Posts Tagged ‘newtown creek’
omnipresent slime
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This post is being written on Sunday the 28th of October, as a storm bears down upon the Megalopolis. Dire warnings and predictions of a somewhat Assyrian Apocalypse (water) are filling the airwaves, and here in Astoria a palpable sense of foreboding fills the air. My thoughts, of course, involve how my beloved Newtown Creek will fare. Zone A, the mandatory evacuation area as defined by the “powers that be”, includes a broad swath of the Creek. Mainly west of the Greenpoint Avenue Bridge, but points eastward can expect some disruption of normal tidal patterns as well. This is based on what I’ve read at NYC.gov though, I am holding no special “inside knowledge”.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It’s a question I often wonder about, would a storm surge actually manage to make it through the various right angle turns and engineered courses of the Creek? I suspect that part of the reason for these obstructions to “flow” were engineered into the bulkheads in the first place might have had something to do with such circumstance, but this is merely speculation. The unfortunate truth is that our friends in Greenpoint and Long Island City are likely going to have an unpleasant few days- at least. Let’s all hope that they make it through the storm with as little stress and trouble as possible.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A few emails reached me today asking what to do, listing the locations of the senders and inquiring as to whether the sender would be “safe” sheltering in place. Honestly, I am not the person to ask, and if the Mayor of New York City is telling you to get out of Dodge- you should take him at his word. Whatever you might have to say about Michael Bloomberg, no one can accuse him of being an alarmist given to wild flights of panic. Regarding North Brooklyn, one thing I can tell you categorically is that the reason that the Newtown Creek Waste Water Treatment Plant is located here is because it is located in the “bottom of the soup bowl”. This soup bowl is formed by the terminal Morraine of Long Island, the Palisades, and Staten Island. A significant amount of the water dumped on NY in the next 24 hours is headed here, regardless of any storm surge.
Everyone take care, batten down the hatches, and if anything crazy happens- react calmly and freak out afterwards. Presuming that power and Internet access are still available, I’ll be posting tomorrow at the usual time. If you still see this post on Tuesday, you’ll know that Astoria is off the grid. Don’t worry about me or my little dog, as we live on a hill.
Also- Upcoming Newtown Creek tours and events:
for more information on the November 9th Newtown Creek Magic Lantern Show, click here
for an expanded description of the November 11th Newtown Creek tour, please click here
boisterous company
– photo by Mitch Waxman
All ‘effed up. Only way to describe it. Often, a feeling will come over me, a sensation that my shirt is too tight or an odd itch will manifest deep in my ear- far beyond the reach of common probes. Annoyance sets in, with every mundane happenstance somehow confirming that “this is not my day”. In these moments of pique, I reach for the camera and head out the door, much to the puzzlement of my little dog who worries that it might have been she that upset me. It’s the psychological equivalent of hay fever, not unlike the sensational annoyance of a nose which drips uncontrollably. Luckily, I live within walking distance of more than one interesting place.
from wikipedia
Mucophagy is feeding on mucus of fishes or invertebrates. It may also refer to consumption of mucus or dried mucus in primates.
There are mucophagous parasites, such as some sea lice that attach themselves to gill segments of fish.
Mucophages may serve as cleaners of other animals.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The headphones are in before the portal to the human hive is crossed, and when angered or annoyed, the tunes are as well. Normally, one enjoys the company of an audiobook or the extensive list of podcasts to which I am subscribed, but on days like the foggy one on which these shots were captured – it’s Husker Du. For those of you unfamiliar, the seminal hardcore trio from Minneapolis produced some of the finest punk albums of the 1980’s, and their masterpiece is something called Zen Arcade. The double album, which is meaningless term in the age of digital music, reminds me of those days when a young narrator was capable of a dizzying number of emotions rather than the three or four I’ve been reduced to in my increasing dotage.
from wikipedia
Common features of oppositional defiant disorder (ODD) include excessive, often persistent anger, frequent temper tantrums or angry outbursts, as well as disregard for authority. Children and adolescents with ODD often purposely annoy others, blame others for their own mistakes, and are easily disturbed. Parents often observe more rigid and irritable behaviors than in siblings. In addition, these young people may appear resentful of others and when someone does something they don’t like they prefer taking revenge more than sensitive solutions.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Joking to myself that there might be things moving about in the fog, a reference to another bit of 1980’s pop culture, my plodding steps led me- as always down toward Newtown Creek and in the direction of the LIRR station. Can’t tell you why, but this spot is thrilling to me. Something about the trains moving along at grade level, so close you can touch them, and feeling (rather than hearing) the titan engines of these locomotives go by just electrifies- it feels as if a strong cup of coffee has just been injected intravenously.
from wikipedia
Caffeine overdose can result in a state of central nervous system over-stimulation called caffeine intoxication (DSM-IV 305.90), or colloquially the “caffeine jitters”. The symptoms of caffeine intoxication are comparable to the symptoms of overdoses of other stimulants: they may include restlessness, fidgeting, anxiety, excitement, insomnia, flushing of the face, increased urination, gastrointestinal disturbance, muscle twitching, a rambling flow of thought and speech, irritability, irregular or rapid heart beat, and psychomotor agitation. In cases of much larger overdoses, mania, depression, lapses in judgment, disorientation, disinhibition, delusions, hallucinations, or psychosis may occur, and rhabdomyolysis (breakdown of skeletal muscle tissue) can be provoked.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Of course, the conspirators who plot against Queens in their Manhattan offices would like to see this solace taken away from me, and would love nothing more than to deck over these tracks and install bland real estate. The masters they serve, and that thing which cannot possibly exist in the cupola of the sapphire Megalith is one of them, know that my joy is something to be crushed and will do whatever they can to see me cry. Next, they’ll take away my right to listen to loud thirty year old punk and take photos of stuff. Bastards!
I’m all ‘effed up.
from wikipedia
Grandiose delusions (GD) or delusions of grandeur is principally a subtype of delusional disorder that occurs in patients suffering from a wide range of mental illnesses, including two-thirds of patients in manic state of bipolar disorder, half of those with schizophrenia and a substantial portion of those with substance abuse disorders. GD are characterized by fantastical beliefs that one is famous, omnipotent, wealthy, or otherwise very powerful. The delusions are generally fantastic and typically have a supernatural, science-fictional, or religious theme. There is a relative lack of research into GD, in comparison to persecutory delusions and auditory hallucinations. About 10% of healthy people experience grandiose thoughts but do not meet full criteria for a diagnosis of GD.
Also- Upcoming Newtown Creek tours and events:
for more information on the October 27th Newtown Creek Boat Tour, click here
for more information on the November 9th Newtown Creek Magic Lantern Show, click here
for an expanded description of the November 11th Newtown Creek tour, please click here
forbidden zone
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Consultations with the elder tomes, Armbruster and Riker amongst others, an activity entered into during an innocent pursuit of certain historical lore about the area surrounding the conjunction of Grand Street/Avenue and the fabled Newtown Creek, revealed- or rather suggested- blasphemous realities difficult to digest. Needing a walk, and desiring to be warmed by the burning thermonuclear eye of god itself, your humble narrator found himself scuttling forth and somehow ended up at the hidden relict known to some as the Maspeth Avenue Plank Road. It was there that a corpse was discovered.
from wikipedia
Horseshoe crabs resemble crustaceans, but belong to a separate subphylum, Chelicerata, and are therefore more closely related to arachnids e.g spiders and scorpions. The earliest horseshoe crab fossils are found in strata from the late Ordovician period, roughly 450 million years ago.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Long time readers of this, your Newtown Pentacle, are familiar with the spot. The wooden structure visible is the last remains of the Maspeth Toll Bridge Co.’s Plank Road- which last crossed the Newtown Creek in 1875. Connecting the ancient community of Maspeth and Newtown with the hellish expanse of Furmans Island (home to Peter Cooper’s Glue Factory and Conrad Wissel’s Night Soil and Offal Dock, amongst other notorious or malodorous occupants), the Plank Road today exists as a destination for Newtown Creek devotees and fetishists. One did not expect to find a cadaver there, especially not of a creature whose origins stretch back to the Ordovician age.
from wikipedia
For most of the Late Ordovician, life continued to flourish, but at and near the end of the period there were mass-extinction events that seriously affected planktonic forms like conodonts, graptolites, and some groups of trilobites (Agnostida and Ptychopariida, which completely died out, and the Asaphida, which were much reduced). Brachiopods, bryozoans and echinoderms were also heavily affected, and the endocerid cephalopods died out completely, except for possible rare Silurian forms. The Ordovician–Silurian Extinction Events may have been caused by an ice age that occurred at the end of the Ordovician period as the end of the Late Ordovician was one of the coldest times in the last 600 million years of earth history.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Given its size, the departed was likely a female, and it was fairly apparent from both olfactory and visual inspection that it had emerged from the water and mounted its cairn several days before you humble narrator stumbled upon it. Clearly, its eyes had been chewed away by some scavenger. Often have I been told that this specie exists in Newtown Creek, but never have I beheld a specimen along it. Truly- who can guess, all there is, that might be buried down there?
from wikipedia
Xiphosura is an order of marine chelicerates which includes a large number of extinct lineages and only four recent species in the family Limulidae, which include the horseshoe crabs. The group has hardly changed in millions of years; the modern horseshoe crabs look almost identical to prehistoric genera such as the Jurassic Mesolimulus, and are considered to be living fossils. The most notable difference between ancient and modern forms is that the abdominal segments in present species are fused into a single unit in adults.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Often has the thought occurred to me. The relatively sudden change in the chemistry of both water and sediment over the last couple of hundred years- what process has that begun in the genome of local specie? Those who cannot adapt to the “new normal” will wither and die off, while others will alter themselves to thrive in the environment they find themselves in. Such is the very nature of life upon this world. Creatures such as this Horseshoe Crab have persisted, generation after generation, through asteroid hits and volcanic calamity and ice age. Surely they can adapt to the petroleum and chemicals in the water. They have seen dinosaurs come and go, these creatures.
from wikipedia
The Atlantic horseshoe crab, Limulus polyphemus, is a marine chelicerate arthropod. Despite its name, it is more closely related to spiders, ticks, and scorpions than to crabs. Horseshoe crabs are most commonly found in the Gulf of Mexico and along the northern Atlantic coast of North America. A main area of annual migration is Delaware Bay, although stray individuals are occasionally found in Europe.
The other three species in the family Limulidae are also called horseshoe crabs. The Japanese horseshoe crab (Tachypleus tridentatus) is found in the Seto Inland Sea, and is considered an endangered species because of loss of habitat. Two other species occur along the east coast of India: Tachypleus gigas and Carcinoscorpius rotundicauda. All four are quite similar in form and behavior.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The province of science fiction, such industrially adapted animals might thrive on petroleum derivates, taking advantage of other species inability to exist in such places. It has happened before, sudden environmental change. Unfortunately, it is rather simple creatures like the horseshoe crab and those smaller who are most likely to survive. Always, it is the apex predators who dominate the landscape that die off, which in modern times – unfortunately- is us.
from wikipedia
It is generally agreed that the Chelicerata contain the classes Arachnida (spiders, scorpions, mites, etc.), Xiphosura (horseshoe crabs) and Eurypterida (sea scorpions, extinct). The extinct Chasmataspida may be a sub-group within Eurypterida. The Pycnogonida (sea spiders) were traditionally classified as chelicerates, but some features suggest they may be representatives of the earliest arthropods from which the well-known groups such as chelicerates evolved
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Imagine the earth of a century or two from now- flooded and with vast reserves of carbon dioxide loosed within the atmosphere. Contrary to doomsayers fantasies of some parched Sahara, the historic record suggests- based on the fossil record of eras when CO2 existed in concentrations well beyond any modern day greenhouse gas scenario- that the planet will host vast forests as opportunist trees and plants drink in the stuff. We will be long gone, of course, either having escaped into space or extinct because of changes in rainfall, habitable land, and climate which will render large scale agriculture a quaint memory. If and when the monsoons fail to arrive in China and India, we will know the end is nigh.
Of course, these CO2 rich epochs were also marred by incredibly vast fires. The smoke from forest fires which consumed whole continents contributed to palls of smoke blotting out the sun which eventually cooled the planet and caused ice ages. Additionally, the precipitate of this smoke, carried down by rain, changed the pH of the oceans which dissolved the shells of mollusks and burned away the coral reefs. Ask the Xiphosura, they’ll tell you all about it, unless we wipe them all out first.
from pbs.org
With its armored shell, ancient anatomy, and 350-million-year lineage, the horseshoe crab almost seems too inconspicuous to stir up controversy. Yet this humble creature is at the very center of a collision between three completely different species.
For many decades, humans have harvested the horseshoe crab for use as fishing bait. Since the 1970s, we have also used horseshoe crab blood for medical purposes. But we may have gone too far. Horseshoe crab numbers have declined significantly since the early 1990’s. And, naturally, so did their egg numbers.
Also- Upcoming Newtown Creek tours and events:
for more information on the October 27th Newtown Creek Boat Tour, click here
for more information on the November 9th Newtown Creek Magic Lantern Show, click here
for an expanded description of the November 11th Newtown Creek tour, please click here
excellent care
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I’ve recently had the honor of making the acquaintance of the Queens Borough Historian, Dr. Jack Eichenbaum, and when I heard that he was going to conduct a walking tour around a section of Newtown Creek for the Municipal Art Society- I asked if I could come along. Luckily he consented, and even introduced me to his group. They were a little taken aback, as you’d imagine, as your humble narrator is extremely horrible in appearance and manner.
from geognyc.com
I hold a Ph.D. in urban geography (University of Michigan, 1972) where my dissertation was titled Magic, Mobility and Minorities in the Urban Drama. I’m a lifelong observer of NYC and other large cities around the world. My expertise lies particularly in quantitative methods, historical urban geography, migration, ethnicity, and technological change. I maintain a storehouse of urban concepts, researched facts, and biased memories of bygone eras.
Much of what I know about digital NYC comes from a career in the Property Division of the NYC Department of Finance collecting data and modeling valuation of tax parcels. Most of whom I know in NYC comes from founding and coordinating GISMO, NYC’s GIS user group, participating in non-profit institutions like the Municipal Art Society, and teaching at Hunter College (CUNY). I continually update my familiarity with NYC by walking, walking, and walking in all five boroughs.
In June, 2010, I was appointed Queens Borough Historian. My agenda includes advising the Borough President, convening people and organizations concerned with Queens history, education at all levels, promoting Queens’ history-related attractions and changing cultures, and introducing the concept of “digital history.”
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One thing you should know, lords and ladies, is that the historical community here in Queens spends most of its time fighting with each other. Often, I’m angry at someone, who hates me back. Alternately, this historical society is at war with that one, usually over some small point of contention. Everyone is actually pretty ok, and most of the arguments- which seem like the end of the world when they’re ongoing- settle out after a period of time. Such heated discourse, however, is something which I avoid at all costs and is why I spend my time- alone- down by the Creek. I would hate having Jack’s job as Borough Historian, and don’t know how he deals with the politics and backbiting without striking out or fleeing into the night. He’s a cooler cat than I.
from wnyc.org
They give lectures and tours and help New Yorkers learn about their neighborhoods. Their positions are mandated by state law…but they don’t make a penny for the job. They’re the five city historians, one for each borough. This summer, we’ll be meeting them and finding out some of the secret knowledge about their respective ‘hoods.
Queens Borough Historian Jack Eichenbaum is the new kid on the block. He got his job in June, promising not to hide behind books.
In the Flushing apartment he’s lived in for decades, Eichenbaum looks tan and fit in a t-shirt, royal blue track shorts and running shoes. He’s lived nearly all of his 67 years in Queens — a place he believes is still undervalued by the rest of the city.
The people who act like Manhattan is the center of the known universe? Don’t even get him started.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Along the way, Dr. Eichenbaum had arranged to meet up with George Trakas at the Newtown Creek Waste Water Treatment Plant Nature Walk. Mr. Trakas, who designed the Nature Walk, is a terrific guy and a fantastic ambassador for his inimitable public space. The Newtown Creek Armada art installation was also in place at the Nature Walk that day, which titillated the crowd.
from urbanomnibus.net
Newtown Creek’s notoriety as one of the most polluted waterways in the country belies its peculiar beauty and uncommon potential to provide vistas of New York’s industrial history and the scale of the city’s waste management machine. It’s also a wicked cool place to impress a date with a surprise picnic.
Artist George Trakas saw the potential of this canalized estuary as he navigated the waterways of New York over the past forty-five years. When the City’s Department of Environmental Protection launched a $3 billion upgrade of the wastewater treatment facility in the late 1980s, Trakas was able to seize the opportunity – through the City’s Percent for Art program – to go beyond the brief and to provide public access to the water for treatment facility employees and local residents. And by access, he means access: visitors won’t merely see the water from above, behind a fence. Rather, you can descend staged granite steps to the water’s edge and sit (or dock your boat) on a series of getdowns perforating the bulkhead along the Whale Creek tributary. It’s part amphitheatre and part shore, with horticultural and sculptural references to local history, geology, and geography. But it’s also a model of a successful community engagement process. Trakas participated in meetings with the Newtown Creek Monitoring Committee every month for the past ten years, incorporating community feedback and priorities into his design. Instead of using art to conceal environmental hazards with decorative band-aids, Trakas has created a Nature Walk that provides an interpretive frame on its surroundings and invites visitors to share his delight in water, industry and the urban beauty of the overlooked.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There was a cool dog who came along as part of the group, said canine seemed transfixed by what he was seeing and hearing along the way. Can you imagine what Newtown Creek must smell like to a dog?
There is so much interest in Newtown Creek amongst the general public, something I learned personally this last summer, and it was quite spectacular to hear Jack’s take on the place. The Municipal Art Society sent along blogger Kate Lenahan to record the event, and her post can be accessed here. Additionally, I got mentioned in a third party’s blog post, linked to below.
from downwithtyranny.blogspot.com
First, when I first did the walk, some 15 months ago, the primary attraction was laying eyes on Newtown Creek, which to my knowledge I had never done before. You have to remember that like most industrial waterfronts it was pretty well closed off to civilian eyes and feet. But in that intervening year and a quarter I had done more walks around various parts of the creek than I can remember and also cruised the creek, mostly under the auspices of the Newtown Creek Alliance (it’s definitely worth signing up for their e-mail list), and mostly with NCA historian Mitch Waxman (whose blog, “The Newtown Pentacle,” is always worth checking out).
Second, there’s the Jack Eichenbaum factor. In all the many walks I’ve done with Jack, I can hardly remember one where I didn’t learn something of near-life-changing importance — certainly a change in my way of perceiving the city, and likely the world around me. Walking with Jack, you learn to see how basic factors of physical and human geography have shaped the way regions and neighborhoods have developed and redeveloped.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Dr. Eichenbaum led the group over the Pulaski Bridge and into Long Island City, but I had to split off and stay in DUPBO. Another event was scheduled to begin later in the day, a presentation on water quality at the North Brooklyn Boat Club. The very good news was that they had beer, and a campfire going down there.
Also- Upcoming Newtown Creek tours and events:
for an expanded description of the October 20th Newtown Creek tour, please click here
for more information on the October 27th Newtown Creek Boat Tour, click here
for more information on the November 9th Newtown Creek Magic Lantern Show, click here
for an expanded description of the November 11th Newtown Creek tour, please click here
immemorial past
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Not unlike the woodland elves described in Tolkien stories, the Dutch had been diminishing for some time in their former free holds, and by the middle of the 19th century they had largely departed for that place where the burning thermonuclear eye of god goes at the end of the day. Their old haunts had grown lousy with the English, Germans, and Irish by this point in time anyway and they must have realized that their time had come to an end on Long Island’s western tip. Sightings of them continued right up to the beginning of the 20th century, but these days the Dutch in Ridgewood are functionally extinct. There may still be one or two, but these are anachronistic individuals.
from onderdonkhouse.org
The Vander Ende-Onderdonk House, located in Ridgewood on the border of Queens and Brooklyn, is the oldest Dutch Colonial stone house in New York City. Peter Stuyvesant granted the land it sits on in the mid-seventeenth century, and by 1660, Hendrick Barents Smidt occupied a small house on the site. In 1709, Paulus Vander Ende of Flatbush purchased the farm and began construction of the current house. The building was a prominent marker in the 1769 settlement of the boundary dispute between Bushwick in Kings County and Newtown in Queens County.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Reports from the time describe an odd and curiously industrious people, possessed of peculiar notions considered alien and sinister by the English (and eventually American) gentry who replaced them. These Dutchmen allowed property to fall into the hands of female heirs, considered their slaves to be indentured servants rather than livestock, and even tolerated congregations of Jews and Catholics gathering for their sabbaths (provided that they show discretion and deference, of course). Savages, atavist savages, they were.
from 1910’s “Genealogy of the Onderdonk Family in America By Elmer Onderdonk“, courtesy google books
“On Saturday, Sept. 21, 1776, the day after the great fire in N. Y., a detachment of Col. Birch’s 17th Light Dragoons visited Great Neck, Cow Neck, and in the afternoon they reached the house of Adrian Onderdonk, which they instantly surrounded, when an officer went in and searched every part up and down stairs, thrusting his sword into every secret place. The object of their pursuit happened to be at home, and on being arrested, he asked the reason of it, and in reply was informed “that your neighbors complain of you.” The officer then mounted his horse and rode off with the troopers, perhaps in quest of other Whigs on Cow Neck.
Adrian Onderdonk was taken as far as Flushing and shut up in the Friends Meeting House that night. The next day he was taken to New York, and on his arrival at the city he with other prisoners were paraded, with a gang of loose women marching before them to add insult to suffering.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
When they went into the west, these Knickerbockers failed to leave behind much other than a few place names and old houses, and the English speaking world was never apt to do much more than mention them in passing. Certainly, there were some Dutchmen who remained in their anglicized home, and their names are writ large across the historical record. Roosevelt, Van Cortlandt, Vanderbilt- all conjure some immediate memory or reactive instinct in modern audiences- but all in connection with Manhattan or “New York” rather than Long Island.
from 1911’s “American Prisoners of the Revolution, by Danske Dandridge“, courtesy google books
After nearly four weeks imprisonment the friends of Adrian Onderdonk procured his release. He was brought home in a wagon in the night, so pale, thin, and feeble from bodily suffering that his family scarcely recognized him. His constitution was shattered and he never recovered his former strength.
Onderdonk says that women often brought food for the prisoners in little baskets, which, after examination, were handed in. Now and then the guard might intercept what was sent, or Cunningham, if the humor took him, as he passed through the hall, might kick over vessels of soup, placed there by the charitable for the poor and friendless prisoners.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Authors and orators created a narrative in the early middle 19th century about these original european colonizers of the New York archipelago, a whimsical and semi ironic one, and they came to be regarded as a primitive group of peasant “hay seeds”. Washington Irving and others wove together an image of a good natured yet quite illiterate and impressionable race of farmers and merchants often at the mercy of superstition and fate. Not much mention of religious remonstrances or the complicated political deals entered into with powerful aborigine nation states (which surrounded and vastly outnumbered them) is commonly spoken of, but lurks just below the surface of the English speaking origin mythology of the United States.
from bklyn-genealogy-info.com, where they have historic photos of the place!!!
It is called the ONDERDONK House because on April 27, 1821, Adrian ONDERDONK purchased the 58-acre farm with the house and barn for $6,000. The farm extended south from Flushing Avenue to what is now Catalpa Avenue. During the 1820’s, Adrian ONDERDONK erected a small frame addition to the stone house immediately above the remnants of the foundation of the 1660 building. Its architectural features are typical of Dutch buildings in this period: a gambrel roof, Dutch doors, central hallway and double hung windows with shutters.
Immediately west of the ONDERDONK Farm was the COVERT Farm of 48 acres. It is thought the original Dutch grant covered what was in the early 1800s the ONDERDONK and COVERT farms.
In 1819, Adrian ONDERDONK, married Anna WYCKOFF, daughter of Peter WYCKOFF, who had a large farm nearby on Flushing Avenue.
In 1865, Gertrude ONDERDONK SCHOONMAKER, daughter of Adrian ONDERDONK, was the owner of the farms. She sold off 30 acres, but continued to live on the farm.
In the 1890s, she sub-divided the balances of the farm and sold building lots.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Progressive revisionism, a style of historical interpretation which reinforces a certain political philosophy popular in the United States during the middle and late 20th century, embraces a version of the “noble savage” concept. This is an old trope in European thought, which presupposes that the so called American Indians were possessed of neither property nor base motives prior to the arrival of the Europeans, and lived in some sort of vast peaceful commune with each other that celebrated naught but the world of nature. The “noble savage” population of North and South America concept originates centuries ago with Columbus, and has caused a terrific amount of carnage and suffering since.
from wikipedia
Originally, Ridgewood was part of the Dutch settlement Boswijk (Bushwick) and was later incorporated into the village of Breuckelen (Brooklyn). A legacy of this past stands today; Onderdonk House, which was erected in 1709. The house is the oldest Dutch Colonial stone house in New York City. Also located at the Onderdonk House site is Arbitration Rock, which was a marker for the disputed boundary between Bushwick and Newtown and essentially Brooklyn and Queens.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The actual history of the aboriginal occupants of North America, in the time before the plagues of Europe were unleashed upon them, is less than bucolic according to a fragmentary and badly documented historical recod. To the north were found Seneca and Mohicans, to the east were the Rockaway, south and west were found the Lenape. These were just the big guys- the regional players- and a complicated web of suzerainty and an homage based economy sustained and involved thousands of smaller groups in a web of trade and diplomatic relations. The first attempt at establishing a colony in Maspeth failed precisely because the Dutch had underestimated the strength, sophistication, and reach of one of these tribal groups- and the States General and Dutch East India Company decided that it would just be easier to buy the land from the Indians than fight them for it. The Indians, by all reports, could not believe that these odd trouser wearing people from overseas wanted to actually live year round in a swamp. NY State, incidentally, has preserved several of the property contracts entered into by the Dutch with the natives.
from wikipedia
The Arbitration Rock was set in 1769 as the boundary marker between the two Long Island townships of Newtown and Bushwick. Since Newtown was in Queens County and Bushwick in Kings County, this rock the size of a Volkswagen Beetle also served to mark the dividing line between these two colonial New York counties.
An acrimonious dispute over the boundary lines between the two townships had started as far back as 1661. “The feeling ran so high than men of one community would stone those of another.” To a large extent, the dispute reflected the conflict between the original Dutch settlers of Bushwick with the burgeoning English colonists of Newtown, New York.
In 1768, “a bill was passed in the legislature for a commission to draw a line to designate the boundary between the two townships.” In 1769, the borderline between the two towns and counties was established measured from this large rock that would ultimately be referred to as the “Arbitration Rock”. Still the dispute was not settled until 1880, when the state sent surveyors to verify the point on the old rock made in 1661.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As mentioned, earlier this week, your humble narrator had found himself drawn to the Onderdonk site on Flushing Avenue in Ridgewood in the name of attending a meeting of the Newtown Creek Alliance. In a somewhat metaphoric setting – beneath a big tent- the group discussed current projects and certain plans for the near future. The Ridgewood Historic Society Group acted as our hosts, and this- like the disappearance of both the Indians and the Dutch from western Long Island- requires comment. Thanks are offered to them for their hospitality.
from nyc-arts.org
On display inside the house are objects found during excavations conducted in the 1970s and 1980s as well as architectural and historical exhibits. The house was built by Paulus Vander Ende, a Dutch farmer, about 1709. The smaller wooden wing was erected much later. In the early 1800s, the house was purchased by the Onderdonk family. After the last Onderdonk moved out, successive owners used the house as a livery stable, speakeasy, office and, most recently, as a factory for parts for the Apollo space program. The Greater Ridgewood Historical Society was formed to save the house, which was nearly destroyed by fire in 1975. It opened to the public in 1982.
Also- Upcoming Newtown Creek tours and events:
for an expanded description of the October 20th Newtown Creek tour, please click here
for more information on the October 27th Newtown Creek Boat Tour, click here
for more information on the November 9th Newtown Creek Magic Lantern Show, click here
for an expanded description of the November 11th Newtown Creek tour, please click here
The Newtown Pentacle 