Posts Tagged ‘Access Covers’
oblique realizations
It’s National Chicken Nuggets Day, in these United States.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Last week, obligation found one heading into accursed Manhattan.
As is my habit, I stare at the sidewalk whilst walking through the Shining City lest its gaudy lures and attractions infect or tempt me. Of course, given my predilection and interest involving manhole – or access – covers, this habit often pays out certain dividends for the wandering and historically minded mendicant.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Spotted along the Hudson River just north of Houston Street, a fairly old (as indicated by its shape) access cover for the Consolidated Telegraph & Electrical Subway Company. It’s an electrical one, as indicated by the hatch marks.
Part of the modern day Consolidated Edison company, Consolidated Telegraph & Electrical Subway Company was organized in 1885 with the intention of moving overhead carrier wires off of utility poles and then burying them in subterranean conduits which wiggle about beneath the streets. I would presume that Consolidated Telegraph & Electrical Subway Company was brought into the larger CONED conglomerate back in 1913, along with a bunch of other smaller companies and systems, but that’s just an educated guess.
from caselaw.findlaw.com
In the year 1884, the legislature of the state of New York required that ‘all telegraph, telephonic, and electric light wires’ in certain cities-New York and Brooklyn-should be placed under the surface of the streets (Laws of 1884, chap. 534). Under the authority of a statute passed in the next year (Laws of 1885, chap. 499, amended by Laws of 1886, chap. 503), the board of commissioners of electric subways adopted a plan by which the city of New York should enter into a contract with a company to construct the necessary subways, etc., which other companies operating electrical wires should be compelled to use, paying therefor a reasonable rent. Under contracts made accordingly and ratified by the legislature ( Laws of 1887, chap. 716), subways, etc., were constructed by the Consolidated Telegraph & Electrical Subway Company.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Over in the Greenwich Village section, this similarly ancient sewer hatch was observed, bearing the screed of “Borough of Manhattan – Bureau of Sewers.” Now, here’s how you “do some of the math” on these things: “Borough” indicates that it dates back to no earlier than 1898 when the consolidated City of Greater New York introduced the concept of the five boroughs to the world. My guess would be that this hatch was placed sometime between 1898 and 1910. You’ll also notice that the identifying system seen on the more modern manholes covers is absent, which would require hexagons as part of the design to indicate its purpose as a wastewater pipe.
As I’ve said before – Federal Roadway regulations state a preference for State and Local governments to either replace an access cover with an exact copy from the original foundry, or just leave the old one in place. This means, since most of these things were put in place before the World Wars of the early 20th century, there are iron or steel discs adorning the “via publica” which can tell the tale of Municipal organization, consolidation, dissolution, and indeed gentrification which are scattered about and barely noticed by most.
A precursor agency of the modern day DEP was the Borough of Manhattan – Bureau of Sewers. The DEP was formed in 1983 during a City Charter revision, incidentally, consolidating several independent bureaucracies into one massive agency that handles the delivery of potable water to the City, the operations and maintenance of the storm water and sanitary sewers, and a bunch of stuff that doesn’t involve getting wet – like noise complaints, air issues, chemical spills, all those sorts of things.
Upcoming Tours and events
Newtown Creek Alliance Boat tour, May 21st.
Visit the new Newtown Creek on a two hour boat tour with NCA historian Mitch Waxman and NCA Project Manager Will Elkins, made possible with a grant from the Hudson River Foundation – details and tix here.
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hysterical laughter
It’s Edgar Allen Poe’s Birthday, Icelandic Man’s and Woman’s Day (Bóndadagur), and it’s also National Popcorn Day – here in these United States.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Part of my scheme to survive the cold this year involves a bit of a mix up on the normal routine. Rather than walk from Point A in Astoria to some distant industrial wasteland and then follow a completely different path back home (my normal “thing”), I’ve instead been taking the subway out a few stops to spots around three to four miles from home and then figuring out how to walk back home along an interesting route. On a recent day, my route involved taking the G out to Williamsburg. Not the shiny part of Williamsburg, of course, but the still crappy section that touches southern Greenpoint.
Whenever I’m in Williamsburg, I stare at the ground lest I catch the eye of a hipster who might find me novel or twee.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
On the corner of Metropolitan Avenue and Leonard Street, this centuried access cover was encountered, bearing the screed “Catskill Water Chamber.” Now, I’ve asked the question “who can guess, all there is, that might be buried down there?” more than once at this – your Newtown Pentacle over the years… but in this case I don’t actually have to guess or wonder.
This is the sort of stuff that I know about which makes the folks at NYC DEP nervous about how I know it, incidentally. Short answer – while everybody else is reading about celebrity news or watching sports, I’m combing through the well hidden corners of NYC.gov. It’s a gold mine, I tell you.
Water Tunnel #2 is about 17 feet in diameter, and it feeds pipes which first stretch out under Long Island City, Greenpoint, and Williamsburg. A sixty inch trunk main pipe under Jackson Avenue in LIC connects to one on McGuinness Blvd. in Greenpoint after passing under the Newtown Creek. At Leonard Street and McGuinness, a seventy two inch pipe is connected to the main line, and that one feeds water all the way to Driggs Avenue.
At the corner of Metropolitan Avenue and Leonard Street here in Williamsburg, where the access cover seen above can be found, there’s a series of smaller twelve inch mains which split off from the main flow and feed water to local customers.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It’s likely that these access covers were forged sometime between 1905 and 1915, with the Catskill system beginning to come online in late 1915. The Catskill system was ultimately completed by 1928, forging one leg of the tripod of upstate reservoirs which supply NYC with drinkable water. It’s all very complicated.
The NYC Department of Water Supply, Gas and Electricity was the entity which the Catskill system would be handed over to, and was one of the many “wet work” agencies that were compressed into the gargantuan NYC Department of Environmental Protection back during the City Charter revision of 1983.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
After congratulating myself on displaying another bit of my largely useless knowledge base, it was time to start moving again as a small crowd of hipsters were beginning to form and I feared ending up being posted about on Instagram again. One decided to continue up Metropolitan Avenue, following it to the Northeast, and inexorably approaching those loathsome existential realities which one finds lurking about the legendary Newtown Creek.
More tomorrow – at this, your Newtown Pentacle.
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discoursed of
All access, indeed!
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As described in bit more than six years of prior posts, one has a certain fascination with those things which others ignore. The history of NYC can literally be found right there beneath your feet, especially once you learn how to read the signs and sigils left behind by earlier generations. Access, or Manhole covers, are everywhere. Research has shown that Federal Roadway regulations state a preference for State and Local governments to either replace an access cover with an exact copy from the original foundry, or just leave the old one in place. This means, since most of these things were put in place before the World Wars of the early 20th century, that there are iron or steel discs adorning the “via publica” which can tell the tale of Municpal organization, consolidation, dissolution, and indeed gentrification scattered about.
Pictured above, an access cover put in place by the Bureau of Sewers, Borough of Queens found in Astoria.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Over in Blissville, also in Queens, an access cover which once belonged to the New York & Queens Electric Light & Power Company, which is one of the consolidated parts of Consolidated Edison. NY&Q EL&Pco. was created in 1900, and quickly bought up most of the smaller players in electrical generation and supply in western Queens. Most of NY&Q EL&Pco.’s common stock was actually held by the Consolidated Gas Company of New York. In 1918, the NY&Q EL&Pco. merged with the Edison Electric Illuminating Company of Brooklyn. The new entity merged with the Edison company of Brooklyn, Inc. Eventually, after decades of this sort of merger and acquisitions nonsense, you get to Con Ed. On it.
The circles, I am told, are standard indicators that electrical equipment will be found below.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
An odd one spotted on West 24th street in Manhattan, which quite obviously belongs to everybody’s favorite corporation – Time Warner Cable. It bears their modern logo, and is quite interesting as there aren’t thousands of wires splayed through the trees and bending utility poles, which is that squamous corporation’s tell tale calling sign is in Queens and Brooklyn. I guess the City people don’t want their blocks all cluttered up so the wires are in the ground where they belong.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Over in Queens Plaza, sometime between 1912 and 1923, this NYM cover was placed. The New York Municipal Railway Corporation was formed in pursuance of contract 4 of the dual contracts era of the New York City Subway construction era, and was originally connected to the Brooklyn Rapid Transit (BRT) company. In 1923, NYM merged with the New York Consolidated Railroad and formed the New York Rapid Transit Company. It also stopped working on “BRT” or Brooklyn Rapid Transit and instead got busy on the “BMT” or Brooklyn Manhattan Transit situation.
The BMT became the New York City Board of Transportation’s problem in 1940.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A precursor agency of the modern DEP was the Department of Water Supply.
The DEP was formed in 1983, incidentally, combining several independent bureaucracies into one massive agency which handles the delivery of potable water to the City, the operations and maintenance of the storm water and sanitary sewers, and a bunch of stuff that doesn’t involve getting wet – like noise complaints, air issues, chemical spills, and those sorts of things.
DEP also spends a lot of effort figuring out ways to obscure what they’re doing from the reckoning eyes of regulators and citizens. The DEP accounts for something close to a third of NYC’s budget, has a navy, operates courts and police departments in upstate New York on Resovoir lands, and ultimately reports to a Robert Moses style “Authority” and the Mayor of New York City. The Water Board Authority, whose board is composed of political appointees (The DEP Commisioner plus 4 mayoral and 2 gubernatorial appointments), can borrow a theoretically unlimited amount of money in your name – doesn’t have to tell you who they borrowed it from – and will raise your water rates to pay the interest. They are the permanent government. Kafka would recognize the DEP.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Another “Authority” who can borrow freely in your name, once upon a time the New York City Transit Authority was known as “Rapid Transit New York City” and that was when this smallish “RTS NYC” hatch cover was embedded in the pavement. The particular specimen pictured above is found on Broadway somewhere near the hazy borders of Jackson Heights and Woodside in the 60’s.
The City’s RTC NYC purchased the BMT and IRT in 1940, and in June of 1953, the New York State Legislature created the New York City Transit Authority to rescue the nearly bankrupted agency. In 1968, NYCTA was folded into the State’s new Metropolitan Transportation Authority, along with LIRR and twelve other counties worth of rail and bus operations. That’s how, long story short, MTA became New York City Transit’s parent agency.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
We were once a plain spoken people, we New Yorkers. Once upon a time it was simply the “N.Y.C. SEWER” department. Today, it’s a division of DEP called “Bureau of Water and Sewer Operations.” Guess it sounds better on your resume when trying to pick up a lucrative Singaporean consulting gig after you’ve done your 25.
NYC has a fairly archaic system, sewer wise. It was state of the art back when Germany had a Kaiser, but the combined sewer system has major drawbacks in our modern time. A quarter inch of rain translates into a billion gallons of water, citywide, moving through the system. Since our sanitary and storm sewers feed into the same pipes, the mixed flow of liquid happiness is far greater than our sewer plants can handle all at once and it gets released directly into area waterways – like my beloved Newtown Creek.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The access cover pictured above sports six sided bits on its face (hexagons), which indicates there’s some sort of telephone infrastructure under it. Mysterious, to me, is the titanic amount of force and weight required to break one of these cast iron things on Astoria’s Broadway near the 46th street station of the R and M lines. Famously, a 1950’s nuclear test (Operation Plumbob) launched a manhole cover, which resided on a shaft near the blast site, at six times the velocity which would be required to escape Earth’s gravity. The discus was never recovered.
At the end of it all, there will be rats, roaches, and manhole covers.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
You see these all over Long Island City, and they are my favorites. My understanding of the process involved in creating one of these designs is that it’s a pretty straight forward sculptural one. A carving is made which serves as the “positive” for molds. The molds then have molten metal poured into them, creating a casting. The red hot casting is cooled, and undergoes a finishing round of polishing and grinding. The reason that so many of these access covers are as ancient as they are is that foundries generally discard positives and molds after the order has been fulfilled. Most of these foundries aren’t even in existence anymore, either. You don’t meet many blacksmiths or forge stokers in Bushwick or Williamsburg these days, not even artisanal ones.
As stated at the start of this post, the federal highway people prefer for the original cover to stay in place, or be replaced with an exact duplicate. Sans the original mold, that ain’t gonna happen.
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portal guardians
Hatches abound in the Newtown Pentacle.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One is possessed by a certain and somewhat odd fetish for “access covers” – or as they are colloquially known and popularly referred to by the local gentry – “manhole covers.”
Often, these iron discs will be the oldest thing present on any given street, due to their durability and the difficulty one encounters when attempting to replace one. According to several Federal Highway and Street design manuals which I’ve suffered through – guidelines state that it is preferential to replace one of these hatch covers only with an exact copy issued by the original manufacturer.
That’s probably why you’ll notice the Citizens Water Supply Company of Newtown’s hatches sprinkled around the neighborhoods of the Newtown Pentacle.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
About a block from the 108th Precinct’s HQ in LIC, sharp eyes will notice this 1874 vintage (independent municipality of) Long Island City sewer cap adorning the pavement.
Nothing else which has survived gentrification on this particular block dates back to anything earlier than 1900 or so, which makes this discus a genuine artifact of another age and a somewhat prehistoric culture.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A few blocks away, on Second Street in LIC, there used to be an iconic power plant that (positively) electrified the Long Island Railroad. The power plant is gone, transmogrified by the Real Estate Industrial Complex into yet another bland residential building sheathed in mirror glass.
The rectangular LIRR access cover remains, nevertheless. This chunk of iron likely dates back to the late 1890’s, an educated based on logo usage and operational era.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Over on Queens Blvd., in the Sunnyside area, you might notice these IRT branded storm drain covers. They are found on the roadway parking lots which underlie the massive concrete acqueduct which carries the Subway tracks high above.
These access covers are a non standard size, btw, only around 16-18 inches across. They carry the sort of typography one would expect from the house of Moses at the TBTA, and I suspect that they might have installed when Queens Blvd. was widened to its current footprint back in the 1930’s (may have been 40’s but I think it was the post Triborough Bridge era in the late 30’s. Don’t trust me on this one, I’m pulling this from memory rather than proper fact checking).
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Once upon a time, there was just one phone company. A monolith corporation which enjoyed a special status in NYC, the populace hereabouts called it “Ma Bell.” One of the interesting bits of history about which these access caps can inform the observer concerns corporate America.
You’ll see “NYCTEL” and “Bell System” as well as “NYNEX” and “Verizon” sprinkled around here and there, and all speak to the roll out of telephonic infrastructure across the megalopolis, and the evolution of the telecommunications industry.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Speaking of wires, Consolidated Edison caps are probably the most numerous hatch covers encountered. They are larger than most of the other ones, and are sometimes several feet in diameter.
My understanding is that the electric people have been retrofitting their access pipes in recent years with plastic undercaps, whose purpose is to keep salt laden melt water from winter snowfalls from infiltrating down into and degrading the electrical equipment found within. The hidden barrier also serves to vouchsafe against the manhole cover becoming electrified.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Over in East Elmhurst, this gorgeous hatch was recently encountered along Ditmars Blvd. in the 80’s. It belongs, or belonged, to the Brooklyn Union Gas Company – another monolithic organization which enjoyed – like the Bell System – a special monopoly in NYC.
These mega corporations operated under the aegis of a “Public Utility” designation, which meant that in return for exclusive access to the NYC market they would agree to charging politically regulated rates and perform tasks in concert with municipal officialdom.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The typography on this hatch is particularly pleasing, to my eye, at least.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Also in East Elhurmst, around a block or two from LaGuardia Airport, this manhole cover was encountered. Signage nearby adjures that a buried gas line is in the ground, which might offer some clue as to the occupation of the hatch, but the “ACQ” screed embossed in the iron is somewhat puzzling.
Any ideas as to its meaning, Lords and Ladies?
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Upcoming Tours –
July 26th, 2015
Modern Corridor – LIC, Queens Walking Tour
with Brooklyn Brainery, click here for details and tickets.
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The Newtown Pentacle 