Brooklyn/Queens Waterfront
Learn more about Kirkman Lofts here:
http://kirkmanlofts.com/#/history
Original location: on a triangular plot of land across the intersection of Front Street on Hudson Avenue (formerly Jackson Avenue).
Architect: original monument and 2nd monument in Ft Greene Park unknown, 1905 monument, McKim, Mead and White
Date: internment 1808, moved to ft. Greene in 1873
Significance: The British occupied Wallabout Bay from 1776-1783. During that period, there were numerous prison ships docked in the bay that held American soldiers. The conditions on those ships were indescribably foul - disease and malnutrition killed most of the men, and during the next 2o years after the war, the remains of more than 11,500 men were either found or washed up on the shores of the bay. John Jackson, the owner of the original land used for the navy yard, put forth the money to house the bones, and the remains were interred in a small tomb on Hudson Ave, on a hill overlooking the bay (where they died). The original tomb was a vault, into which 13 caskets containing the bones were installed.
Location: Spans the East River from the base of Flatbush Ave, Brooklyn to Canal Street, Manhattan.
Architect: Bridge – Leon Moisseiff; Bases, Arches and Collonnades – Carrere & Hastings
Date: 1901 – 1909, 1912-1915 (Approaches)
Significance: Last of the three suspension bridges along the east river and utilized the newest forms of bridge technology. It was the first bridge to use the Warren Stiffening trusses and chains of nickel-steel chains instead of woven steel cables. Also, it is the only bridge in Manhattan to have been designed by both Moisseiff and to have elegant entrances on either side designed by Carrere & Hastings (the Brooklyn approach is no longer extant). Finally, it is the only bridge that fully embodies the City Beautiful Movement and its aesthetic union between engineering and architecture.
In 1861, John Ericsson, engineer and inventor, is contracted by the Navy to build an iron-clad floating battery called the Monitor. Ericsson commissions Continental Iron Works to build the hull of the ship, and Neziaha Bliss’s Novelty Iron Works to build the revolving gun turret. Continental Iron works covered seven acres along the Greenpoint waterfront and employed 1400 men.
In 1862 the USS Monitor sunk off the coast of North Carolina near the Outter Banks in a storm. The wreck was discovered in 1973.
Eberhard Faber Pencil Company Historic District
Between Franklin, Kent, Greenpoint, and West Streets
Designated in 2007, the Eberhard Faber Pencil Company Historic District consists of eight buildings and the remaining portions of three partially demolished nineteenth century facades of the former pencil factory which opened in Greenpoint in 1872. The pencil factory was founded in 1861 in Manhattan and moved to Brooklyn, after a fire in the original plant, where it remained until 1956. The company is credited with bringing German lead pencil-making to the United States and employing hundreds of workers, most of which were women. The mid-nineteenth century and early twentieth century buildings are decorated with stone lintels displaying the company’s logo, the Faber star and diamond. The final building constructed in the district was completed in 1924 and is the largest and most notable structure, a six story tall building embellished with giant pencils and stars made of glazed terra cotta.
Sinking of the HMS Hussar
On November 23, 1780, Capt. Charles Pole inadvertently ran the frigate HMS Hussar against Pot Rock in the Hell Gate Channel, Astoria, and it sank to a depth of 100 feet. The British denied rumors that it carried a huge cargo of gold, which led to many attempts at salvage.
Noguchi Museum
Isamu Noguchi was a stone sculptor who moved his studio to Ravenswood in 1960. In 1985 Noguchi opened The Isamu Noguchi Garden Museum (now known as The Noguchi Museum), in Long Island City. The Museum, established and designed by the artist is located in a 1920s industrial building across the street from where the artist had established a studio in 1960. Today the Noguchi Museum is hosting Civic Action: A Vision for Long Island City—a combined effort of the Noguchi Museum and the Socrates Sculpture Park to attempt to raise New York City’s consciousness about Ravenswood and its potential while mediating the potential for full scale exploitation by developers. As evidenced historically, Hunter’s Point serves as the warning cry for what is about to happen in Astoria and Ravenswood and the crude full-tilt gentrification of Hunter’s Point has sounded the alarm for thoughtful development.
The Noguchi Museum is a very early indicator of artistic interest in the area, predominantly due to low rents, cavernous spaces, and ready access to the materials required by a stone sculptor. Ravenswood is still an active home to stone and architectural metalworks to the construction trade. Despite Noguchi’s prescient interest in the area, it seems he does not have many followers as Ravenswood is largely working class poor with very little artistic movement in the neighborhood. But with the creation of the Socrates Sculpture Garden next door, things may be changing.
Big Allis
Big Allis, the moniker given to the Ravenswood No. 3 Power plant that dominates the Ravenswood skyline, was named for the Allis‐Chalmers Company which manufactured the new turbines for the site constructed in 1965. It is a 2,480 MW power plant. Con Ed had tried to build a nuclear reactor on the site of Big Allis in 1963, but was met with public opposition. The 1977 blackout that cost the city $300 million is arson and looting damage was the result ultimately of a failure at Big Allis. Currently Big Allis supplies 20-25% of New York City with electricity.
Queensbridge Park
This park is named for the nearby Queensboro Bridge, which is also known as the Queensbridge or 59th Street Bridge. The 1960s band Simon and Garfunkel made the bridge famous in their song “Feelin’ Groovy,” also called “The 59th Street Bridge Song.”
Dr. Thomas Rainey (1824-1910), a resident of Ravenswood, Queens, spent twenty-five years of his life and most of his fortune promoting the construction of a bridge across the East River connecting Manhattan and Long Island City. The area now occupied by Rainey Park (just to the north) was to be the Queens anchor for this structure, which was to be called Blackwell Island Bridge. The bridge, planned with one ramp south to Brooklyn and another out to Long Island, was promoted as a catalyst for developing growth in Queens and as a railroad link to Long Island. However, the effort fell apart during the financial Panic of 1873; most interest in the region was for another bridge between Brooklyn and Manhattan, and the sparse population in Queens at the time raised further concerns of need and profitability.
The City of New York acquired the land that is now Queensbridge Park in two sections in 1939. The nearby Queensbridge Housing projects gave jurisdiction of the land to the New York City Housing Authority, but it was understood that Parks would maintain it. In 1975, some of the property was transformed into parking lots under the supervision of the Bureau of Property Management. The park is characterized by a variety of facilities, including baseball fields, a football-American football combination field, basketball, volleyball and handball courts, a playground with see-saws, swings and jungle gyms, a wading pool, a comfort station, picnic areas, sitting areas, walkways, greenery and trees. In 1998, Council Member Walter L. McCaffrey funded a $551,000 reconstruction of the ball fields within Queensbridge Park, and in 2000, he sponsored the installation of floodlights for the ball fields.
Queensbridge Houses
Built in 1939 in Ravenswood, the Queensbridge Houses were the largest public housing project in the U.S. at the time. Built to house 3,149 families or 11,400 people, they had an average rent of $5.41 per month. The income limit was set at $1,399 per annum and rent included electricy, heat, and hot water.
The Queensbridge Houses were built with several cost-saving features including the elimination of closet doors with a savings of $250,000 and skip-stop elevators which only stopped at the first, third, and fifth floors in the six story high buildings.
The development was met with protest by some Queens residents at the time, but they were told the site was chosen because of the low land value. Today the Queensbridge Houses are wrestling with the fact that in gentrifying Hunter’s Point, “a $9.00 glass of wine is only a gunshot away.”
Alexander Jackson Davis House
In 1836, the Roach Brothers purchased a parcel of land on the Queens waterfront to be a speculative development community called Ravenswood. Imagined, and for a short time realized, as a retreat for the wealthy of Manhattan—Ravenswood began as an idealized hamlet by the combined efforts of the Roach Brothers and Alexander Jackson Davis. According to the Noguchi Museum, the property deeds reveal a stipulation for a promenade along the waterfront to give the community waterfront access. I suspect the reason for the waterfront access is of 21st century political manufacture, but the existence of a promenade is most likely accurate. A Currier and Ives lithograph of an AJ Davis drawing illustrates their hopes for a splendid waterfront community and one AJ Davis drawing for a Tuscan villa in Ravenswood exists today.
92nd Street Ferry
Astoria was established in 1839 as a speculative development under the Town of Newton by Steven Alling Halsey his 92nd Street ferry service (begun in 1835) and his new Flushing turnpike.
Ethel Merman
Ethel Merman was born in 4th Street, Hallett’s Point Astoria in 1908, although she claimed that it was actually 1912.
