Posts Tagged ‘queens’
rolling peacefully
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Cavorting along in that neighborhood which once hosted the titan works of the Waldes Koh-I-Noor mill, where relict rail tracks reach up mercilessly through the asphalt of modern times, your humble narrator was chasing a shot of mighty Queensboro in the distance- illuminated by the rays of a setting sun.
My path brought me to the lightly travelled and seldom commented upon Davis Court.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
An industrial street lined by warehouses both old and new, my attention suddenly became fixed upon these six sandwiches of dubious origin affixed upon the ground.
They appeared to be a sextuplet of jelly sandwiches, but one can never be sure about such things until a bite has been taken- which I was unwilling to do.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It cannot be explained to you, lords and ladies of Newtown, why this arrangement of comestibles struck me as sinister. Perhaps it was the abandonment of perfectly edible food to the nocturnal scavengers which roam the creek lands, a beady eyed and squealing army which emerges from cracks and from other hidden apertures only when the burning thermonuclear eye of god itself has sunken below the horizon.
Perhaps it was the sandwich arrangement, I cannot say, but repulsion ruled my thoughts.
Feeling faint, your humble narrator moved on.
Project Firebox 34
– photo by Mitch Waxman
You don’t see many of this sort of Firebox anymore, which combined Police and Fire intercoms in a single unit. A humble narrator clearly remembers school assemblies (P.S. 208 on Avenue D) in which redoutable members of both services offered advice on how and when to appropriately use these fireboxes in terms of emergency.
One also recalls the “give a hoot, don’t pollute” stickers on garbage pails and being urged to turn off lights when leaving the room. Bellbottom corduroy pants also figure heavily into such memories.
rhetorical effect
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There is a curious stretch of 50th avenue, a truncated street that starts at 27th street and terminates at 23rd street in the dusty streets of Long Island City, which is orphaned and decapitated. It is dominated by the high flying steel of the Queens Midtown Expressway section of the Long Island Expressway, and the tortured asphalt of the street it shadows often exhibits bursting ruptures revealing century old cobble stones.
Long have I exerted to refer to this area as the “Empty Corridor“.
Pictured above are the relict remains of Irving Subway Grate, which suffered a catastrophic fire a few years back.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Even during the work week, there are few places in New York City that allow one to feel so isolated and alone as this street. Once it connected with Hunters Point, but that was long before the Queens Midtown Tunnel and the astounding steel viaduct of the Long Island Expressway which sprouts from it were installed and opened to traffic on November 15, 1940.
It was before the Long Island Railroad established its operations that it met with East River, in fact.
Borden and Hunters Point Avenues are the main through way for traffic heading east and west, and this street is little more than relict of earlier times.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The overhead tracks of the Long Island Railroad are observed at the intersection of 25th street, which govern the passage of large trucks on 50th avenue. Never have these tracks been observed as active by a humble narrator, but those in the know about such matters assure me that they are in fact transited.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Alongside these tracks, on the loamy midden which surrounds them, one might observe the colonies of feral cats which hunt and frolic around these parts. The kind hearts of area workers insure that these cats are afforded shelter and food, which unfortunately allows them to breed and multiply.
It is not an easy life, to be a feral cat.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As mentioned in the past, when these nocturnes are observed as my perambulations carry the camera about the concrete devastations of western Queens, a sure notion that the right place and time have been arrived at sets into my mind.
Always, they signal that the path which stretches before me is an appropriate and often revelatory one.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Beyond the tracks and their feline neighbors, the gargantuan structure with its attendant loading docks on the right are the former Bloomingdales warehouse, and is currently used by the New York City Housing Authority. They refer to it as the “Long Island City Complex” which sounds menacing somehow.
The left (or south) side of the street hosts several garage based businesses, and mainly acts as a parking lot for fleet trucks.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As the LIE slouches rudely toward the Queens Midtown Tunnel it descends from its 106 foot apex over Dutch Kills, just a few blocks away, and the street noticeably darkens. A guarded parking lot and entrance to the LIRR station lies to the right or north side, which is intended for employee access. To the south, one might follow 23rd street southward, toward Borden Avenue.
An audible hum, the sound of automotive tire spinning upon the elevated roadway above, colors the air.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The street ends in the driveway of a steel equipment company, which a humble narrator did not feel obliged to explore. What atavist wonders might lurk down there are surely beyond legal access, and are quite visible from the fence which adjoins the LIRR station on Hunters Point Avenue, near the Paragon Oil building. Surely some revelation hides back there, denied to me.
Illegal trespass, however, is not the Newtown Pentacle way.
nothing useful
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Observed, recently along the Boulevard of Death, this cool set of wheels.
Obviously, loved and kept in a state of functional restoration, this atavist vehicle caught my eye.
Occasionally, a humble narrator needs to remind himself to comment on little gems like this late model pickup truck, and marvel that such manufactured items can survive the trials of time.
Offered is the belief that this is either a 1949 or 1950 Chevrolet 3600 pickup, but I’m no expert.
Obcordate, a short posting today. Back tomorrow with something more substantial for you to sink your collective teeth into.
verdant valley
– photo by Mitch Waxman
While preparing the slideshow which was recently presented at the Ridgewood Democratic Club, which is one of two updated versions of the thing (differing lengths), I’ve been churning the content waters deeply. One of the little collections of images which I pulled together was called “Kosciuszko Bridge”.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
For awhile now, special attention has been paid to this decaying structure, due to those plans held by State employees and agencies to replace it with a modern bridge designed to overcome many of the flaws exhibited by the 1939 era “Meeker Avenue Bridge” – which was later renamed as the Kosciuszko Bridge in 1940.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It’s a lumbering and brutish design, inelegant, undistinguished, and strictly utilitarian. Which sort of makes sense given its construction during the latter half of the Great Depression.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Literally, and figuratively, this is Down Under the Kosciuszko Bridge Onramp, DUKBO. This is on the Brooklyn side, incidentally.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This post isn’t intended to carry any deep insight or reveal some historical truth. To confess, I’m showboating a bit today, and featuring something that won’t be here too much longer.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One thing you will notice in these shots is the horrific amount of corrosion which the bridge displays. This is, of course, why the State plans on replacing it in a few years time.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Naked, the bridge shows the lines of force which it’s engineered around, and for a structure that carries something like 200,000 vehicle crossings a day- that’s a lot of force. The Kosciuszko Bridge trusses are just so damned ugly about it, unlike the graceful curvilinear shaping of the Hellgate or Bayonne arches.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The reason it’s so high, around 150 feet of clearance at low water, is that ocean going ships used to come all the way back here. Not sail, although that was a consideration in 1939, but the smokestacks of ocean liners were what it was flung into the sky to accommodate.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Sliding over to the Queens bank, where the piles are driven into compacted mud and sand instead of bedrock, the legs of the bridge straddle the former home of Phelps Dodge. The neighborhood around these parts formed the border between the villages of Berlin and Blissville.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
From what I’ve been told, the former Phelps Dodge site is in private hands, but parts of it will house the new bridge which will replace the 1939 model. From the planning statements I’ve read, the new Kosciuszko Bridge won’t be quite so high.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It seems that the needs of the trucking industry will be acknowledged in the design of the onramps, which will not present quite as steep a grade to the angle of their approaches. I’ll miss the scale of the current bridge, I fear.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Like the nearby Megalith at Court Square in Long Island City, the Kosciuszko Bridge provides a geographical frame of reference for miles around. The only other bridges of sufficient scale to provide such service span the East River or provide connection to… Staten Island…
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The Kosciuszko Bridge, on the Queens side, follows the shallow valley between Laurel and Berlin Hills, both of which are graded down shadows of their former selves. There must have been dense woods here once, bisected by a shallow stream that fed into the Newtown Creek.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The Maespetche Indians who lived here were mostly wiped out by Smallpox by the 1700’s, and by that time the Dutch had already established a few homesteads here. When the English arrived, often overland from Eastern Long Island, they mocked the degenerate Dutch with their old fashioned customs and bizarre beliefs.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The English had plenty of controversies in this area themselves, with the bizarre adherents of the “Friends” cult showing up time and again from New England via the Long Island Sound, the presence of accused witches, and all sorts of odd religious experimentation by commoner and courtier alike going on.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
All that sort of nonsense ended in the early 1800’s, when the post revolutionary industrial boom got started here in DUKBO. General Chemical came in the 1840’s, and joined with the distilleries and fat renderers who had been here for years to participate in what we would call “the industrial revolution”.
Things really kicked into gear when the Long Island Railroad laid down track in the 1860’s and 70’s.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Of course, in 1848, Dagger John Hughes buried Esther Ennis and consecrated Calvary Cemetery as the official burying ground of the Roman Catholic Church. Construction of the cemetery on Laurel Hill was largely finished by the late 1850’s, which removed approximately 360 million tons of topsoil from the hill and installed an enormous drainage system within it to dry the swampy land.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
In the 1890’s, there were still homes and saloons, schools and churches here. Calvary grew by land acquisition and donation, and industrial pursuits rendered the whole area around these parts a smoky, soot stained mess.
And then, there was the smell.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The smell is legendary in the historical record, it seems that it’s all that the riders of the Long Island Railroad could talk about. Health Department records preserve complaints presented by residents of Manhattan who opined that the stink actually extended all the way to Turtle Bay (approximately 34th street).
– photo by Mitch Waxman
All that is gone now, although on humid days after heavy rains, the stink is still more than just a memory.
As are the chemicals in the ground and water which all that industrial growth left behind for the future.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Definitely. I’m going to miss the big K when it’s gone, wonder what interesting things will be found in DUKBO when the shovels hit the dirt.
After all- who can guess, all there is, that might be buried down there?
