Posts Tagged ‘Project FIrebox’
Project Firebox 20
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There are many places in and around Astoria where time and space fold in upon each other and you find yourself at the corner of an avenue and street which bear the same number. This scarlet paladin withstands and discharges its duty despite the frozen indignity heaped on and around it at the junction of 37th avenue and 37th street- just off Northern Blvd. Who can guess what odd sights it has witnessed at this tripartite angle between Dutch Kills and Astoria and Queens Plaza, and what strange attractors frequent such concurrent corners?
Project Firebox 19
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Decapitated, this firebox on Skillman Avenue and Honeywell Street has long been severed from its designed functionality. I’m told by certain knowledgeable sources that you simply cannot remove the stump of an alarm box from its appointed spot, as the circuitry which governs the entire system will be affected by its absence rendering the surrounding neighborhood’s chain of Fireboxes blind to urgent cries of imminent immolation.
This firebox, however, finds a new utility for the needs of the few – or in this case the one- as opposed to the many it once protected, for your humble narrator routinely uses the dinner plate sized platter which crowns it as a makeshift camera platform when photographing the titan Sunnyside Yard with its backdrop of the shield wall of that Shining City which squats squamously across the River of Sound.
Project Firebox 18
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Badder than you, this urban survivor owns the corner of Vernon Vlvd. and Queens Plaza South. Scarlet, its backdrop is mighty Queensboro itself, and the mysterious doorway into its tower. Rumored by area wags and historical enthusiasts alike to have once led to elevators and stairways which carried potential passengers to a trolley platform high above on the bridge itself, local legends abound as to the true purpose of the entrance. Who can say?
Project Firebox 17
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The hinterlands found along Kingsland Avenue in Brooklyn, as it slouches roughly toward the Kosciuszko Bridge, are a concrete fascination. The locale is typified by guardian canines and hurtling security fences, whose extant borders reveal heavy industry and streets literally collapsing from the concomitant truck traffic they have endured for over a century. This shot dates back to 2007, when I first learned that the FDNY and its masters in the City government consider these alarm boxes a nuisance and I began a dedicated effort to record as many of them as still stand.
Project Firebox 16
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Too seldom consulted and seldom admired, this notable exception to municipal prejudice on Review Avenue provides succor and aid to the long strip of industrial and warehouse buildings which typify the severe declination that leads one to the Newtown Creek, and acts as a watchman over the titan walls of Calvary Cemetery.
note: apologies for missing yesterday and for the non tangential nature of this post, but I’m a little busy with something at the moment. I’ll be back on the stick within a day or so.
The Newtown Pentacle 