Posts Tagged ‘Williamsburg Bridge’
roughly hemispherical
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Good news permeates the City of Greater New York, as a remedy to the various financial crises has emerged. To begin with, the Mayor and City Council have voted to eliminate the wasteful practice of running mostly empty buses during non peak hours, and replacing them with smaller and more efficient vehicles like the one pictured above. Ergonomic and comfortable, the fare has been waved for these new conveyances, in order to encourage ridership and acceptance of the new scheme. Your humble narrator looks forward to “scooping” around the borough, although calling the driver “a backhoe” will be considered a hate crime and socioeconomic slur leveled against a City employee and will be punishable by 15 years forced labor at the Ratner trash mines in Pennsylvania.
Savings- $385 million!!!
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Over in Brooklyn, the “Williamsburg Financial Corridor” has proven to be such a success that the entire Third Ward has been designated an outlying district of Manhattan. Brooklyn will miss it’s emo child, but Manhattan welcomes the “Lower, extremely East Side” (LEES) to it’s family. Win Win for the City, although Brooklyn will still have to fund the schools, hospitals, and other facets of Williamsburg’s municipal infrastructure. The good news is that Billyburgers can now report that they have a Manhattan address to their families back in the Mid-West.
Benefit to Manhattan- 3 billion in property taxes!!!
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Never let it be said, though, that Manhattan doesn’t share the load. In another daring and data driven decision, the Mayor and City Council have agreed to sell the Empire State Building to Dubai. The Sheikhs of that far off desert land have announced their plans to lift the iconic structure from its foundations via the use of a fleet of Skyhook helicoptors and dirigibles. The scheme involves transporting the luckily aerodynamic skyscraper to the shores of Arabia via the heavy lift capability of its Al-Zeppelins, all the way to their exotic Emirate just south of the Persian Gulf.
The City is the big winner in this story however, as both Mayor’s office and City Council members and staff will receive free vacations at the desert resort, during which time they can forget all about April 1st, and the fools they govern over back in New York.
Another Lucky shot
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Social gatherings and year end meetings consume the evening hours of twilit December, and recently, I had occasion to be at the Pier 17 complex at South Street Seaport. Upon arriving at my destination in the cavernous building, this scene greeted me.
Luckily, I had my trusty “old” camera- the Canon G10 with its magnetic tripod gadget attached which allows me to make “on the fly” long exposures. Even so, this was a lucky shot.
A 15 second exposure, looking north along the East River at the Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Williamsburg Bridges, on December 7th, 2010 at 7:50 PM.
Circumnavigation 3
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Hailing from the Brooklyn neighborhoods of first Flatbush, then Flatlands and Canarsie, my driving into “the City” habits always focused on the red haired step child of the Brooklyn Bridge- the Manhattan Bridge- which was the next great structure that the Circle Line passed.
from wikipedia
The Manhattan Bridge is a suspension bridge that crosses the East River in New York City, connecting Lower Manhattan (at Canal Street) with Brooklyn (at Flatbush Avenue Extension) on Long Island. It was the last of the three suspension bridges built across the lower East River, following the Brooklyn and the Williamsburg bridges. The bridge was opened to traffic on December 31, 1909 and was designed by Leon Moisseiff, who later designed the infamous original Tacoma Narrows Bridge that opened and collapsed in 1940. It has four vehicle lanes on the upper level (split between two roadways). The lower level has three lanes, four subway tracks, a walkway and a bikeway. The upper level, originally used for streetcars, has two lanes in each direction, and the lower level is one-way and has three lanes in peak direction. It once carried New York State Route 27 and later was planned to carry Interstate 478. No tolls are charged for motor vehicles to use the Manhattan Bridge.
The original pedestrian walkway on the south side of the bridge was reopened after forty years in June 2001.[3] It was also used by bicycles until late summer 2004, when a dedicated bicycle path was opened on the north side of the bridge, and again in 2007 while the bike lane was used for truck access during repairs to the lower motor roadway.
Main span: 1,470 ft (448 m)
Length of suspension cables: 3224 ft (983 m)
Total length: 6,855 ft (2,089 m)
The neighborhood near the bridge on the Brooklyn side, once known as Fulton Landing has been gentrified and is called DUMBO, an acronym for Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass.
To celebrate the bridge’s centennial anniversary, a series of events and exhibits were organized by the New York City Bridge Centennial Commission in October 2009. These included a ceremonial parade across the Manhattan Bridge on the morning of October 4th and a fireworks display in the evening. In 2009, the bridge was also designated as a National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark by the American Society of Civil Engineers.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Your humble narrator was honored to serve as a Bridge Parade Marshall for the aforementioned Centennial Parade, and attended the Landmarking ceremony on March 5th.
Here’s the Newtown Pentacle Posts on the Centennial Parade on October 4th-
Manhattan Bridge Centennial Parade 1
Manhattan Bridge Centennial Parade 2
Manhattan Bridge Centennial Parade 3
Here’s the NP post on the Ceremony in March- Exhausted
And for my personal take on the Manhattan Bridge- DUMBO… or missing my Dad
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Beneath the Bridge, small clots of citizenry were cleaning the shoreline of wind blown refuse and whatever washed up out of the East River over the long and severe winter that New York endured in 2010. It was Earth Day eve, after all.
I wish I could point you to a link about this effort, but the Brooklyn Blogosphere is an impenetrable fortress of noise and self importance which defies even the might of Google. If anybody associated with this effort is reading this, please fill the rest of us in on the particulars.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Moving north, ever north, midtown Manhattan’s iconic Chrysler Building rises behind the recently upgraded East River Station cogeneration power plant at 14th street and Ave. D.
The East River Generating Station, one of Consolidated Edison Co. of New York Inc.’s largest and most significant combined-cycle power stations, will be repowered by Slattery Skanska and its subsidiary Gottlieb Skanska.
Located on the east side of Lower Manhattan, the 43,000-sq.-ft. facility produces electricity and steam for homes and businesses throughout New York City. The project was completed May 2004.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I still owe you, lords and ladies, a proper workup of the Williamsburg bridge. I’m still collecting material research and photography for this posting, so don’t expect it anytime soon. One of my summer projects is “The Grand Walk”, which will start in Manhattan and follow Grand Ave. through Williamsburg and Greenpoint, across the Grand Ave. Bridge into Queens and onto (former Grand Avenue) 30th avenue through Astoria to Hallet’s Cove. An open call for experts on the various phases of the route is being made, by the way, and hopefully I can get a few of you to come along for the first Newtown Pentacle meetup and photowalk at the end of the summer. Bring ID, and a camera.
from wikipedia
Construction on the bridge, the second to cross this river, began in 1896, with Leffert L. Buck as chief engineer, Henry Hornbostel as architect and Holton D. Robinson as assistant engineer, and the bridge opened on December 19, 1903 at a cost of $24,200,000. At the time it was constructed, the Williamsburg Bridge set the record for the longest suspension bridge span on Earth. The record fell in 1924, when the Bear Mountain Bridge was completed.
The Newtown Pentacle 