Posts Tagged ‘Greenpoint’
The Night Soil and Offal Docks, and Jell-O
Not Furmans Island, but pretty close by in 2008
I was seeking out some information on a shunned 1960’s religious group which had headquartered at a disused 19th century Satmar Yeshiva (which burned to ash in 1973) over on the Greenpoint side when I read about “Conrad Wessel’s noxious and pestilential night soil and offal dock on Furman’s Island, along the Newtown Creek”. This reference was connected to Gov. Flower’s “smelling committee” which traveled up Newtown Creek in a steamboat during the summer of 1894 to confirm that the waterway did, in fact, smell. The Smelling Committee placed much blame for the miasma which permeated Long Island City, Dutch Kills, and Greenpoint at the doorstep of the bone boilers on Furman’s Island.
A muddy patch midway at the branch of Maspeth Creek with the main waterway, Furman’s (originally Smith’s) island was connected to the shore by a plank road. This plank road would later become Maspeth Avenue. At the corner of Gardner, where the Maspeth Tanks towered until just recently- was Peter Cooper‘s Glue Factory. This picture is from the Brooklyn public library:
Cooper- as in Cooper Union- and Canton Iron- as in B&O Railroad- as in the first transatlantic telegraph wire- was a brilliant chemist who worked in the “we use every part of the pig but the squeal” days of the American meat industry. By 1870, his operation specialized in the refinement of glues, albumen, and aspic from bone and inedible parts of animals. He invented the process by which gelatin can be powderized, flavored, and shipped to waiting consumers. His product- jell-O brand gelatin (patented 1845), is just one of the many everyday items invented and originally manufactured on our troubled newtown waters. One of New York’s greatest men, Cooper’s factory was nevertheless a gigantic animal tissue distillery which was spewing a plume of grease and acid directly into the Newtown Creek. Dead animals were collected all over the greater New York area (these were the horse and buggy days) and loaded onto barges headed for Furman’s Island. Also, human and animal poop littered the streets of Manhattan in those days.
The classic Sanitation man, in white uniform with a pail on wheels and armed with brooms and brushes- the sort you see show up in old warner bros. cartoons- was part of a nocturnal army who would open hydrants and water mains on top of the hill at 5th ave. and sweep the filth down to the rivers. This accumulation was in turn loaded on barges destined for… you guessed it… Newtown Creek. This is also where your grandmother’s threats about becoming a street sweeper if you didn’t do your homework come from. I grew up in the 70’s, and “garbage man” was a solid, well paying, union job.
Cooper’s men would first boil the organics and by-products, reducing them to fatty acid kept near boiling, then the foul chowder would be pumped through ceramic pipes to become constituents for whatever use Mr Cooper, or later his nephews Charles and George, desired. A reading of Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle”, which is admittedly based in Chicago, gives a fairly good taste of what life must have been like on New York’s own bubbly creek back then. Compare with “How the Other Half Lives: Studies Among the Tenements of New York” by Jacob Riis for the New York slant.
Cooper was the largest of the bone boilers, but not the only one. His plant was considered a model as compared to the Fertilizer and Rendering Works of Peter Van Iderstein, Jr. or Fred Heffner’s fat rendering operation. Also present along the Creek was the aforementioned Conrad Wessel’s Offal Dock, along with wire manufacturers like William Grossback and Co., and Charles Tendele’s Provisions dealership. Thousands of small operations worked in barns and sheds shoeing horses and building crates and barrels.
For a free historic New York Times column on the Smelling Committee and it’s findings- click here (registration required)
Its not the oil spill you should worry about folks, for things darker than petroleum flow beneath the gentle waves of the Newtown Creek.
Also, if anything you read here is contradictory to something you know, leave a comment and let’s talk about it…
The Creek from the Greenpoint Avenue Bridge
newtwn_HDR_IMG_8317_19.jpg, originally uploaded by Mitch Waxman.
Newtown Creek has long been home to the oil and petroleum industries. Famously, the underground Greenpoint oil spill is the largest in U.S. history and can be tied back to John D. Rockefeller‘s Standard Oil (now Exxon). The extent of contamination by oil, however is just the tip of the iceberg.
A quarter of New York City’s raw sewage is dumped directly into the creek. It mixes with 19th century pollutants like coal tar and naptha to form what Bernie Ente calls “Black Mayonnaise”. Estimates say that there’s anywhere from 10-20 feet of this unctious ooze coating the bottom. The waters of the Creek aren’t a death sentence, just a multi day stay in the hospital for a course of broad spectrum antibiotics.
from the Environmental Protection Agency:
Newtown Creek is a part of the New York – New Jersey Harbor Estuary that forms the northernmost border between the New York City boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens. 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 refineries 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. Currently, factories and facilities still operate along the creek. Various contaminated sites along the creek have contributed to the contamination at Newtown Creek. Today, as a result of its industrial history, including countless spills, Newtown Creek is one of the nation’s most polluted waterways.
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.
During the 1970’s, there were fears that a casually tossed cigarette would ignite the water.
The Newtown Creek
pictured- shot from the The Greenpoint Avenue Bridge, Greenpoint side
Before I say anything else, I must acknowledge the massive scholarship of a fellow named Bernard Ente on the subject of the creek. A photographer and historian, Bernie is a central cog in the community of environmentalists, activists, and bloggers who wander the 3.5 mile long industrial waterway which separates Brooklyn and Queens. Mr. Ente can be found via the Newtown Creek Alliance ( http://www.newtowncreekalliance.org/ ) and is possessed of an encyclopedic knowledge of Newtown Creek’s long history.
I won’t bore you with the same accounting of dutchmen and pollution that everyone else does, instead, I’ll just direct you to:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newtown_Creek
instead, I will just say that the smell is cyan colored, with hints of yellow. More to come.
(this is a 3 exposure HDR image, taken in the late summer of 2008 by Mitch Waxman)
What is “The Newtown Pentacle”?
The colonial era towns of Green Point, Brooklyn and the Queens towns of Astoria, Ravenswood, Hunter’s Point, Bowery Bay, and Middletown were called Newtown in Dutch and English times. In the early 19th century, the Queens villages combined to form Long Island City. The industrial center of the area was and still is Newtown Creek. The most polluted body of water on earth, this ancient inlet was once home to the Maspaetche Indians. Dutch Orchards and English farms gave way to Yankee rail and then Standard Oil as time went by. Today, its waters are a curious shade of copper green, and the largest oil spill in history gurgles back and forth through deep subterranean channels between Green Point and Long Island City. The architecture of the place is disturbingly heterogeneous. A rough tumble of styles are represented in this area — 19th century wrought iron row houses predominate, but 18th century warehouses are still on active duty in some places.Near Hunter’s Point and in Old Astoria, Antebellum mansions abut hideous Le Corbusier-influenced modernism. To the south and the east can be found some of the most interesting stone work in New York City as one explores the cemetery belt along the Brooklyn and Queens border. Three million New Yorkers lie in Calvary cemetery alone. In this, the Necropolis of New York City, the living population of Queens is outnumbered three to one.
After a health scare a couple of years ago, my doctors recommended a course of clean living and regimen of physical exercise as the best curative. An amateur antiquarian and connoisseur of odd information, I elected to use my prescriptive exertions as an opportunity to explore and record. I toured crumbling Long Island City, the tree lined lanes of Victorian Astoria, and rusty coastlines of foetid Newtown Creek. Headphones on, camera in hand. The journey has taken me to many odd and forgotten places, and led me to discover a fascinating group of people. Follow me on these long walks, I promise you’ll see something amazing.
The Newtown Pentacle 