Posts Tagged ‘Brooklyn’
Gods Gift to Pain
Please click through to Flickr and the larger incarnations of the above shot- it’s composed of 7 photos stitched together. Thats 7 fifteen megapixel shots and its HUGE – photo by Mitch Waxman
That extinction of hope called the Newtown Creek enjoys a series of canalized industrial waterways which act as tributaries to its main course. In the past we have visited Dutch Kills, Whale Creek, Maspeth Creek… today, it’s time for a visit to the vicious end of it all.
note: This post violates a number of the rules followed by this, your Newtown Pentacle, regarding rail tracks and probable trespass of private property… yet my hypocrisy knows no bounds. Realize, however, that I was with learned company- individuals overly familiar with this area, its mores, and the rail schedules. Do not come here, especially by yourself- for reasons later explained in this very post!
Welcome to the poison heartlands of New York City, where foul ichors flow freely, and English Kills bubbles in the afternoon sun.
from wikipedia
Newtown Creek is a 3.5 mi (6 km) estuary that forms part of the border between the boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens, in New York City, New York, United States. It derives its name from New Town (Nieuwe Stad), which was the name for the Dutch and British settlement in what is now Elmhurst, Queens. Channelization made it one of the most heavily used bodies of water in the Port of New York and New Jersey and thus one of the most polluted industrial sites in America, containing years of discarded toxins, an estimated 30 million gallons of spilled oil, and raw sewage from New York City’s sewer system. Newtown Creek was proposed as a potential Superfund site in September 2009.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This is as bad as it gets, one of the few places along the Creek where exposure to the water is life threatening in the short term.
Sure, if you fall off the Grand Avenue Bridge, you’re going to experience broad spectrum antibiotics administered intravenously over the course of a week or two in the hospital- but this stuff is pure dragon blood.
Nauseous miasmas were luckily carried away by stiff breezes, but several times- your humble narrator felt one of his spells coming on.
Up until the latter part of the 20th Century, industries along the creek had free reign over the disposal of unwanted byproducts. With little-to-no government regulation or knowledge of impacts on human health and the environment, it made business sense to pollute the creek. The legacy of this history today is a 17 million gallon underground oil spill caused by Standard Oil’s progeny companies—7 million gallons more than the Exxon Valdez spill in 1989, copper contamination of the Phelps Dodge superfund site, bubbling from the creek bed in the English Kill reach due to increases of hydrogen sulfide and a lack of dissolved oxygen, and creekbeds coated with of old tires, car frames, seats and loose paper. Nearly the entire creek had the sheen and smell of petroleum, with the bed and banks slicked black.
There is no natural freshwater flow into the creek as the historic tributaries were covered over. Flow exclusively consists of contaminated stormwater runoff, carrying trash from numerous bridges, unsewered and wholly paved streets and industrial sites, waste transfer stations, and combined sewer overflows (CSOs) from the city’s sewer system. Moreover, severely toxic groundwater seeps through the bed and banks of the creek. Every year Newtown Creek receives 14,000 million gallons of combined sewage overflow, a mixture of rainwater runoff, raw domestic sewage, and industrial wastewater that overwhelms treatment plants every time it rains. There are also discharges from numerous permitted and unpermitted pollution sources. The creek is mostly stagnant, meaning all the pollutants that have entered the creek over the past two centuries have never left. The creek is also home to a federal Superfund site, several State Superfund sites and numerous brownfields that have not yet secured the attention of regulators.
All is not lost, however. Recently, life is returning to the creek. You can find blue crabs at the mouth, fish swim in its waters, and waterfowl are prevalent. Wetland plants are taking over the abandoned bulkheads and sediment piles and school children are growing oysters, which serve as natural water filters. The Newtown Creek Alliance is actively fighting to help life return to the creek by decreasing pollution and increasing the wetlands along the creek.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The sickly vegetation, everything, was pulsing with “the colour”. Neither black nor white nor gray, but somehow “shiny”, this alien colour – like something out of space- permeates and identifies the creeklands. Nothing moved, but seemed instead to sway against the wind instead of with it.
In 1655, Director Stuyvesant being absent on an expedition against the Swedes on the Delaware, a horde of armed Indians landed at New Amsterdam, and began to break into houses for plunder. Driven back by the soldiers and armed citizens, they fell upon the unprotected Dutch farmers in the vicinity, many of whom were slain and others taken into captivity. The troubles experienced from the savages were now so alarming as to require the residents of Mespat Kills to concentrate for mutual safety. They, therefore, formed a village on “Smith’s Island,” at the English Kills. The Hon. Nicasius De Sille, who had a patent for the island, had the direction of the new settlement, and called it Aernhem after his native place.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Dead things were observed in the filth, amongst other unidentifiable shapes and eyeless tubiforms that slithered and flopped and listened from the littoral mud. A vague sense of being watched affected my guides and I, and the loneliness of our location created a sense of certain misgivings which was both real and profound. Nevertheless, I continued my incessant photography, trying to make the best of limited access.
from The Eastern District of Brooklyn By Eugene L. Armbruster, via google books
BEYOND THE NEWTOWN CREEK
In the olden times the lands on both sides of Newtown Creek were most intimately connected. County lines were unknown, the creeks were dividing lines between the several plantations, for the reason that lands near a creek were taken up in preference to others, and the creeks were used in place of roads to transport the produce of the farms to the river, and thus it was made possible to reach the fort on Manhattan Island.
The territory along the Newtown Creek, as far as “Old Calvary Cemetery” and along the East River to a point about where the river is now crossed by the Queensboro bridge and following the line of the bridge past the plaza, was known as Dutch Kills. On the other side of Old Calvary was a settlement of men from New England and, therefore, named English Kills. The Dutch Kills and the English Kills, as well as the rest of the out-plantations along the East River, were settlements politically independent of each other and subject only to the Director-General and Council at Manhattan Island, but became some time later parts of the town of Newtown.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This place, the very end of English Kills in East Williamsburgh, is non navigable and well beyond the containment boom that is observable from the Metropolitan Avenue Bridge. It hosts a rather large CSO (combined sewer outlet), and is crossed by a rail bridge which connects the massive Waste Management operation to infinite Brooklyn on one side and Queens on the other. The wooden structures which are so pleasingly posed, in their relict decay, are the remains of a former rail bridge which served the same purpose as the modern bridge.
The desk chair above is anybody’s guess.
from habitatmap.org
Combined Sewer Outfall – Newtown Creek 015
- Address Johnson Ave., Brooklyn, NY
- Neighborhood Newtown Creek
- Owner/Occupant NYC DEP
- Location Details Combined Sewer Overflow Outfall NC-015:
- discharges 344.4M gallons per year into English Kills
- Tier 2 outfall
- Ranked 20 out of over 400 in terms of volume
- located at Johnson Ave
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The shores were littered with death and disposal, and I spotted this sad little duck perched out on one of the rail structures. It didn’t seem to be moving very much, and its posture suggested sickness.
The City of New York has plans for this area. Check out page 29 of this PDF
DEP proposes to construct a 9 million gallon CSO storage facility to improve water quality by reducing the CSO discharged into the English Kills during rain storms when the CSO exceeds the capacity of the combined sewers. When this occurs, the CSO would be bypassed to the storage facility. At the end of the rain event the CSO would flow by gravity or be pumped back to the sewer system to be conveyed to the Newtown Creek Water Pollution Control Plant (WPCP) for treatment. This system was recommended by the Newtown Creek Water Quality Facility Planning Project (WQFP), a study that was part of the Citywide Combined Sewer Overflow abatement program.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Here’s a close up of the duck, which is what I was shooting when my companions and I heard a series of voices and shuffling from the overgrown border of one of the warehouses that abuts the English Kills. Haste was made for a more advantageous position, as we were downhill and the water was at our backs. Strange gutterals were heard emanating from somewhere back in the forbidden brush, a sound almost reminiscent of a dog or bear attempting to speak as a man might- an imitation of speech rather than true use of language.
from epa.gov
Various sediment and surface water samples have been taken along the creek. Pesticides, metals, PCBs, and volatile organic compounds (VOCs), which are potentially harmful contaminants that can easily evaporate into the air, have been detected at the creek.
In the early 1990s, New York State declared that Newtown Creek was not meeting water quality standards under the Clean Water Act. Since then, a number of government sponsored cleanups of the creek have taken place. The New York City Department of Environmental Protection has sampled sediment and surface water at a number of locations along the creek since 1980. In 2009, EPA will further sample the sediment throughout the length of Newtown Creek and its tributaries. The samples will be analyzed for a wide range of industrial contaminants. EPA will use the data collected to define the nature of the environmental problems associated with Newtown Creek as a whole.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
2 men, whose macabre appearance and bizarre style of dress took me aback, emerged from down this trail. Something odd was happening back there, and it was decided that discretion was the best part of valor, and we prepared to exit. Allowing the two men to gain some distance from us (I did not photograph them, out of cowardice) I swung my camera back toward the water and the Waste Management fenceline just as music began to play somewhere back in this wood of suspicion and horror.
from wikipedia
Waste Management, Inc. (NYSE: WM) is a waste management, comprehensive waste, and environmental services company in North America. The company is headquartered in Suite 4000 at the First City Tower in Downtown Houston, Texas, in the United States.
The company’s network includes 367 collection operations, 355 transfer stations, 273 active landfill disposal sites, 16 waste-to-energy plants, 134 recycling plants, 111 beneficial-use landfill gas projects and 6 independent power production plants. Waste Management offers environmental services to nearly 20 million residential, industrial, municipal and commercial customers in the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico. With 21,000 collection and transfer vehicles, the company has the largest trucking fleet in the waste industry. Together with its competitor Republic Services, Inc, the two handle more than half of all garbage collection in the United States.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I shot this photo figuring it to be the end of this post, but that’s when I noticed it…
from wikipedia
The eastern half of East Williamsburg, roughly bounded by the Newtown Creek East and by the BQE and Flushing Avenue on the North and South, is mostly zoned for industry with some residential housing mixed among the warehouses and factories. The section is currently referred to by the city as the East Williamsburg Industrial Park (EWIP), or formally the East Williamsburg In-Place Industrial Park (EWIPIP)[8]. The western boundary runs approximately along Kinsgland Ave, then Morgan Avenue and then just East of Bushwick Avenue.
The EWIP is one of eight In-Place Industrial Parks in New York City and is managed by the East Williamsburg Valley Industrial Development Corporation (EWVIDCO), a company founded in 1982 with the goal of revitalizing East Williamsburg by attracting new businesses, providing business assistance to existing firms and grow overall job opportunities in the neighborhood
Historically, this neighboorhood was not part of the Village of Williamsburgh. In the late 1800s the region east of Smith Street (now Humboldt Street), west of the Newtown Creek, south of Meeker Avenue (now the BQE service road)), and north of Metropolitan Avenue was the 18th ward of the City of Brooklyn[10]. The north part of the EWIP is served by the Greenpoint Post Office and is considered by some to be part of Greenpoint. The portion of the EWIP to the South of Metropolitan Avenue was historically part of Bushwick and is still referred by many as being in Bushwick.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I really have no idea what this is about, and I have read every crackpot theory that has ever been concocted. It very well could just be “ironic” hipster graffiti. I really don’t know, but it’s here at the end of English Kills, where at least two VERY odd characters are camped out. The things I noticed about these two fellows, you see, was this…
Two skinny white guys, late 40’s- early 50’s. Gray hair, both of them. They walked kind of stiff, and they had the colour on them. They lived back there, was my impression. A lot of “down on their luck” people live in these kinds of places- that’s not odd. What was odd- every item of clothing they were wearing still had price tags on them, and their shoes weren’t placed on their feet correctly- one of them had the left foot in the right shoe and so on. It was as if they weren’t used to wearing the clothing of men- or at least the men of this era.
from wikipedia
While it is generally accepted that some homeless people in large cities do indeed make use of accessible, abandoned underground structures for shelter, urban legends persist that make stronger assertions. These include claims that ‘mole people’ have formed small, ordered societies similar to tribes, numbering up to hundreds living underground year-round. It has also been suggested that they have developed their own cultural traits and even have electricity by illegal hook-up. The subject has attracted some attention from sociologists but is a highly controversial subject due to a lack of evidence.
Jennifer Toth’s 1993 book The Mole People: Life In The Tunnels Beneath New York City, [1] written while she was an intern at the Los Angeles Times, is allegedly a true account of travels in the tunnels and interviews with tunnel dwellers. The book helped canonize the image of the mole people as an ordered society living literally under people’s feet, reminiscent of the Morlocks of science fiction writer H.G. Wells.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As the sign at English Kills says, the one with the little pitchfork in the lower left hand corner:
“In Gods Blessed Darkness Rambo Harnesses Light as Gods Gift to Pain”.
Bigskybrooklyn got some shots of the place during the defoliated winter, which shows a shack back there- check them out.
from nyc.gov
New York City has an estimated 3,306 unsheltered individuals according to HOPE 2008-a ratio of 1 unsheltered homeless individual to 2,485* of the general city population. San Francisco has a 1 in 269 ratio; followed by Seattle with 1 in 295; Miami-Dade County with 1 in 1,741; and Chicago with 1 in 1,798.
There were an estimated 1,263 unsheltered individuals in Manhattan; 279 in the Bronx; 336 in Brooklyn; 135 in Queens; and 152 in Staten Island for a total of 2,165 on the surface (meaning streets and parks). There were 1,141 unsheltered individuals in the subways. Additionally, the Single Adult Shelter Census showed a decline by 19 percent from 8,687 in 2005 to 6,998 in 2008.
MV Red Hook at Brooklyn Bridge
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Our Lady of the Pentacle suffers much for my obsessions with the municipal sewage infrastructure of the City of Greater New York. Endless hours of monotone exposition greets her whenever a significant appliance or facility is encountered, and today you- lords and ladies- will share her pain. That’s the M/V Red Hook sludge boat soldiering down the East River, and passing beneath the Brooklyn Bridge.
from wikipedia
Contemporaries marveled at what technology was capable of and the bridge became a symbol of the optimism of the time. John Perry Barlow wrote in the late 20th century of the “literal and genuinely religious leap of faith” embodied in the Brooklyn Bridge … “the Brooklyn Bridge required of its builders faith in their ability to control technology.”
References to “selling the Brooklyn Bridge” abound in American culture, sometimes as examples of rural gullibility but more often in connection with an idea that strains credulity. For example, “If you believe that, I’ve got a bridge to sell you.” References are often nowadays more oblique, such as “I could sell you some lovely riverside property in Brooklyn …”. George C. Parker and William McCloundy are two early 20th-century con-men who had (allegedly) successfully perpetrated this scam on unwitting tourists. The 1949 Bugs Bunny cartoon Bowery Bugs is a joking reference to Bugs “selling” a story of the Brooklyn Bridge to a naive tourist.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Speculative destinations for the Red Hook could include storied Greenpoint, where the product of the Temple of Cloacina might require transport, or the Wards Island facility where the syrupy product of New York’s human infestation will be dewatered and processed into cakes of concentrated nightsoil.
Sludge treatment
The following are typical stages of the sludge treatment process.
Thickening
The sludge produced by primary and secondary treatment is approximately 99% water and must be concentrated to enable its further processing. Thickening tanks allow the sludge to collect, settle and separate from the water for up to 24 hours. The water is then sent back to the head of the plant or to the aeration tanks for additional treatment.
Digestion
After thickening, the sludge is further treated to make it safer for the environment. The sludge is placed in oxygenfree tanks, called digesters, and heated to at least 95 degrees Fahrenheit for between 15 to 20 days. This stimulates the growth of anaerobic bacteria, which consume organic material in the sludge. Unlike the bacteria in the aeration tanks, these bacteria thrive in an oxygen-free or “anaerobic” environment. The digestion process stabilizes the thickened sludge by converting much of the material into water, carbon dioxide and methane gas. The black sludge that remains after digestion has the consistency of pea soup and has little odor. This is called digested sludge.
Methane gas is often used as an energy source at the City’s wastewater treatment plants. The gas may be used in engines to produce electricity or directly drive plant equipment. Gas is also used in boilers to provide heat for digestion and plant-wide buildings. Currently, DEP and the New York Power Authority (NYPA) have jointly installed fuel cells at four of the City’s water pollution control plants; 26th Ward, Red Hook, Oakwood Beach and Hunts Point. Fuel cells convert the methane gas and carbon dioxide into heat and electricity that is then used to operate the plants. This technology contributes to New York City’s efforts to enhance clean air operations at its facilities. There is a significant reduction in air emissions as a result of using fuel cells.
Digester sludge is pumped from sludge storage tanks to a dewatering facility. At some treatment plants, where there are no dewatering facilities on site, the sludge is transported for processing through a pipeline or by a sludge boat to a plant that has a dewatering facility.
Circumnavigation 2
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Onboard the Circle Line, as it passed the Lower Manhattan Financial District, I spotted a couple of interesting things. The Meagan Ann tugboat was pulling a barge of shredded autos, which were reduced to their basic components at an industrial location found along that canalized exemplar of municipal neglect called the Newtown Creek, just up the river.
Here’s a shot of that Newtown Creek auto shredding operation which I took last year:
– photo by Mitch Waxman
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Meagan Ann is a twin-engine, 2,250 HP coastal towing tug, built in 1975 and rebuilt in 1988, approximately 81 feet long and formerly known as the Scorpius. It is owned and operated by Donjon Marine towing, Inc.
from donjon.com
Since its incorporation in 1966, Donjon Marine has established and continues to seek long-term client relationships in a world where limited business resources demand a constant balancing of expenditures. Beginning with its foundation in the New York area as a pioneer in marine salvages services, Donjon has grown to become a leader in both conventional and environmental dredging. Our areas of expertise also include recycling, land and marine demolition, pollution control and remediation, heavy lift transport, marine transportation and landfill remediation/site management. Donjon and its affiliates maintain offices, assets and personnel throughout the Northeast, with operations spanning the globe.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Also witnessed by your humble narrator were regular comings and goings of Helicopter flights from the East River Piers found alongside the Financial District. It’s a Eurocopter AS-350B-2 Ecureuil, based at the West 30th street Heliport and operated by Liberty Helicoptors.
The largest helicopter sightseeing and charter service in the Northeast. Liberty Helicopters is currently the only authorized helicopter sightseeing company in New York City. We began in the charter business on April 22, 1986 and added sightseeing tours of New York City originating from the VIP heliport on September 6th, 1990. At that time, Liberty had begun an aggressive plan selling in both the domestic and international markets. Using our strong customer base afforded us the opportunity to open a second location at the downtown Manhattan heliport in 1995. Liberty Helicopters was not only the first company to operate sightseeing tours from this multi-million dollar facility, but also the first to offer our customers the convenience of two Manhattan locations. On May 1, 2004, we opened a third heliport at the Paulus Hook Pier located in the newly developed area of the Colgate section of Jersey City, N.J. In addition to our “once in a lifetime” helicopter tours, this facility operates both commuter and sightseeing ferry services, making it a very accessible facility to Manhattan.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Of course, once we reached the grandest structure in the entire megalopolis (if you consider New York City to be composed of individual parts as opposed to being one gigantic system of transit, power, and satellite cities that stretches for hundreds of miles in every direction) your humble narrator forgot all about Sludge boats, Tugs, and aircraft. I’m always amazed at the scale and classical proportions of the Brooklyn Bridge.
from wikipedia
The Brooklyn Bridge is one of the oldest suspension bridges in the United States. Completed in 1883, it connects the New York City boroughs of Manhattan and Brooklyn by spanning the East River. At 5,989 feet (1825 m), it was the longest suspension bridge in the world from its opening until 1903, and the first steel-wire suspension bridge.
Originally referred to as the New York and Brooklyn Bridge, it was dubbed the Brooklyn Bridge in an 1867 letter to the editor of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, and formally so named by the city government in 1915. Since its opening, it has become an iconic part of the New York skyline. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1964.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
If it hasn’t been recommended to you yet, by me or others, I have to sing the praises of “The Great Bridge by David McCullough” which details the design and construction of the Brooklyn Bridge as well as providing a real “slice of life” about 19th century New York City. My preference for audiobooks is satisfied by the version available at apple’s iTunes store, and you could do worse things with your hard earned money than pick up the print edition at amazon.
from wikipedia
Born and raised in Pittsburgh, McCullough attended Yale University, earning a degree in English literature. His first book, The Johnstown Flood, was published in 1968; he has since written seven more on topics such as Harry S. Truman, John Adams, and the Brooklyn Bridge. McCullough has also narrated multiple documentaries, as well as the 2003 film Seabiscuit; he also hosted American Experience for twelve years. Two of McCullough’s books, Truman and John Adams, have been adapted into a TV film and mini-series, respectively, by HBO. McCullough’s next work, about Americans in Paris between the 1830s to the 1930s, is due out in 2010.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I don’t remember who the quote is attributed to, but the Ken Burns PBS documentary “Brooklyn Bridge” embedded a notion into me a while back that “all of modern heroic New York began with the building of the Brooklyn Bridge”. I tend to agree with this maxim.
from endex.com
After sixty years of political, financial and technical discussions (including a 6 lane tunnel proposal in the 1830’s), John Roebling’s plan was approved, the New York Bridge Company was formed and, in 1869, construction of the bridge finally began.
The bridge was built over 14 years in the face of enormous difficulties. Roebling died as a result of an accident at the outset; a fire in the Brooklyn Caisson smoldered for weeks; Roebling’s son, Washington, who took over as chief engineer, suffered a crippling attack of the bends during the construction of the Manhattan Caisson, and continued to direct operations, sending messages to the site by his wife, Emily. After the towers were built, a cable parted from its anchorage killing two people; there was fraud perpetrated by the cable contractor.
In the end, John Roebling’s prediction that the promenade above the deck will be “of incalculable value in a crowded commercial city” was justified, together with his perhaps most noted statement, claiming that “the great towers…will be ranked as national monuments. …As a work of art, and a successful specimen of advanced bridge engineering, this structure will forever testify to the energy, enterprise, and wealth of that community which shall secure its erection.”
On May 24, 1883, with schools and businesses closed, the Brooklyn Bridge, also referred to as the “Great East River Bridge”, was opened. Scores of people attended this spectacular ribbon cutting event. Over 100 years later, its renowned beauty & stature is still admired by many New Yorkers & tourists alike.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The shot above is actually from last year (2009), but gives a good sense of the intricate series of roads and onramps that allow Manhattan traffic egress to the bridge.
from pbs.org
- Although he was physically able to leave his apartment, Washington Roebling refused to attend the opening celebration honoring his remarkable achievement.
- The bridge opened to the public on May 24, 1883, at 2:00 p.m. A total of 150,300 people crossed the bridge on opening day. Each person was charged one cent to cross.
- The bridge opened to vehicles on May 24, 1883, at 5:00 p.m. A total of 1,800 vehicles crossed on the first day. Vehicles were charged five cents to cross.
- Today, the Brooklyn Bridge is the second busiest bridge in New York City. One hundred forty-four thousand vehicles cross the bridge every day.
the hillside thickets
CREEK WEEK continues…
- For the first installment, from the mouth of the Newtown Creek at the East River to the Pulaski Bridge, click here. For more on just the Pulaski Bridge, click here.
- For the second installment, which turns off the main course of the Newtown Creek and follows the Dutch Kills tributary to Long Island City’s Degnon Terminal, click here.
– photo by Mitch Waxman (from the Queens Museum of Art’s “Panorama of the City of New York”)
As the Newtown Creek follows its atavist path across the (currently) undefended border of Brooklyn and Queens, the second drawbridge encountered along its length is the J.J. Byrne Memorial Bridge, aka the Greenpoint Avenue Bridge, which provides a connection between Queen’s Blissville and Brooklyn’s Greenpoint.
A detailed posting on this bridge and its immediate environs was presented in August of 2009, which can accessed by clicking here.
from the DOT website:
The Greenpoint Avenue Bridge is a double-leaf trunnion bascule, with 21.3m wide leaves. This bridge is a steel girder structure with a filled grid deck. The bridge provides a channel with a horizontal clearance of 45.4m and in the closed position a vertical clearance of 7.9m at MHW and 9.4m at MLW. The bridge structure carries a four-lane two-way vehicular roadway with a 1.2m striped median and sidewalks on either side. The roadway width is 8.6m and the sidewalks are 4.0m and 3.7m for the north and south sidewalk respectively. The approach roadways are narrower than the bridge roadway. The west approach and east approach roadways are 17.1m (including 1.4m center median) and 11.9m respectively.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A significant petrochemical industrial footprint is observed at the 1.3 mile mark of the Newtown Creek, and the bridge marks that point at which even the current generation of shambolic urban planners throw up their hands and surrender. This is where the heavy manufacturing stage of the industrial revolution was enacted and invented, and the story preserved in the anaerobic soils of this area will be the joy of future archaeologists. Nearby the Queens onramp, Silvercup studios maintains a large film and television production campus, but this is mainly a region defined by recycling yards, warehouses, truck depots, and a sewer plant interspersed with century old petrochemical franchises. There are a few homes nearby, in both Brooklyn and Queens, but this is not a residential area. This is where the “sweaty, smelly, and dirty work” is done.
the nytimes has an article available from 1919, describing a spectacular and auspicious conflagration at Standard Oil.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The Brooklyn shore of the Creek hosts an enormous yard of fuel tanks, while the Queens side is lined with rail and light industrial buildings. Review and Railroad Avenue’s follow the Newtown Creek in Queens, which intersect with Laurel hill Blvd. less than a mile away. Appropriately high security along the volatile shoreline of Brooklyn renders exploration of it a somewhat futile endeavor, with high walls and armed guards securing and enclosing privatized corporate streets. A stroll down from Kingsland ave., through Grandparents ave., to Norman ave., Bridgewater St., and Stewart avenues will reveal visual egress to the Newtown Creek in only two places, both of which are well staffed and monitored by private security. A trucking center, the streets and sidewalks here are also quite degraded, and in this part of Brooklyn- Guard Dogs are deployed in great numbers. Go to Queens, instead.
There is more than 400 years of rich, if often troubled, history on Newtown Creek. Dutch explorers first surveyed the creek in 1613-14 and acquired it from the local Mespat tribe. The Dutch and English used the creek for agriculture and fledgling industrial commerce, making it the oldest continuous industrial area in the nation. The country’s first kerosene refinery (1854) and first modern oil refinery (1867) brought jobs and infrastructure. By the end of the 19th century, Rockefeller’s Standard Oil, which began as Astral Oil Co. in 1880, had over 100 distilleries on both sides of Newtown Creek, and each refinery’s average effluent of discharge per week was 30,000 gallons, most spewing into the creek. By the 1920s and 30s, the Creek was a major shipping hub and was widened, deepened, and bulkheaded to accommodate bigger barges, destroying all its fresh water sources. Newtown Creek became home to such businesses as sugar refineries, hide tanning plants, canneries, and copper wiring plants.
Up until the latter part of the 20th Century, industries along the creek had free reign over the disposal of unwanted byproducts. With little-to-no government regulation or knowledge of impacts on human health and the environment, it made business sense to pollute the creek. The legacy of this history today is a 17 million gallon underground oil spill caused by Standard Oil’s progeny companies—7 million gallons more than the Exxon Valdez spill in 1989, copper contamination of the Phelps Dodge superfund site, bubbling from the creek bed in the English Kill reach due to increases of hydrogen sulfide and a lack of dissolved oxygen, and creekbeds coated with of old tires, car frames, seats and loose paper. Nearly the entire creek had the sheen and smell of petroleum, with the bed and banks slicked black.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The Queens shoreline boasts a geologic feature called Laurel Hill. High ground, as it were. A lot of time is spent on the Queens side, scuttling around in a filthy black raincoat, by your humble narrator. Of late, I’ve been curtailing my presence in the area, for fear of environmental exposure’s cumulative effects. Breathing this air, while walking the blistered concrete of its lengths, cannot be beneficent for the mammalian constitution.
Beginning at Borden Avenue near the Dutch Kills, which is roughly a mile from where the ferry docks of 19th century Hunter Point could be found, Review Avenue only goes to one place. Literally, it was the avenue that funeral reviews- elaborate parades of mourners replete with musicians and baroque carriages- would use to travel to Calvary Cemetery. A posting from July of 2009, Walking Widdershins to Calvary, explored Review Avenue and the surrounding area in some small depth. Industrial footprints are observed on the Creek side, and very active rail tracks still carry freight along the shoreline.
here’s a link to city-data.com, which details the sort of businesses and structures, and their worth, which are found along Review Avenue
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Relict factories and abandoned lots for many years, the structures along the Queens side are either being torn down or renovated to modern usage. Dirty industries like recycling and septic tank maintenance firms are seen hard at work, and a thriving light industrial facility exists, however, these businesses are predicated on the use of Trucks and ignore the reason for their original construction- which is access to the water. Not that long ago, industrial shipping along Newtown Creek outstripped traffic on the Mississippi River.
from bklyn-genealogy-info.com’s History of Queens County
The boundary line of Long Island City, “beginning at a point formed by the intersection of the easterly boundary line of the city and county of New York with the centerline of Newtown Creek,” runs “thence easterly along the center line of said Newtown Creek to the westerly side of the Penny Bridge (so – called); thence northerly along the westerly side of the Bushwick and Newtown turnpike to the road on the southerly side of Calvary Cemetery, known as the road to Dutch Kills; thence along the center of said last named road to the southerly and westerly side of Calvary Cemetery as far as the boundaries of said cemetery extend; thence northerly along the said cemetery to the center of the road leading to Green Point along the northerly side of said cemetery; thence easterly along said last mentioned road to the intersection of the same with the road leading from Calvary Cemetery to Astoria; thence northerly and north- easterly along the center of said road, Dutch Kills road, Woodside avenue, Bowery Bay road, to the easterly boundary line of land formerly of Isaac Rapelye, on the northerly side of said Bowery Bay road; thence along the line of said Rapelye land to the Bowery Bay; thence along Bowery Bay and the sound to the northerly boundary line of the town of Newtown; thence northwesterly and southwesterly along said boundary line to the easterly boundary line of the city and county of New York; thence southwesterly along said last mentioned boundary line to the place of beginning.”
The new city was divided into five wards, described as follows:
- First Ward (Hunter’s Point)– “All that portion of the city lying between the center of Newtown Creek on the south, the westerly boundary line of Long Island City on the west, the center of Nott avenue and Boundary street on the north and the center of Dutch Kills Creek on the east.”
- Second Ward (Blissville).- “Beginning at the junction of Newtown and Dutch Kills Creek, running thence easterly along the center of said Dutch Kills Creek to Boundary street; thence along the center of Boundary street to Jackson avenue; thence easterly along the center of said Jackson avenue to the easterly line of Long Island City; thence southerly along said boundary line to the southerly boundary line of said city and at the center of Newtown Creek; thence westerly along the southerly boundary line of said city to the place of beginning.”
- Third Ward (Ravenswood).– “Beginning at a point on the westerly boundary of Long Island City, at its intersection with the center line of Nott avenue when extended on its present course to the said westerly boundary line of Long Island City; running thence northerly along said boundary line to its intersection with the center line of Sunswick Creek; running thence easterly and southerly along the center of said creek to the center of Pearce avenue; thence easterly along the center of said Pearce avenue to the center of First avenue; thence southerly along the center of said First avenue to the center of Webster avenue; thence easterly along the center of Webster avenue to the center of Jackson avenue; thence southwesterly along the center of Jackson avenue and Nott avenue to the point or place of beginning.”
- Fourth Ward (Astoria).– “Beginning at a point in the westerly boundary line of Long Island City, at its intersection with the center line of Sunswick Creek, running thence northerly along said westerly boundary line to its intersection with the center line of Franklin street, when extended on its present course to the said westerly boundary line; thence easterly along the center of Franklin Street to the intersection of Flushing avenue; thence easterly along the center of said Flushing avenue to the easterly boundary line of said city at the center line of the Bowery Bay road; thence southerly along the said easterly boundary line to the center of Jackson avenue; thence southwesterly along the center of said Jackson avenue to the center of Webster avenue; thence westerly along said Webster avenue to the center of First avenue; thence northerly along the center of First avenue to the center of Pearce avenue thence westerly along the center of Pearce avenue to the center of said Sunswick Creek; thence northerly and westerly along the center of said creek to the point of beginning.”
- Fifth Ward (Bowery Bay).– “All that portion of the city lying between the northerly boundary line of Long Island City on the north, the easterly boundary line of said city on the east, the westerly boundary line of the same on the west, and the Fourth ward on the south, together with all the islands opposite thereto and comprehended in the town of Newtown.”
- The islands belonging to Long Island City are known as North Brother, South Brother and Berrien’s.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The bulkheaded docks found here, this one in particular, once allowed funeral ferries from Manhattan to dock near the Penny Bridge (a structure which allowed egress from Brooklyn). A LIRR passenger station, also called Penny Bridge, was nearby. Mourners would gather on these docks and weave through the crowds entering the main gate of Calvary Cemetery, after having completed the journey from Manhattan. Nearby, in Maspeth, Hunters Point, and along Review and Greenpoint Avenue- hospitality industries sprang up in the form of inns, hotels, and saloons. Hunters Point also offered illegal gambling (and during prohibition in the 1920’s, booze), but that was for the trip home. When the Five Points gangsters held a funeral out here, extra police from Hunters Point would be on duty to prevent a drunken riot from breaking out, here- in Blissville.
from wikipedia
Blissville is a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Queens. It is part of Long Island City. It is bordered by Calvary Cemetery to the east; the Long Island Expressway to the North; Newtown Creek to the South and Dutch Kills (a tributary of Newtown Creek) to the West. Blissville was named after Neziah Bliss, who owned most of the land in the 1830s and 1840s. Bliss built the first version of what was known for many years as the Blissville Bridge, a drawbridge over Newtown Creek, connecting Greenpoint, Brooklyn and Blissville. It was replaced in the 20th century by the J. J. Byrne Memorial Bridge, also called the Greenpoint Avenue Bridge), located slightly upstream.
Blissville existed as a small village until 1870 when it was incorporated with the villages of Astoria, Ravenswood, Hunters Point, Dutch Kills, Middletown, Sunnyside and Bowery Bay into Long Island City.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Calvary Cemetery, of course, is not the only entity which has defined this area- just the largest and longest lasting. Nearby, the Phelps Dodge corporation maintained a copper refinery, and an early chemical factory was located here. Colorants and dyes were also a specialty of the locale. Review Avenue is remarkable for a cyclopean splendor at Calvary, the towering masonry structures which girdle and contain the borders of the necropolis.
from queenslibrary.org
A history of the Laurel Hill Chemical works from the beginning in 1852, from the Phelps Dodge Corporation Laurel Hill Plant Records, 1893-1983.
The following is a chronology of Phelps Dodge Corporation’s Laurel Hill Plant starting with William Henry Nichols, the man who co-founded the original chemical plant, G.H. Nichols and Company at the site in 1872; continuing to when it was purchased by Phelps Dodge Corporation in 1930; and ending in 2000 when all the structures were finally demolished.
Chronology
- 1852 William Henry Nichols was born to George Henry and Sara Elizabeth (Harris) Nichols in Brooklyn, New York, January 9, 1852.
- 1870 William Henry Nichols and his friend Charles W. Walter started making acids.
- 1872 To expand their acid production to sulfphurc acid and support their entrepreneurial needs William H. Nichols and Charles W. Walter, with the financial backing of William’s father George Henry Nichols, formed the G. H. Nichols and Company. The new company so named, because not only did George Henry provide the majority of the capital, but also the two men were too young to incorporate a company in New York State. During the year the company began purchasing land and building buildings in the Laurel Hill (now Maspeth) neighborhood of Queens, New York on Newtown Creek. Not only did the site offer good fishing, it afforded convenient water and rail transportation to move their raw and finished material.
- 1870s-1880s Their sulphuric acid, produced from brimstone, was stronger than the industry standard upsetting their competition but greatly increasing their market share.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Calvary Cemetery, as longtime readers of this Newtown Pentacle are all too aware, is a special place which I’ve spent a lot of time exploring. Past postings on Calvary include:
- Up and Through Calvary
- Calvary Mystery Box
- Calvary Cemetery Walk
- Tales of Calvary 1 – The O’Briens
- Tales of Calvary 2 – Veterans Day
- Tales of Calvary 3 – Rumors and stories
- Tales of Calvary 4 – Triskadekaphobic Paranoia
- Tales of Calvary 5 – Shade and Stillness
- Tales of Calvary 6 – The Empire State Building and the Newsboy Governor.
- Tales of Calvary 7
- Tales of Calvary 8– the Abbot
- Tales of Calvary 9– A Pale Enthusiast
- Tales of Calvary 10– The Hatch
- Tales of Calvary 11– Keegan and Locust Hill
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This shot is from one of those two vantage points in Brooklyn, mentioned above, showing the bend taken by the Newtown Creek and the Shining City of Manhattan beyond. The construction work observable on the right side of the image is the self same bulkhead where the ferries from Manhattan docked that was pictured above. Everything in Brooklyn and Queens looks toward Manhattan, but as always, I have to scuttle off in a different direction and to the beat of my own drummer. Turn widdershins on your heels, Lords and Ladies, and gaze eastward toward the besotted and behemoth corpse lands of the Kosciuszko Bridge.
from wikipedia
The Kosciuszko Bridge is a truss bridge that spans Newtown Creek between the New York City boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens, connecting Greenpoint, Brooklyn and Penny Bridge, Queens. It is a part of Interstate 278, which is also locally known as the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. The bridge opened in 1939, replacing the Penny Bridge from Meeker Avenue in Brooklyn to Review Avenue and Laurel Hill Boulevard, and is the only bridge over Newtown Creek that is not a drawbridge. It was named in honor of Tadeusz Kościuszko, a Polish volunteer who was a General in the American Revolutionary War. Two of the bridge towers are surmounted with eagles, one is the Polish eagle, and the other the American eagle.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The heart of darkness, where the slime and filth that agglutinate along the bed of the Newtown Creek defeat navigable intentions of oarsman and sailor alike, begins beyond the Kosciuszko Bridge. Untrammeled and seldom travelled pathways, a moonscape of cement dissolution awaits…
…but that’s going to be in another installment of Creek Week, here at your Newtown Pentacle.
– photo by Mitch Waxman (from the Queens Museum of Art’s “Panorama of the City of New York”)
On a side note, a ripple of revulsion and shock greeted the antiquarian and environmentalist communities that operate along the Newtown Creek recently, when a Dolphin was spotted near the Pulaski Bridge by members of the Harbor School- as reported by Gothamist.com
horrible and unearthly ululations…
– photo by Mitch Waxman (from the Queens Museum of Art’s “Panorama of the City of New York”)
Loathsomeness awaits, in the deep.
At the end of the Pleistocene, when the ice of the Wisconsinan glaciation was at last defeated by ocean and sun, the rubble which spilled from its ruptured facings piled up to form the terminal moraine of a cyclopean coastal sandbar, as well as many smaller islands. The torrents of flowing mud and water – acting in the manner of icy Lahars– interacted with this loose fill of titan boulders and frosty soil, amalgamating around stoney knobs of bedrock. These rough bits of rock, exposed by the motive traction exacted by ten thousand years of mile high ice, formed and agglutinated into an archipelago and estuary familiar to modernity as New York Harbor.
At the western tip of the sandbar, which european cartography called Long Island, an arabesque web of waterways was carved out of this turbulent tidal and river environment.
Welcome to the Newtown Creek.
from wikipedia
The Wisconsin Glacial Episode was the last major advance of continental glaciers in the North American Laurentide ice sheet. This glaciation is made of three glacial maxima (sometimes mistakenly called ice ages) separated by interglacial warm periods (such as the one we are living in). These glacial maxima are called, from oldest to youngest, Tahoe, Tenaya and Tioga. The Tahoe reached its maximum extent perhaps about 70,000 years ago, perhaps as a byproduct of the Toba super eruption. Little is known about the Tenaya. The Tioga was the least severe and last of the Wisconsin Episode. It began about 30,000 years ago, reached its greatest advance 21,000 years ago, and ended about 10,000 years ago. At the height of glaciation the Bering land bridge permitted migration of mammals such as humans to North America from Siberia.
It radically altered the geography of North America north of the Ohio River. At the height of the Wisconsin Episode glaciation, ice covered most of Canada, the Upper Midwest, and New England, as well as parts of Montana and Washington. On Kelleys Island in Lake Erie or in New York’s Central Park, the grooves left by these glaciers can be easily observed. In southwestern Saskatchewan and southeastern Alberta a suture zone between the Laurentide and Cordilleran ice sheets formed the Cypress Hills, which is the northernmost point in North America that remained south of the continental ice sheets.
The Great Lakes are the result of glacial scour and pooling of meltwater at the rim of the receding ice. When the enormous mass of the continental ice sheet retreated, the Great Lakes began gradually moving south due to isostatic rebound of the north shore. Niagara Falls is also a product of the glaciation, as is the course of the Ohio River, which largely supplanted the prior Teays River.
With the assistance of several very large glacial lakes, it carved the gorge now known as the Upper Mississippi River, filling into the Driftless Area and probably creating an annual ice-dam-burst.
In its retreat, the Wisconsin Episode glaciation left terminal moraines that form Long Island, Block Island, Cape Cod, Nomans Land, Marthas Vineyard, and Nantucket, and the Oak Ridges Moraine in south central Ontario, Canada. In Wisconsin itself, it left the Kettle Moraine. The drumlins and eskers formed at its melting edge are landmarks of the Lower Connecticut River Valley.
– photo by Mitch Waxman (from the Queens Museum of Art’s “Panorama of the City of New York”)
3.8 miles long, its mouth is directly opposite the Bellevue Psychiatric Hospital in Manhattan, and defines the currently undefended border between North Brooklyn and Western Queens. Estimates state that some 14 million gallons of combined sewage, storm runoff, and industrial waste provide the only flow of water into the Creek. It’s waters are opaque, and in the height of summer turn an unnatural shade of green.
The soft bottom of the waterway is 15-20 feet below the surface of the water, and the hard bottom is occluded by a gelatinous sediment known as “Black Mayonnaise”. Composed of petroleum residues, coal tar, PCB’s, and human excrement- it lies 15 feet thick on the bed. The oxygen content of the water drops precipitously as soon as one leaves the East River. The first of the drawbridges which cross it- known as the Pulaski Bridge, is the borderline beyond which immersion in this water is worthy of full HAZMAT gear and first responders institute biological decontamination procedures for anyone who finds themselves in it.
As I’ve mentioned in the past… the chemicals Putrescine (an organic chemical compound NH2(CH2)4NH2 (1,4-diaminobutane or butanediamine) and Cadaverine (a toxic diamine with the formula NH2(CH2)5NH2) which are produced by the rotting and putrefaction of animal flesh are abundantly found in the Newtown Creek under industrial aliases like Acrylonitrile and are prominent members on the EPA’s list of Volatile Organic Compounds– or VOC’s..
Who can guess, what it is, that may be buried down there?
from brookhaven national laboratories
Sediments from the New York/New Jersey Harborareas are dredged routinely to maintain navigable water depths for shipping channels and berthing areas to facilitate commerce and safe navigation. Historically, the dredged materials was disposed in the ocean. However, ocean disposal has been restricted due to greater regulatory restrictions on contaminant concentrations in the dredged sediments. The dredged sediments typically contain elevated levels of metals, polynuclear aromatichydrocarbons (PAHs) (tars, oils, fuels) polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), chlorinated pesticides and herbicides, dioxins (PCDDs), andfurans (PCDFs) as shown in Table 1-1[l] for Newtown Creek. Table 1-1, included at the end of this section, lists both the range previously available from the Request for Proposal and the average of six samples available to date for the treatability studies.The actual sediment used for the test was a black mayonnaise-like paste that contained few particles (or 0.2% on dry basis) greater than 2 mm, and exhibited an oily, foul odor.
BNL and other governmental federal and state agencies are in the process of developing risk-based and/or specific clean-up standards for the various locations where the treated sediment products are to be used. These standards are likely to be related to the soil clean-up criteria used based on direct soil contact (residential and non-residential) and/or impact to groundwater. For example, Appendix A contains the current soil clean-up criteria used by the State of New Jersey and the Maximum Concentration of Contaminants for the Toxicity Characteristic. Based on the sediment from Newtown Creek and the soil clean-up criteria for direct soil contact, some contaminants already meet the clean-up criteria while some need up to one or two orders-of-magnitude removal. The TCLP values for the Newtown Creek sediment are below the maximum toxicity characteristic value.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There are 5 major vehicular traffic bridges which hurtle over the Newtown Creek, 3 of which are drawbridges and one is a non functioning swing bridge. It’s tributary branches are also crossed by a variety of other spans, from the high flying Queens Midtown Expressway section of the Long Island Expressway and the grade level Hunter’s Point Avenue drawbridge to the Borden Avenue retractile bridge over the Dutch Kills. Additionally, atavist rail bridges and trackbeds stretch from no longer existing car docks at Hunters Point to the massive rail terminals and switchings in Maspeth and lead to points further East. Municipal neglect has rendered many of these bridges dangerously decayed, non functional, or dangerous to operate. Once, this was the busiest industrial waterway in North America.
A spate of emergency repairs and reconstructions was conducted in the 1980’s and 90’s to shore up these crossings. For instance, the 1910 Hunter’s Point Avenue Bridge, originally a double leaf bascule design like the Pulaski, was replaced by a single leaf design and in 1987- the 1929 Greenpoint Avenue Bridge was rebuilt- and the 1959 Pulaski was rebuilt in the early 1990’s.
from nyc.gov
The Pulaski Bridge, which carries six lanes of traffic and a pedestrian sidewalk over Newton Creek and the Long Island Expressway, is orientated north-south and connects Greenpoint in Brooklyn to Long Island City in Queens. McGuinness Boulevard approaches the bridge from the south and Eleventh Street from the north. The Pulaski Bridge is a 54m double leaf, trunnion type bascule bridge. It has two 10.5m roadways divided by a concrete median barrier. It also carries a 2.7m pedestrian sidewalk. The bridge provides a channel with a horizontal clearance of 45.7m and a vertical clearance of 11.9m in the closed position at MHW and 13m MLW.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There is a “colour” observed around the Newtown Creek. An iridescent sheen which seems to have been drawn from a palette not of this earth, rather it is best described as looking like some “Colour out of space“. Observable on every oil soaked cobblestone which pushes up through the asphalt, and pulsing through thorny vines which line the rotting bulkheads and sway against the putrid breeze, this colour is only the visible manifestation of a detestable lament which has infected the land and percolates in the swampy underworld hidden by piling and cement some 10-20 feet beneath the so called land. Wild catalogs of chemical compounds congeal in unknowable combinations, pooling in vast subterrene chambers and mixing with an underground water table that feed the sickly trees lining area streets.
Fish and invertebrates harvested from the Newtown Creek display open sores, unexplained tumors, and queerly mutated organs. Weird eyeless things can be seen wriggling in the filth, at low tide.
The surface of the water has tested positive for a variety of bacterial specie including Gonorrhea, Typhus, and Cholera.
from epa.gov
“Newtown Creek is one of the most grossly-contaminated waterways in the country,” said Acting Regional Administrator George Pavlou. “By listing the creek, EPA can focus on doing the extensive sampling needed to figure out the best way to address the contamination and see the work through.”
EPA responded to requests by members of Congress to evaluate specific sites along the creek by publishing a September 2007 report that contained a review of past work and recommendations regarding future work at Newtown Creek. The state of New York referred the site to EPA due to the complex nature of the contamination along the creek.
Newtown Creek is part of the core area of the New York-New Jersey Harbor Estuary, which has been designated by EPA as an “estuary of national significance.” Despite the ongoing pollution problems, some residents currently use the creek for recreational purposes such as kayaking, while others catch fish for consumption out of it. Various sediment and surface water samples have been taken along the creek and reveal the presence of pesticides, metals, PCBs, and volatile organic compounds (VOCs), which are potentially harmful contaminants that can easily evaporate into the air.
In the mid -1800s, the area adjacent to the 3.8-mile Newtown Creek was one of the busiest hubs of industrial activity in New York City. More than 50 industrial facilities were located along its banks, including oil refineries, petrochemical plants, fertilizer and glue factories, sawmills, and lumber and coal yards. The creek was crowded with commercial vessels, including large boats bringing in raw materials and fuel and taking out oil, chemicals and metals. In addition to the industrial pollution that resulted from all of this activity, the city began dumping raw sewage directly into the water in 1856. During World War II, the creek was one of the busiest ports in the nation. Some factories and facilities still operate along it, and various adjacent contaminated sites have contributed to its contamination. Today, as a result of its industrial history, including countless spills, Newtown Creek is badly polluted.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The northern bank of the Newtown Creek forms the border of Long Island City, and swirls through Laurel Hill (or Blissville), Sunnyside, Ridgewood, and Maspeth in Queens. The southern bank in Brooklyn is dominated by the ancient cities of Greenpoint, Bushwick, and Williamsburg.
from wikipedia
Greenpoint was originally inhabited by Keskachauge (Keshaechqueren) Indians, a sub-tribe of the Lenape. Contemporary accounts describe it as remarkably verdant and beautiful, with Jack pine and oak forest, meadows, fresh water creeks and briny marshes. Water fowl and fish were abundant. The name originally referred to a small bluff of land jutting into the East River at what is now the westernmost end of Freeman Street, but eventually came to describe the whole peninsula.
In 1638 the Dutch West India Company negotiated the right to settle Brooklyn from the Lenape. The first recorded European settler of what is now Greenpoint was Dirck Volckertsen (Dutchified from Holgerssøn), a Norwegian immigrant who in 1645 built a one-and-a-half story farmhouse there with the help of two Dutch carpenters. It was in the contemporary Dutch style just west of what is now the intersection of Calyer St. and Franklin Street. There he planted orchards and raised crops, sheep and cattle. He was called Dirck de Noorman by the Dutch colonists of the region, Noorman being the Dutch word for “Norseman” or “Northman.”
The Newtown Pentacle 