astoria Historical Society‘s “Haunted East River” tour to start, what did I spy crossing under mighty Triborough?
The John Reinauer tugboat- that’s what- moving a fuel barge north on the East River, through the bright passage at Hells Gate.
from wikipedia
Liquid cargo barges are barges that transport petrochemicals, such as styrene, benzene and methanol; liquid fertilizer, including anhydrous ammonia; refined products, including gasoline, diesel and jet fuel; black oil products, such as asphalt, No. 6 fuel oil and coker fuel; and pressurized products, such as butane, propane and butadiene, which are transported on the waterways from producers to end users.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The John Reinauer was built at Main Ironworks in 1969, and was christened the Esso Crystal River. (Esso, is of course, the brand name for Standard Oil -S.-O- Esso, later Exxon) The now Exxon Crystal River went to Reinauer Transportation in 1993. A 2,600 horsepower, 86 foot long steel hulled towing vessel, the J.R. is 27 feet wide and has a draw of 9 feet.
Check out the company’s J.R. page for photos of the ship in its various incarnations here.
from wikipedia
The terms “Tonnage” and “Ton” have different meanings and are often confused. Tonnage is a measure of the size or cargo capacity of a ship. The term derives from the taxation paid on tuns of wine, and was later used in reference to the weight of a ship’s cargo; however, in modern maritime usage, “tonnage” specifically refers to a calculation of the volume or cargo volume of a ship. The term is still sometimes incorrectly used to refer to the weight of a loaded or empty vessel.
Measurement of tonnage can be less than straightforward, not least because it is used to assess fees on commercial shipping.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Like many other tugboats, the John Reinauer participated in the evacuation of Lower Manhattan necessitated by the September 11 attacks.
(The John J. Harvey Fireboat, which was discussed in some detail in 2 prior posts- here… and here, similarly served the city that day).
from wikipedia
Immediately after the first attack, the captains and crews of a large number of local boats steamed into the attack zone to assist in evacuation and provide supplies and water.Water became urgently needed after the Towers’ collapse severed downtown water mains. The size of the dust and debris cloud following the collapse of the Twin Towers was such that it necessitated that many of these trips were navigated by radar alone. Estimates of the number of people evacuated by water from Lower Manhattan that day in the eight hour period following the attacks range from 500,000 to 1,000,000. As many as 2,000 injured people in the attacks were reportedly evacuated by this means through there were no reported injuries resulting from the evacuation itself.
Tales of Calvary 3
-photo by Mitch Waxman
Swirling, my thoughts.
A vast and byzantine pattern which extends beyond even the coming of the Europeans into the mist of olden days, traced by rail and road, reveals itself step by step as the burning eye of god itself leads me to and fro across the glass strewn Newtown Pentacle.
Bits of information, nuggets of pregnant fact, theosophical themes and mystic iconography obfuscating its truths and meaning, a maelstrom of barking black dogs crowds my mind. Cowardly and infirm, I run to the grave.
Solace is found amongst the tomb legions, and the nepenthe of their silence.
from the Brooklyn Daily Eagle in 1880, via junipercivic.com
The extension of Calvary Cemetery by the addition of one hundred acres occasions the demolition of the Alsop mansion, of historic interest. The Alsop family was distinguished n the annals of Newtown down to recent date. Now but one descendant remains, and he long ago quitted his ancestral home. Thomas Wandell was the founder of the Alsop family, through Richard Alsop, his nephew, when be brought from England, while a mere boy, about the year 1665 and adopted his son and heir. The one act in mr. Wandell’s life in Newtown which serves to perpetuate his name in local history was his effort to thwart the burning of human beings for witchcraft. He was foreman of the jury that tried Ralph Hall and his wife, and acquitted them…
-photo by Mitch Waxman
Researches into the hallowed grounds of Calvary Cemetery have hinted at a lost mausoleum, whose hidden entrance was last known in the 1900’s – and which served as an exclusive tomb for Catholic clergy.
Neighborhood gossips whisper of hidden rites and orgiastic meetings, conducted by caribbean cultists and drug crazed adolescents who dance in candlelight upon Calvary’s swollen ground, on moonless nights.
Personal observation has served a buffet of puzzling evidences, odd coincidence, and terrifying implication. If you dial the correct number at midnight, who – or indeed what- might answer?
from the Annals of Newtown
Mr. Wandell, according to reminiscence in the Alsop family, had been a major in Cromwell’s army; but, having some dispute with the protector, was obliged to flee for safety, first to Holland, and thence to America. But some doubt of this may be justly entertained; because Mr. Wandell was living at Mespat Kills in 1648, which was prior to the execution of King Charles, and when Cromwell enjoyed but a subordinate command in the parliamentary army.
Mr. Wandell, the widow of Wm. Herrick, whose plantation on Newtown Creek, (originally patented to Richard Brutnell,) he bought in 1659, afterwards adding to it fifty acres, for which Richard Colefax had obtained a patent in 1652. On this property, since composing the Alsop farm, Mr. Wandell resided. He was selected, in 1665, as one of the jury for the trial of Ralph Hall and his wife for witchcraft, (the only trial for witchery in this colony,) and shared the honor of acquitting the accused. Some years later, he made a voyage to England, returning by way of Barbadoes, and, it is supposed, brought with him from England his sister’s son, Richard Alsop, who, about this time, came to America, and was adopted by Mr. Wandell as his heir, he having no issue. He d. in 1691, and was interred on the hill occupied by the Alsop cemetery. Many years ‘after his death, the silver plate of his coffin was discovered, in digging a new grave.
-photo by Mitch Waxman
Shrouded by ancient copyright and purpose driven obscurity, the building of Calvary was a gargantuan project.
Hints of some enormous underground water calvert electrify my imaginations. The notion of a tunneled world beneath the sepulchral depth, collecting storm driven torrents of rain that would otherwise carry this vast attempt at elysian splendor into the nearby Newtown Creek (in the manner of some macabre mudslide), and the anticipation of where- and what- this system of sewers might empty into fill me with an overwhelming and loathsome joy.
from “A history of Long Island” at archive.org
At ye Court of Assizes held in New Yorke ye 2d day of October 1665 &c.
The Tryall of Ralph Hall and Mary his wife, upon suspicion of Witchcraft.
The names of the Persons who served on the Grand Jury: Thomas Baker, fforeman of ye Jury, of East Hampton ; Capt. John Symonds of Hempsteed ; Mr. Hallet, Anthony Waters, Jamaica ; Thomas Wandall of Marshpath Kills ; Mr. Nicolls of Stamford ; Balthazer de Haart, John Garland, Jacob Leisler, Anthonio de Mill, Alexander Munro, Thomas Searle, of New Yorke.
The Prisoners being brought to the Barr by Allard Anthony, Sheriffe of New Yorke,
This following Indict was read, first against Ralph Hall and then agst Mary his wife, vizt.
The Constable and Overseers of the Towne of Seatallcott, in the East Riding of Yorkshire upon Long Island, Do Present for our soveraigne Lord the King, That Ralph Hall of Seatallcott aforesaid, upon ye 25th day of December ; being Christmas day last, was Twelve Monthes, in the 15th yeare of the Raigne of our Soveraigne Lord, Charles ye
Second, by the Grace of God, King of Eng- land, Scotland, ffrance and Ireland, Defender of the ffaith &c, and severall other dayes and times since that day, by some detestable and wicked Arts, commonly called Witchcraft and Sorcery, did (as is suspected) maliciously and feloniously, practice and Exercise at the said Towne of Seatalcott in the East Riding of Yorkshire on Long Island aforesaid, on the Person of George Wood, late of the same place by which wicked and detestable Arts, the said George Wood (as is suspected) most dangerously and mortally sickned and languished. And not long after by the aforesaid wicked and detestable Arts, the said George Wood (as is likewise suspected) dyed.
-photo by Mitch Waxman
Calvary Cemetery is very much alive, teeming with a population of wild cats, rabbits, migratory birds. A sort of ecosystem exists here, but disturbing subsidences are common, the soil collapsing into a familiar rectangular pattern.
At intervals throughout the cemetery, there are oddly shaped concrete pillboxes- clearly hollow- which are secured with heavy iron lids that are often padlocked. Once, I dared to look into an unlocked one, and the dread implications of a staircase allowing egress down into a corridor roughly 15 feet below the surface, and the fresh muddy footprints leading away into that underworld nearly brought on one of my nervous attacks.
But- hatches abound in the Newtown Pentacle, and it is best not to dwell on all it is, that might be lurking down there.
Samuel Dibble accused his father-in-law, William Graves of witchcraft in the death of his wife, Abigail. There was a history of disagreement between Samuel and his father-in-law over his wife’s dowry. Abigail suffered horribly during the birth of her daughter (with a condition now possibly diagnosed as eclampsia (toxemia)) and Samuel blamed William Graves and depositions were taken in his complaint against him. The outcome of these depositions is unknown, however, it is likely that there was no severe action taken against William Graves as he lived another twelve years and died in Newtown, Long Island.
-photo by Mitch Waxman
Meditating on the oddly suppressed events that have occurred here at Calvary, my mind reels with implied meanings and unheralded imaginings.
On Christmas Eve of 1996, “vandals” overturned between 50 and 75 headstones.
Recently, Crows- the name I’ve coined for the large population of metal collectors who scavenge and pry to feed raw material to the recycling industry along the Newtown Creek – have been accused of stealing valuable copper ornaments adorning the mausoleums here.
Evidences of unwholesome activities may be found all along the great walls, adorned with the spear motif of the high iron gates that surmount and complete them, which seal the great ossuary off from its environs. In the waning years of the 19th century- 1866 to be exact- the Newtown Board of Health was forced to bring charges in courtagainst the cemetery for improper treatment of the bodies of the poor.
From nycgovparks.org
In the five years between 1793 and 1798, New York City suffered terrible outbreaks of yellow fever, and by the end of the crisis, the city had lost nearly five percent of its population. An investigation into the causes of the outbreaks found shockingly unsanitary conditions, and the City responded with sweeping health reforms. Those reforms effectively staved off yellow fever for several years, but in the summer of 1803, the disease struck again. In 1805, the City created the Board of Health, which used its powers to evacuate residents from all streets near the East River, where the epidemic hit the hardest. This successfully warded off the disease for another 14 years. In 1830, a Manhattan ordinance forbade burials below Canal Street, and land in the suburbs was set aside for cemeteries. Newtown, the region between Brooklyn and Queens, was the site of so many cemeteries that it was often called “the city of the dead.”
-photo by Mitch Waxman
Today, visual inspection will confirm the Review Avenue and Laurel Hill Blvd. fences as being a favorite spot for illegal dumping of both construction debris and deceased animals. Directly across the street from the Review Avenue gate, at the former Penny Bridge Calvary railroad stop- fascist iconography adorns the scene.
and from “The Annals of Newtown” at bklyn-genealogy-info.com
This cemetery, which is located at Laurel Hill, was set apart and consecrated in 1848. It is one of the most accessible rural cemeteries near New York, and it would be difficult to select a lovelier or fitter spot as a place of sepulture. The old ground comprised one hundred and ten acres, but in 1853 a charter was obtained from the State by the trustees of St. Patrick’s cathedral, New York city, for 250 acres; 165 acres of this are now enclosed. The artesian well in that part of the enclosure called New Calvary was sunk in 1879. It is 606 feet deep and 6 3/4 inches in diameter, and was bored in white granite for a large part of its depth. Last year 32,000 persons died in the city of New York, and of this number 15,500 were buried in Calvary. The cemetery keeps one hundred and fifty men regularly employed, and two hundred more are kept at work by the relatives and friends of the deceased. Here may be found some of the choicest of materials and the finest models in monumental structure; and here we may mention as worthy of note the vault and chapel built by John Johnston, at a cost of $75,000, and regarded as one of the finest to be found in any ground. This cemetery is to the Catholics of New York what Greenwood is to the Protestant population. Since 1872 Hugh Moore has been the general superintendent, and to his ability much of the beauty and attractiveness of the place is due; he has been assisted by Michael Rowen. The mortuary chapel, of fine architectural design and finish, was built in 1856. The present chaplain is Rev. M.J. Brennan.
Tales of Calvary 2- Veterans Day
-photo by Mitch Waxman
21 Roman Catholic Union soldiers are interred amongst the 365 acres of first Calvary Cemetery in Queens, nearby the cuprous waters of the much maligned Newtown Creek.
The wars of the 20th century, terrible in scope and vulgar in effect, cause us to overlook these men who vouchsafed the American Republic in the 19th century as we focus in on the veterans of the second thirty years war which modernity myopically calls World Wars One and Two. Woodrow Wilson proclaimed a federal holiday called Armistice Day in 1919, celebrating the anniversary of the legal end of the first World War in 1918. Congress agreed, seven years later, and then took six years to pass an act which made Armistice day an official United States federal holiday celebrated on November 11 annually.
Ed Rees, a populist Representative from the state of Kansas during the post World War 2 era, spearheaded a successful campaign in 1953 to have “Armistice Day” reclassified as “All Veterans Day” so as to include the veterans of WW2, and the ongoing conflicts fought by our “permanent government” on the world stage.
from nycgovparks.com
On April 28, 1863, the City of New York purchased the land for this park from the Trustees of St. Patrick’s Cathedral and granted Parks jurisdiction over it. The land transaction charter stated that Parks would use the land as a burial ground for soldiers who fought for the Union during the Civil War (1861-65) and died in New York hospitals. Parks is responsible for the maintenance of the Civil War monument, the statuary, and the surrounding vegetation. Twenty-one Roman Catholic Civil War Union soldiers are buried here. The last burial took place in 1909…
The monument features bronze sculptures by Daniel Draddy, fabricated by Maurice J. Power, and was dedicated in 1866. Mayor John T. Hoffman (1866-68) and the Board of Aldermen donated it to the City of New York. The 50-foot granite obelisk, which stands on a 40 x 40 foot plot, originally had a cannon at each corner, and a bronze eagle once perched on a granite pedestal at each corner of the plot. The column is surmounted by a bronze figure representing peace. Four life-size figures of Civil War soldiers stand on the pedestals. In 1929, for $13,950, the monument was given a new fence, and its bronze and granite details replaced or restored. The granite column is decorated with bronze garlands and ornamental flags.
-photo by Mitch Waxman
Many of the combatant nations observe November 11th as Armistice Day, or Remembrance Day.
It is hard for we moderns to conceive of the psychological pathologies of the post Victorian era, as our “end of the world scenario” is played out as either an expanding cloud of nuclear fire, or some “romeroesque” dystopia populated by hordes of disease maddened and resource starved ghouls- either way- it involves the apocalyptic ascendance of one of the “ism’s”.
Have no doubts though, that the world which created Calvary ended in an apocalypse, and our modern world was built upon the ashes of the Fin de Siècle.
from wikipedia
In many parts of the world people take a two-minute moment of silence at 11:00 a.m. as a sign of respect for the roughly 20 million people who died in the war, as suggested by Edward George Honey in a letter to a British newspaper although Wellesley Tudor Pole established two ceremonial periods of remembrance based on events in 1917.
-photo by Mitch Waxman
The soils of Calvary, a vast cocktail of loathsome and ghoulish ichor, contain many Civil War dead- as well as citizen soldiers from every conflict since. Forgotten and long neglected, the obelisk and its attendant bronzes are in a tremulous condition, etched at by a century of pervasive industrial pollution arising from Newtown Creek, and the greater city beyond.
from a newtown pentacle post, from july 31 of 2009, titled “Up and through Calvary”
Daniel Draddy was an irish speaker from County Cork, and the son of John Draddy- a stonecarver and prolific author in the Irish language who hailed from a family on Quaker Road. In context, they came from what modernity would describe as “an oppressed religious underclass involved in an ethnic and cultural war with an aggressive and powerful neighbor willing and and able to actively engage in state sponsored genocide and ethnic cleansing“ but which they would have called the Irish Potato Famine.
Daniel maintained his marble studios on 23rd street in Manhattan, near the east river. Known as a cultured and gracious host, he was beloved by the Tammany men. Contemporaries describe him as a first class carver, mechanic, historian, and he had the ability to write in the Irish language “druidically”.
Resemblance of the monuments to the tombs of ancient Egypt is no accident. The men who built this were Free and Accepted Masons.
This is masonic iconography, with its obelisk splitting the solar wisdom into the four cardinal directions and the four deities of the spaces found between standing watch at intersecting 45 degree vectors. Such falderol was quite in vogue after the Civil War, look at the Capitol Dome or Supreme Court building in Washington D.C. for similar thematic elements.
Don’t forget- Draddy was a stonecutter, from a family of stonecutters. That made him a Free and Accepted Mason, who’s existential threat was the subject of much Catholic liturgy. The Masons, especially after their successes in the Lowlands and North America in the 17th and 18th centuries, were considered a dangerous fifth column in the power structure of Europe. In the United States, the origins of the mythology surrounding them was beginning to form. In the 19th century men like Draddy would have been considered as subscribing to an “ism”, and its odd to find such iconography in a Catholic cemetery. The Church bore a special antipathy toward the Masons in this period of time, and even today they officially shun members.
-photo by Mitch Waxman
The statues here at Calvary’s Soldiers Monument seem to have been the original castings of a much reproduced statuary design. Placed here in 1866, they predate the identical statues found at Green-Wood Cemetery, and exact issuance of the mold has been confirmed in New England, North Carolina, and all over New York State. As early as 1875, fumes from a nearby Ammonia Factory at Newtown Creek were graving pitted marks into them.
Check out this amazing nytimes.com report of the ceremonies held, at this very spot- on Memorial Day, June 1, 1875.
In accordance with a resolution to celebrate the ceremony of decorating the graves of their dead comrades with more impressiveness than had attended that event in the past, John A. Rawlius Post, No. 80, with the members of the veteran corps of the old Sixty-ninth Regiment, Meagher’s Irish Brigade, Corcoran’s Irish Legion…
Observation, Speculation, and musing- the thinking out loud section
During the Civil War, the United States Union organized its troops by State, City, and town- hence the “XXth New York Regiment” or the “XXrd Illinois”. What this meant, in a meat grinder conflict like the Civil War with its high casualties, was that an entire neighborhood or town could lose ALL of its sons in a single battle.
The long economic decline of upstate New York, New England- especially Massachusetts- began soon after the Civil War partly because of this depopulation- and a generation of widows it created (the decline of “green energy” powered cotton cloth production in area textile mills is a major factor as well). The population important to politicians ceased being the rural mill town or agrarian producer and shifted to the newly crowded urban centers. In “the country”, a fascination with Spiritualism took hold while “the cities” set about building concrete cathedrals.
Radical politics, moralist movements, and fringe religion ruled in a depopulated countryside. The worn out land of the family farm wound inexorably toward a dust bowl, and there was no way to keep your sons and daughters from moving to “The City” and its possibilities. Stricken by endemic poverty, disease, ethnic violence, and starvation, the reality of “the good old days” before the Fin de Siècle is something that just doesn’t jibe with “you could leave your doors unlocked when you went to sleep, back then” that my grandfather used to proclaim.
The next generation of women that came along, who saw their widowed mothers and aunts running businesses and farms and participating in government– they were the Suffragettes.
The Newtown Pentacle 