Urban Gadabout: Last call for Jack Eichenbaum's big day on the L train (this Saturday!)

With the rapid gentrification of Williamsburg, then Bushwick, and continuing farther out on the line, NYC's L train has gone from a forlorn stepchild of the subway system to its "boom" line.

by Ken

I'm hoping that by now urban geographer Jack Eichenbaum -- who's also the Queens borough historian -- needs no introduction to readers, and if he does, just click on the tag below. As I've noted, Jack's wide-ranging tours around NYC (I've toured all five boroughs except Staten Island with him), with their emphasis on the evolving forces of urban geography, have done more than I could tell to enable me to see how and why the city has developed and continues to develop.

One of Jack's choice tour modes is to devote an entire day to a single subway line, usually involving a half-dozen off-the-subway mini-walking tours along the route, giving urban gadders a sense of how variously the urban fabric both absorbed and was shaped by the line. He's probably best-known for what he calls his "signature" tour, "The World of the #7 Train," showcasing the diversity of what may be the world's most "international" rail line. But with Jack I've also toured the J train (from Lower Manhattan across the Williamsburg Bridge into Brooklyn and then Queens) and the Brighton line in Brooklyn (revisiting Howie's and my old lifeline into "the City").

Now, as I've noted here previously, Jack is taking on the L train, in advance of the year-and-a-half shutdown of its connection from Williamsburg to Manhattan, to make possible desperately needed reconstruction and repair of damage caused by the ravages of time and Superstorm Sandy.


The Subway Nut's caption: "A Manhattan-bound R143 L train leaves Atlantic Avenue passing the tracks that lead from the L to the East New York L. (29 May, 2007)"

Life and Art Along the L Train
Saturday, October 22, 10am - 5:30pm

Since its expansion to 8th Avenue in Manhattan in the 1930s, the L line has stimulated gentrification along its route which traverses three boroughs. We explore the West Village and meatpacking district -- including a portion of the new Highline Park— and on to the East Village, Williamsburg, East Williamsburg, Bushwick and Ridgewood noting the continuous transformation of each of these neighborhoods, stimulated by the movement of artists.

This tour requires registration and payment in advance and is restricted to 25 participants. Fee $49 

For a complete prospectus, email: jaconet@aol.com

The L train will soon be shut down for repairs; join this tour prior to that.

Obviously, it isn't going to be possible to do this tour again at least until the L line reopens, and even then, who knows? So if this sounds like something you might be interested in, now is the time to get on board. At last word from Jack, there's still space, but since we're talking about this coming Saturday, you need to contact Jack ASAP, either by e-mail or by phone (if you e-mail me at dwtkeninny@aol.com, I'll send you the number).



While the Manhattan connection is still operational, before it closes for post-Sandy reconstruction and repairs, rhe L train runs from Eighth Avenue and 14th Street crosstown under 14th Street, then under the East River to Williamsburg (Brooklyn) and then eastward, eventually hooking southeastward to Canarsie, within bus range of Canarsie's Jamaica Bay shore. [Click to enlarge.]

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Urban Gadabout: Noshwalks, "Steamboat Bill Jr.," Long Island Art Deco, and mudh more (Fall gadding preview, Part 2)

Tomorrow evening movies return to Washington Heights' gorgeous, nearly 3400-seat United Palace Theater [click to enlarge], built in 1930 as Loew's 175th Street, the last of Loew's five 1929-30 "Wonder Theaters" in NYC and Jersey City, as the Buster Keaton silent masterpiece Steamboat Bill Jr. is shown with live organ accompaniment. Advance tickets, available online through today only, are $10. (Tickets tomorrow night will be $15, $10 for seniors.)

by Ken

As I explained Wednesday in Part 1 of this fall gadding preview, what I intended as a brief note on Myra Alperson's Noshwalks, which I haven't written about before, grew out of hand, and so had to be spun off into a Part 2, which has given me an opportunity to include some other odds 'n' ends, including the screening, with live organ accompaniment (by silent film music composer, organist, and orchestrator Bernie Anderson), of Buster Keaton's 1928 classic Steamboat Bill Jr. at the United Palace Theater in my own northern Manhattan neighborhood of Washington Heights.

We'll get to the Noshwalks et al., but first --


STEAMBOAT BILL JR. AT THE UNITED PALACE THEATER

Last night I attended an Open House New York (OHNY) members' open house at the gorgeous United Palace Theater, which included a presentation by Mike Fitelson, executive director of United Palace of Cultural Arts, one of the three entities responsible for activities in this amazing nearly 3400-seat palace, built as Loew's 175th Street Theater in 1930, the last of five "Wonder Theaters" built by Loew's in 1929-30 (so named not just for their massive scale but for their monumental "Wonder Organs"). Here's Wikipedia's rundown of those Wonder Theaters (links and footnotes onsite):

• Loew's 175th Street Theatre, Manhattan (opened 1930) - Operates as a church and an entertainment venue under the name United Palace Theater.
• Loew's Jersey Theatre, Jersey City (opened 1929) - Operates as a classic cinema and performing arts center.
• Loew's Kings Theatre, Brooklyn (opened 1929) - Reopened January 23, 2015, following a complete renovation.[2]
• Loew's Paradise Theatre, The Bronx (opened 1929) - Between 2005 and 2012 it operated as a venue for live entertainment. It is currently a church.
• Loew's Valencia Theatre, Queens (opened 1929) - Remains open as a church, the Tabernacle of Prayer.[3]

Obviously the best-known currently is Loew's Kings in Brooklyn, which as noted reopened in 2015 after a long period of neglect, apparently fabulously rehabilitated. (I haven't been inside the building since Howie's and my high school graduation, like graduations for schools all over Brooklyn, took place there -- a long, long time ago.)

Once Loew's 175th Street went out of use as a movie theater, it had the good fortune, from a preservationist standpoint, of being bought by Reverend Ike, the televangelist, who gave it the name United Palace and undertook an impressive restoration. (I can vouch, never having been inside the building before last night, that it looks simply stunning.) Since Reverend Ike's death in 2009, the "trans-denominational" activities of the United Palace House of Inspiration have been overseen by his son, United Palace's president, Xavier Eikerenkoetter, and his wife. In 2012 Xavier got the ball rolling for an uptown arts center (Loew's 175th had always billed itself as providing "Times Square entertainment closer to home") the United Palace of Cultural Arts, which opened in 2013 as. (The third United Palace entity is presumably as for-profit as it can be: It books the theater, which is being steadily modernized technologically, for outside performances.)

When Reverend Ike bought the building, he had no idea that sealed in concrete was none other than the Wonder Organ, which when uncased turned out to be still playable -- at least until accumulated water and other damage (including "a small fire") to its (count 'em) 1799 pipes rendered it unusable. Now, however, it is being fully restored, under the auspices of the New York Theatre Organ Society, and NYTOS Recording Secretary Nick Myers was on hand, brimful of excitement, to talk about the project, with the four-keyboard console on display in the lobby for one last night before being removed to the space where it will be worked on. (Nick explained that yes indeed, all of those pipes will be painstakingly removed for restoration -- some onsite, others to a proper restoration site. And by one means or another the rest of the instrument's work will be got at.)

The United Palace Wonder Organ console (click to enlarge)

From the NYTOS website:

In the late 1920s, the Loew’s chain of movie theatres designed five “Wonder” theatres to be built, initially, in all five boroughs of New York City (Staten Island’s was eventually built in Jersey City). These theatres were some of the grandest movie palaces ever built and would stand as the flagship theatres for the company. To match the extravagance of the Wonder theatres, the Loew’s firm commissioned the Robert-Morton Organ Company of Van Nuys, California, the second largest theatre organ builder in the world, to build five identical, large organs to fill the massive spaces. These organs would be Robert-Morton’s magnum opus and use some of the highest pressures and largest scales the company ever produced. They would also be some of the last organs the firm produced.

The console, where the organist plays, was designed to be “over the top” and very ornate. The organ’s large pipework and many percussions are installed in two large chambers (rooms) on either side of the stage behind large statues. Also inside of these chambers are over 2,000 valves, tens of thousands of feet of wire, and twelve sound effects. The organ console also has its own lift from the orchestra pit which would rise up, extravagantly, at the beginning and end of each film. The organ in the United Palace was the youngest of the five Wonders; it is the only remaining in its original location with all of its original parts, unaltered. [If I've got this right, the working Wonder in Loew's Jersey is the one originally from Loew's Paradise in the Bronx. -- Ed.] From the over 12,000 theatre organs manufactured throughout the world, there are only around 20 known to be in their original theatres. This organ, along with the Brooklyn Paramount and Radio city, are in that very short list.

Obviously tomorrow night's screening of Steamboat Bill Jr., for the benefit of the organ restoration project, won't be using the United Palace's own Wonder Organ. Luckily, NYTOS has a touring organ, which will be brought onto the premises.


MYRA ALPERSON'S NOSHWALKS


The last Noshwalk I did was just this month in Corona (Queens), which Myra especially likes because the food scene there is still very much in the fermenting stage. Still, you can't do a food tour of Corona, or any kind of tour of Corona, without stopping at the legendary Lemon Ice King of Corona. I had watermelon, and it was really and truly sensational.

I'd been hearing about and seeing listings for Myra's Noshwalks for ages before I finally did one, thanks (as I recall) to a periodic reminder via Justin Ferate's ever-invaluable mailing list -- another reminder of how much we lose when Justin moves to Santa Fe in January (as reported in the update to Part 1 of the preview). Since then I've done a number of Noshwalks, whenever I've managed a schedule fit.

With the double explosion of walking tours generally and, specifically, of food-themed activities, there are now all sorts of food tours going on around town, but none I'm aware of like Myra's now-extensive and far-flung roster of Noshwalks, which cover not just neighborhoods you might expect but all manner of others around the five boroughs, and even beyond. (Go to the website and click on "Tour Schedule," or go directly to the schedule page.) I'm especially trying to keep my calendar clear for the walk in Newark's Ironbound on Sat, Dec 3.)

Myra's walks are quirky and personal and as up-to-date as she can make them -- she's always looking for new gastronomic destinations as well as updating and refreshing even tours she's done for a while, explaining that she herself would be bored doing the same tour over and over. She's especially happy to be able to find areas that are still in the gastronomic developmental stage, when they're at their most fermentatious.

The actual eating consists of mostly takeout items from a circuit of eateries Myra normally scouts afresh for each outing, with occasional planned sitdowns. (At sitdowns eaters are expected to kick in a bit for a tiip, but otherwise all food costs -- though not beverages -- are included in the tour price.) She also scouts neighborhood parks and suchlike public spaces where the goodies can be consumed at leisure, weather permitting -- though even in not-so-permissive weather we've always managed somehow.) Since there are hardly any NYC neighborhoods these days that are ethnically monolithic, tours almost always include a fascinating assortment of goodies.

Myra doesn't neglect non-gastronomic features of neighborhoods either. For example, as many tours as I've done in Flushing, I had never set foot in the post office before doing her Flushing Noshwalk. And back on gastronomic ground, as many walking tours as I've done in Brooklyn's Greenpoint, it wasn't till I did Greenpoint with Myra that I heard tell of the great weekly event at the plant of Acme Smoked Fish, the fish smokers-processors-distributors -- "In Brooklyn since 1906" -- which opens its doors on Fridays only, from 8am to 1pm (there are also limited pre-holiday retail times' cf. Dec 24 and 31), making "Acme Smoked Fish, Blue Hill Bay, and Ruby Bay products available direct to consumers at wholesale prices." (Note: It's cash only.)

Now every week as Friday approaches my mind wanders to thoughts of Greenpoint and Acme. For that matter, each of the Noshwalks I've done with Myra has left indelible food memories -- some as tangible as the bottle of delicious Greek extra-virgin olive oil from a "Mediterranean" (aka Greek) market in Astoria, where a little old man was dispensing samples, and a bunch of us who sampled couldn't resist buying. Yum! You leave each tour not only well filled but well provided with a list of destinations to return to, as well as a feel for the ways Myra scouts the offerings of unfamikliar destinations (and the familiar ones too). The tours also tend to attract eaters with special knowledge of the neighborhood which can enrich the experience, in deliciously unpredictable ways.

Here's what Myra has listed for the rest of 2016 (but keep checking the schedule on the website for changes including possible additions):

Sun, Aug 21: Rego Park (Queens)
Sat, Aug 27: Woodlawn and Wakefield (Bronx)
Sun, Sept 11: Sephardic Brooklyn
Sat, Sept 17: Ridgewood Queens
Sat, Sept 24: Sunset Park (Brooklyn)
Sat, Oct 1: Sheepshead Bay and Brighton Beach (Brooklyn)
Sat, Oct 8: Astoria (Queens)
Sat, Oct 29: Staten Island Ramble
Sun, Nov 13: Kosher Williamsburg
Sat, Nov 19: Amsterdam Avenue Meander (Manhattan) -- New Tour!
Sat, Dec 3: Nosh New Jersey: Newark's Ironbound
Sat, Dec 10: Belmont/Bronx (Little Italy of the Bronx)
Sat, Dec 17: Dyker Heights Holiday Lights (Brooklyn)
Fri, Dec 30: The Wonders of Woodside (Queens)

Note: There's a Noshwalks blog on Facebook.


ART DECO SOCIETY OF NEW YORK (ADSNY)

In Part 1 of the preview I noted Tony Robins's Oct 16 "Art Deco of Central Park West" for the Municipal Art Society as self-recommending -- if you think of "art deco" and "New York," you think of Anthony W/ Robins. (I should also have warned that it's likely to fill up sooner rather than later. You can, by the way, keep up on Tony's doings on anthonywrobins.com.) It was because of Tony that I found my way to the Art Deco Society of New York, for which he does events including periodic ones of the lollapalooza variety. My initiation was an April 2015 all-day five-borough art deco bus expedition, "Art Deco Landmarks: Unlikely Battles and Great Successes" (which you can read about by scrolling down on the ADSNY "Past Events" page).

In a few weeks Tony is undertaking an even more rarified -- for us city-bound folk, anyway -- exploration, for which I gather there's still space. (I don't take chances on these things. I registered as soon as I saw it announced!)

Destination Deco: Long Island Bus Tour
Sun, Sept 11, 9am-6pm

Come join us on an all-day safari as we explore the wilds of Long Island looking for Art Deco. Though Nassau and Suffolk counties are known primarily for their suburban residential architecture, they also have town and city centers with commercial and government buildings dating from the late 1920s and early 1930s – and that means new Deco marvels for us to discover and enjoy.

Join architectural historian, Tony Robins, as he leads ADSNY on this special day-long bus trip that will see treasures such as:

• The Nassau County Courthouse, part of an early 1930s “Modern Classic” government complex in Mineola.
• A handsome WPA-era post office in Hempstead, which is across the street from a fabulous early telephone company building by the same firm (Voorhees, Gmelin & Walker) that gave us the three great Deco behemoths of Lower Manhattan (and it includes marvelous ornamental tracery similar to that found on Ralph Walker’s seminal Barclay-Vesey building).
• An intact, 1928 Art Deco high school in Valley Stream, rivaling any of New York City’s (very few) Art Deco public school buildings.
• Another splendid Deco post office, in Patchogue.

But then come the special treats!

• Lunch at the central pavilion – just opposite the central administration tower – of Robert Moses’s 1930s fabulously designed Jones Beach. [Note: Lunch isn't included in the tour price.]
• A visit to a rarely seen set of WPA murals in a Hempstead firehouse.
• And a visit, behind-the-scenes tour, and wine reception at the beautifully restored and splendidly Deco, Suffolk Theatre in Riverhead, where we will present an ADSNY award to the couple who single-handedly brought the theater back from the brink of destruction.

Members: $90. Non-members: $115. [Check for prices for Jazz Age Order members and their guests.]

As you can see, the saving on the member price will go a long way toward paying for your membership ($55 for one year, or $140 for three years), which gets you the member price on all ADSNY events. (For membership info, check here.) So far announced are:

Thu, Sept 22, 6:30-8pm: Bakelite: A Collector's Odyssey
Sat, Oct 1, 1-3pm: Brooklyn Heights and Downtown Brooklyn Walking Tour (a new tour with Matt Postal)
Sat, Oct 22, 1-5pm: Jersey City Art Deco Bus Tour (Note: Registrants have to provide their own transportation to the meeting place in Jersey City and then back.) [I'm bummed because I can't do this tour, at least the second event -- so far! -- that I can't do because it's the same day as Jack Eichenbaum's epic trek along the L train.]
Sat, Oct 29, 1-3pm: Jazz Age Icons of Woodlawn Cemetery Halloween Tour (with Susan Olsen)
Thu, Nov 10, 6:30-8pm: Art Deco Ceramics: Craft and Collectability (with Judith Miller and Tom Folk)


AIA (AMERICAN INSTITUTE OF ARCHITECTS):
NEW YORK CHAPTER (AIANY)

Sometimes things just don't work out. As I've written, I've been frustrated for a while trying to get myself onto one of the tours my pal Mitch Waxman has been doing in Queens's Calvary Cemetery, but every time a new one was announced, I had some kind of schedule conflict. Finally I manned up and made a big decision: Tempted as I was by the Art Deco Society of New York's already-announced "Egyptomania" event at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (tickets weren't on sale yet, but I'd already put it on my calendar), on that Saturday in July I would finally do Calvary with Mitch, and I signed up. Then the day before, because extreme heat was forecast, they went and canceled the tour! (Hey, I'm used to Municipal Art Societies, which proceed rain or shine. We don't pack it in just 'cause it may get a little warm.) You'll note below that Brooklyn Brainery has rescheduled Calvary Cemetery with Mitch, for Oct 8. Naturally, I can't make it.

By then, naturally, "Egyptomania" was sold out. So much for acting decisively, for taking control of your damn life! Then I remembered a recent mention by a gadding friend of AIANY, which I tend not to think about because they don't seem to have a mailing list, and for that matter don't seem to have a proper of list of their own tours. For the list I manufactured below, I had to peel the listings off of the AIANY calendar, filtering each month's listings for "Tours."

I don't suppose architects would want us to think of AIA as their trade association, which it is, but it's more serious than that, sharing and promoting all aspects of the profession. And this is one organization that isn't trying to glad-hand us into joining. In fact, unless you have documentable ties to architecture or related professions, you can't join. But AIANY maintains a busy schedule of tours that are open to the public; presumably they'd like us to be better-educated about architecture.

In the past I'd done AIANY tours -- usually, as I think of it, when jogged by some sort of external listing that included them. I remember a nice walking tour of the Financial District; and an excellent preview of the new section of Governors Island, the Hills, before it opened in mid-July; and several boat tours" (which you'll note do have a page of their own): both the "architecture"-themed and "bridge and infrastructure"-themed circumnavigations of Manhattan, and the "Roosevelt Island Loop Tour." I still want to do their boat tour to Staten Island's still-in-the-making, transformed-from-landfill Freshkills Park, which you'll note below is being offered a couple of times in the period covered.

So I checked the schedule, and sure enough that Saturday morning AIANY was offering the tour "Midtown Modernism(s): Crosstown Section: 53rd St (approx.) East to West," listed below for Nov 5. So I registered and even with the heat had a lovely time under the tutelage of architect Kyle Johnson, who in fact chairs the Architecture Tour Committee -- an affable as well as learned chap I'd encountered on a couple of previous AIANY tours where he was representing the committee. As Kyle noted, unlike tours offered by other organization, which tend to stress historic buildings, AIA people as architects, while not neglectful of older buildings, tend to be most interested in what more recent generations of architects have been designing.

Events have been announced through November. Here's what I pulled off the calendar:

Sat, Aug 20, 2-4pm: Remembering the Future: Architecture at the 1964/65 New York World's Fair
Sun, Aug 21, 11am-1pm: Between the Clocks: The Architecture of Park Avenue South
Sat, Aug 27, 10:30am-1pm: Battery Park City: Creating a New Neighborhood
Sun, Aug 28, 9:30am-12:45pm: AIANY Freshkills Boat Tour
Sun, Aug 28, 11am-1:30pm: Roosevelt Island: 1970s "New Town in Town" to FDR Four Freedoms Park
Sat, Sept 10, 10:30am-1pm: Midtown Modernism(s): East 42nd Street, the United Nations and Vicinity
Sun, Sept 11, 10:30am-1pm: The High Line, Hudson River Park and New Architecture in West Chelsea and the Far West Village
Sat, Sept 17, 8am-5pm: Escape From the City: Olana State Historic Site Day Trip
Sat, Sept 17, 10am-12:30pm: Times Square: Contemporary Architecture in and around the "Crossroads of the World"
Sat, Sept 24, 10:30am-1pm: Midtown Modernism(s): The Park Avenue Corridor
Sun, Sept 25, 10:30am-1pm: Modern FiDi: Expanding and Renovating the Financial District
Sat, Oct 1, 10:30am-1pm: SoHo: New Architectural Interventions in a Historic District
Sun, Oct 2, 10:30am-12:30pm: New York's Civic Center Walking Tour: History of Its Urban Development and Architecture
Sat, Oct 8, 1:30-3pm: West Side Story: The Evolution of Lincoln Center
Sun, Oct 9, 10:30am-1pm: Lower West Side Rebirth: New and Reused Architecture in the Former Washington Market Area and Southern TriBeCa
Sun, Oct 9, 1:30-4:45pm: AIANY Freshkills Park Boat Tour
Sat, Oct 22, 1:45-4:30pm: Battery Park City: Creating a New Neighborhood
Sun, Oct 23, 11am-1:30pm: Between the Clocks: The Architecture of Park Avenue South
Sat, Oct 29, 11am-1:30pm: Roosevelt Island: 1970s "New Town in Town" to FDR Four Freedoms Park
Sun, Oct 30, 10-11:30am: 9/11 Memorial and World Trade Center: Architecture, Urban Planning and the History of the New and Original World Trade Center
Sat, Nov 5, 10:30am-1pm: Midtown Modernism(s): Crosstown Section: 53rd St (approx.) East to West
Sun, Nov 6, 11am-1pm: NYU and Washington Square: Changing Strategies of Growth and Design
Sat, Nov 12, 10:30am-1pm: New Architecture on Cooper Square, Bond St. and the New Bowery
Sun, Nov 13, 2-4pm: Remembering the Future: Architecture at the 1964/65 New York World's Fair
Sat, Nov 19, 10:30am-1pm: The Changing Face of North Midtown: On and Off 57th Street
Sun, Nov 20, 10am-12:30pm: Modern Architecture and Adaptive Reuse in the West Village and Meatpacking District

Non-member prices appear to be $25 for two-hour tours, $30 for two-and-a-half-hour tours.


BROOKLYN BRAINERY and
NEW YORK OBSCURA SOCIETY

I list these together, even though they're wholly unrelated -- except in my mind, because I came to both as the organizations (apart from the Working Harbor Committee) for which Mitch Waxman does most of his walking tours. That said, they both do lots of other interesting stuff.

BROOKLYN BRAINERY's mission is reasonably priced classes in most any sort of thing you could want to learn. Just in the last week I've done cooking classes with both halves of the Masters of Social Gastronomy, Jonathan Soma, a computer geek by day who "has more hobbies than can dance on the head of a pin," and Sarah Lohman, who styles herself a "historic gastronomist": the American-pancake installment of Soma's many-parted "Summer of Pancakes," and "Pies from Scratch: Stone Fruit Galette" with Sarah. As a matter of fact, Soma and Sarah are about to do an MSG event, "The Story of Sourdough: Starters to Science," Sunday evening, Aug 29, at the Institute for Culinary Education, with an assist from ICE's dean of bread baking, Sim Lee, who "will perform a sourdough bread-baking demonstration."

Since the $15 fee includes two beers, the thing is practically free, and it's fun just to see ICE's lovely, relatively new space. However, because of building and security logistics at Brookfield Place (the former World Financial Center), getting to it and into it, especially at the same time as a large group, is a hassle and a half, and lovely as ICE's class spaces look, the demonstration space is so large that amid that mob, even with a few video monitors, you're not likely to see any demonstrations very well. Still, the crowd is great for socializing, if that's what you're into, and remember, you've got your two beers.

Again, most of the Brainery offerings are lectures or classes that take place either at home base in Prospect Heights or other locations. Here are some field events I pulled out of the listings for the next month which have space left as of writing:

Sat, Aug 20, 12-1:30pm: Governors Island Walk (with James Hoffman, $15)
Sat, Aug 20, 10-11:30am: Drawn to Trees: Greenpoint (Brooklyn) (with Lisa Nett, $12)
Sat, Aug 27, Sat, Sept 3, Sun, Sept 18, and Sat, Sept 24, 10am-4pm: Oko Farms' Aquaponics ($135)
Sat, Aug 27, 1-3pm: Lower Manhattan History Walk (with James Hoffman, $20)
Sat, Sept 10 (Carroll Gardens), Sept 17 (Prospect Heights), or Sept 24 (Greenpoint), 10:30am-12n: Street Tree Identification for Beginners (with Lisa Nett, $13)
Sat, Oct 8, 11am-1pm: Calvary Cemetery (with Mitch Waxman, $30)

The local OBSCURA SOCIETIES are event-oriented local arms of Atlas Obscura. Their events are listed on the "Events" page of the Atlas Obscura website, but it's not necessarily easy to pull out the ones in your area. (There's an e-mail sign-up box on the above-referenced "Events" page, but I don't know whether that selects just for your area.) The New York Obscura Society does have a great mailing list, which is splendid at keeping subscribers up to date on future offerings. Otherwise, I can't find any listing of all offerings. (There's a Facebook page, but it has hardly any listings). I wound up using the relevant page on the Eventbrite site, from which I extracted these listings, omitting events that are already sold out (but you can sign up for a waiting list, so you may want to check them out as well):

Sun, Aug 21, 11am-1pm: The Poison Cauldron of Newtown Creek (with Mitch Waxman)
Sun, Sept 4, 11am-1:30pm: 19th Century Slums on the Lower East Side -- Dystopia in America
Sat, Sept 10, 10:30am-12:30pm: Wildlife Dioramas at the Museum of Natural History
Tue, Sept 13, 7-9pm: Behind the Scenes at Puppet Kitchen
Wed, Sept 14, 1-6pm: Chipmunk Taxidermy Workshop
Fri, Oct 7, 7:30-11:30pm: Murder and Mayhem at Sleepy Hollow Cemetery
Thu, Nov 3, 6:30-7:45pm: New York Academy of Medicine Series: Alchemy

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Urban Gadabout: A fall gadding preview

With Wolfe Walkers update: Oh no, it's the final season!


Yes! On Oct 22 Jack Eichenbaum is doing another of his day-long explorations of a single NYC subway line -- this time the L train.

by Ken

With the Municipal Art Society's Sept-Oct schedule already up and open to registration and with early (members-only) registration for the New York Transit Museum's fall schedule having begun this morning, we're already late for a fall gadding preview if we're ever going to do one. We'll get back to them, but I want to start with what for me is the fall highlight, another of urban geographer Jack Eichenbaum's all-day excursions built around a subway line, this time the L train, especially timely as its Manhattan-to-Brooklyn link is about to be shut down for 18 months for rehabilitation of its Sandy-damaged East River tunnel.


JACK EICHENBAUM

Jack, who's the Queens borough historian, always calls his day-long exploration of and along the #7 (Flushing) line his "signature tour" (you may recall that he recently did a wholly revamped version), but I've also spent days with him on the J train and the Q (Brighton Line). So I whipped out my checkbook when he announced this to his mailing list (which you should sign up for on his website, Geography of New York with Jack Eichenbaum):

[Click to enlarge.]

Life and Art Along the L Train
Sat, Oct 22, 10am-5:30 pm

Since its expansion to 8th Avenue in Manhattan in the 1930s, the L line has stimulated gentrification along its route which traverses three boroughs. We explore the West Village and meatpacking district -- including a portion of the new Highline Park -- and on to the East Village, Williamsburg, East Williamsburg, Bushwick and Ridgewood noting the continuous transformation of each of these neighborhoods, stimulated by the movement of artists.

This tour requires registration and payment in advance and is restricted to 25 participants. Fee $49. For a complete prospectus, email jaconet@aol.com. The L train will soon be shut down for repairs; join this tour prior to that.

Note that Jack is also doing a half-day outing on the J train:

A Day on the J
Sat, Sept 17, 10:30am-1:30pm

The J train enabled the crowded masses of the Lower East Side to move to Brooklyn and Queens. Elevated from the Williamsburg Bridge crossing until Jamaica, the ride provides diverse views of industrial and bucolic landscapes. This tour concentrates on the portion of the J train within Queens. Walks take place in commercial and historic downtown Jamaica, residential Victorian Richmond Hill and residential Woodhaven ending at historic Neir’s tavern, NYC’s oldest bar. At Neir’s enjoy a prix fixe lunch or drink and eat as you wish.

This tour requires registration and payment in advance and is restricted to 25 participants. Fee $25. For a complete prospectus, email jaconet@aol.com.

In addition, as usual Jack has been doing Wednesday-evening tours in Queens this summer. Still to come are:

Wed, Aug 24, 6-8pm, Corona Circuit
Wed, Sept 14, 5-7pm, Roosevelt Island Bridge and Four Freedoms Park

Check out the "Public Tour Schedule" page on Jack's website.


JUSTIN FERATE -- WOLFE WALKERS

For some time now, the peerless Justin has been doing most of his public tours with Wolfe Walkers, and he just sent out an advance notice of the fall season that's about to be announced. When it is announced, it should be findable on the Wolfe Walkers page of his website, but the surest way to get up-to-date info is by being on Justin's mailing list. As I point out frequently, Justin's mailing list is an indispensable (free) resource for information not just about tours but about goings-on generally in NYC. He sends out a lot of stuff, but I can say that I never ignore one of his pass-alongs.

Meanwhile, here's the schedule as Justin sent it out in his advance notice (but see the UPDATE below):

Sunday, Sept 18, 3-6pm: Williamsburg -- The Land of the Chasidim (Rabbi David Kalb of the Jewish Learning Center of New York, with Justin on hand)
Saturday, Oct. 1, 10am-3pm: Fordham Museum of Greek, Roman and Etruscan Antiquities + Fordham University + Belmont (Arthur Ave. Little Italy)
Sat, Oct 8, 9:40am-2pm: United Palace Theatre and the New High Bridge
Sat, Oct 22, 11am-4pm: Broad Channel (Queens) and the Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge (with Justin and Don Riepe, director of the Northeast Chapter of the American Littoral Society)
Sat, Oct 29, 7:45am-6pm: BUS: City Island and Bartow-Pell Mansion (with lunch at the Lobster Box on City Island)
Sun, Nov 6, 11:30am-2:30pm: Socrates Sculpture Park and the Isamu Noguchi Museum (Astoria, Queens)
Sun, Nov 13, 9:45am-6pm: Upper Montclair (NJ) Historic District and Stained Glass Tour (with Justin and Ron Rice)
Sat, Dec 17, 12n-3pm: Holiday Brunch at Pete’s Tavern, with Stanford White lecture by Justin

UPDATE: Justin has now sent out the Wolfe Walkers Fall 2016 brochure, and I've added the schedule information to the above listings. You can download a pdf of the brochure here.

The startling news (startling to me, at least) comes at the end of the brochure, where there's a full-page "Personal Note from Justin" followed by a two-page history of the Wolfe Walkers. In the "personal note" Justin tells a much fuller version of a story I first heard him tell when he suddenly realized that he'd been doing Wolfe Walkers longer than Gerard Wolfe. He tells how the dark depression he was experiencing over what was seeming an ill-advised move to New York City was turned around by his first contact with Professor Wolfe and the Wolfe Walkers. The part I especially love about the story is that it turned on Justin's habit-- and I can't tell you how much I love this -- of sending a thank-you note whenever he enjoys a book by a living author, on the theory that the author will have endured plenty of carping and nitpicking.

It was his discovery of the Wolfe Walkers, Justin says, that led him to fall in love with New York, "and I owe it all to Gerard Wolfe." He continues:

I have never been able to fully thank Gerard for the many, many years of pleasure he instigated for me. When Gerard left New York, his followers were bereft, so they asked me if I would continue in Gerard’s footsteps (literally). I’ve never regretted doing so.

The Wolfe Walkers have provided me with decades of warm, embracing, and exciting adventures. Hopefully, I’ve been able to provide the Wolfe Walkers with many of those same qualities in the countless tours I’ve created over that time.

Now, time continues in its steady pace. In January, I will be moving to Santa Fe, New Mexico. It will be
difficult to say “Goodbye.” As most of you know, my love for New York City is palpable.

He goes on to thank Gerard "for your countless gifts" and "all of you Wolfe Walkers for joining me in our many, many adventures over the decades."

And all I can think -- once past the "Oh no, say it ain't so" stage -- is: No, thank you, Justin.

With the schedule heads-up Justin sent out earlier, I was able to juggle my schedule, with no idea that this would be the final Wolfe Walkers season, to be able to do all but two of the events -- one of them I've already done but would happily have done again if I didn't have a schedule conflict. (That's the Broad Channel/Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge tour with Justin and probably the best-known Jamaica Bay preservation activist, Don Riepe.) So my registrations are in the mail. Now I have to figure out how I thank Justin for everything I've learned thanks to him.


MUNICIPAL ART SOCIETY (MAS)

There is, as usual, a tremendously broad assortment of offerings -- at $20 for members, $30 for nonmembers. Remember that with your modestly priced membership (starting at $50 for an Individual Membership, $40 for seniors over 62), you also get a voucher for a free tour, so membership -- in addition to supporting an invaluable civic organization -- should be pretty much self-recommending.)

It's probably just me, but the tour that really popped out for me is Exploring the Hunts Point Peninsula, Sept 10, with Jean Arrington. Jean is best known as the ranking authority on the citywide deluge of schools built by the legendary C.B.J. Snyder but is also known to step out to interesting areas of "her" borough, the Bronx. Thanks to Open House New York I've been able to tour several of the big Hunts Point food markets, and couldn't help wondering what else goes on on that peninsula sticking out from the South Bronx.

Check out all the listings, but I can say that I get itchy if I go too long without doing a tour with Matt Postal, who's doing Lower Manhattan Skyscrapers, and Brooklyn's Waterfront, Oct. 13, and of course the tours of Tony Robins, Mr. Art Deco, like Art Deco of Central Park West, Oct. 16, are self-recommending. I call attention, especially for people who've never done a walk in the company of that amazing sweetheart Joe Svehlak, to his Atlantic Avenue (Brooklyn), Sept 3, and Nassau Street (Manhattan), Oct 30.

You don't have to remember the MAS Tours link; just go to mas.org and click on "Tours." These Sept-Oct tours still had openings as of writing.

every Fri and Sat, 12:30pm: Tour34: Empire to Penn (with the 34th Street Partnership)
Sat, Sept 3, 10am: Historic Atlantic Avenue (Joe Svehlak)
Fri, Sept 9, 12:30pm: Reflecting Absence: The 9/11 Memorial (Judith Pucci)
Saturday, Sept 10, 2pm, Exploring the Hunts Point Peninsula (Jean Arrington)
Sun, Sept 11, 2pm: Downtown Brooklyn, Part 1: The Department Store District (Francis Morrone) [Note: Part 2, on Oct 23, is already sold out, like Francis's other Sept-Oct tours. I'm surprised there'a still space for Part 1, and wouldn't expect this to remain for long.]
Sun, Sept 11, 2pm: The Theaters of Greenwich Village (Laurence Frommer)
Sat, Sept 17, 11am: Vanderbilt Mansions (Jason Stein)
Sun, Sept 18, 2pm: Jewish History of the Lower East Side (Lower East Side Jewish Conservancy)
Sat, Sept 24, 11am: Before the Code: Lower Manhattan Skyscrapers (Matt Postal)
Sun, Sept 25, 12n: Store Front: The Disappearing Face of New York (James and Karla Murray)
Sat, Oct 1, 11am: The Arc of the Beat: From West to East Villages Across Six Decades (Ron Janoff)
Sun, Oct 2, 2pm: Public Art of Lower Manhattan: An Outdoor Gallery Hiding in Plain View (Patrick Waldo)
Sat, Oct 8, 11am: Exploring Historic Jackson Heights (Meredith Toback)
Sun, Oct 9, 2pm: The Italian South Village (Laurence Frommer)
Sat, Oct 15, 11am: Preserving Brooklyn's Waterfront (Matt Postal)
Sat, Oct 15, 1pm: Subway Art Tour 2 (Phil Desiere)
Sun, Oct 16, 2pm: Art Deco of Central Park West (Anthony W. Robins)
Sat, Oct 22, 12:30pm: Exploring City College (Dalton Whiteside)
Sun, Oct 23, 2pm: Pre-Halloween Prospect Park South and Flatbush (Norman Oder)
Sat, Oct 29, 2pm: Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis: American Cultural Primacy and the Preservation of Our Architectural Treasures (Deobrah Zelcer)
Sat, Oct 29, 11am: Walk the QueensWay (Trust for Public Land and Friends of the QueensWay)
Sun, Oct 30, 11am: Downtown Manhattan's Nassau Street (Joe Svehlak)


NEW YORK TRANSIT MUSEUM

As noted at the outset, registration for the fall schedule is already in progress for members. Information and registration now happen on NYTM's own brand-ew website. Find program information, beginning with the Aug 27 all-day nostalgia ride "To the Rockaways by Rail," on the "Programs" page. Note that some NYTM tours, like the ever-popular "Jewel in the Crown: Old City Hall Station," are members-only.

On offer for fall, at various dates:

Jewel in the Crown: Old City Hall Station (members only, some dates remaining)
Transit Walk: A Trip to Coney Island
Behind the Scenes: Jerome Avenue Yard (members only, all sold out)
Evening Ride to Woodlawn Cemetery, Oct. 29, 4-9pm
Underground Inspiration: from Art to Artifact


OPEN HOUSE NEW YORK (OHNY)

OHNY, whose mission is to give New Yorkers access to noteworthy sites not normally open to us, and also increasingly to give us peeks at the process by which new projects in the city are planned and executed, has events going on around the calendar, aimed mostly (but not exclusively) at members, so keep an eye on the website and get on the mailing list. (Check here for "Upcoming Programs," and check out membership info here.)

Of course OHNY is best known for the annual OHNY Weekend, when zillions of events will be scheduled all around the city at minimal cost, setting the stage for the opening-gun melee that is OHNY registration. As I always say, the most popular events -- the ones everyone will be gunning for -- are by no means necessarily the most interesting, and the interest level is deep enough that the sane people among us can generally come away happy with our fifth or sixth choices.

So by all means mark the dates: Sat-Sun, Oct 15-16, and keep an eye on the "Weekend" page of the website (link above). The tricky thing is that the full schedule isn't announced until barely before the actual event. (a slight advance look at the schedule is members' only advantage here.)

One interesting option is to offer service as a volunteer. OHNY has just put out a "Call for Volunteers":

2016 OHNY WEEKEND
Call for Volunteers

Are you passionate about architecture, design, and history? Want to share your love for New York City with others? Open House New York invites you to join our team of more than 1,000 volunteers who help make Open House New York Weekend one of New York's most exciting events!

Every year, OHNY Weekend opens the doors of hundreds of incredible buildings and sites across the five boroughs of New York City, offering an extraordinary opportunity to experience the city and meet the people who design, build, and preserve New York. Through the unparalleled access that it enables, OHNY Weekend deepens our understanding of the importance of architecture and design to fostering a more vibrant civic life, and helps catalyze a citywide conversation about how to build a better New York.

OHNY Weekend volunteers are integral to the festival's success. Volunteers are assigned to one of more than 250 sites or tours and provide support by welcoming visitors from around New York and around the world, assisting with check-in, managing lines, and acting as a representative of Open House New York. Volunteer for one shift (typically four hours) and receive a 2016 limited edition OHNY Weekend t-shirt, as well as a volunteer button that gives you and a friend front-of-the-line access to sites that do not require reservations throughout the Weekend.

Sign up today to volunteer for Open House New York Weekend on Saturday and Sunday, October 15 and 16, 2016! For more information visit www.ohny.org or email us at volunteer@ohny.org

(Note: As the volunteer link reminds us, OHNY is also on the lookout for volunteers for its programs year-round.)


STILL TO COME --

Myra Alperson's Noshwalks (as noted) plus a couple more tour purveyors I meant to include here.

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Urban Gadabout NYC: Exploring Calvary Cemetery and the L train -- plus fall schedules from the NY Transit Museum and MAS

First Calvary Cemetery occupies a commanding position on the Queens side of the borough's western border with Brooklyn. (Click to enlarge.) Mitch Waxman will be leading a Calvary walking tour on Saturday, August 22, 11am to (approx.) 1pm.

by Ken

Awhile back Mitch Waxman devoted a Newtown Pentacle post to Queens's First Calvary Cemetery ("ordinary interpretation," August 5), when he called it "my favorite place in Queens." That post has taken such root in my head that I was delighted when he mentioned during his recent walking tour of Newtown Creek's Dutch Kills tributary that he'd cleared a date for a walking tour there: Saturday, August 22. The date left me with a bad feeling, and sure enough, when I was able to check my calendar, I was reminded that that's already my date from scheduling hell.

IF YOU REALLY WANT TO KNOW, ON THE 22ND --

I'll first be LIRR-ing it out to Port Washington, on the eastern shore of Long Island's Manhasset Bay, for a 2pm "Great Gatsby Boat Tour" with the Art Deco Society of New York, which you better believe I signed up for as soon as I saw the announcement. (And wisely so. ADSNY has a waiting list for the event.) I have been to Port Washington, and fairly recently; it was our lunch stop on a bus tour with Justin Ferate, en route between visits to two noteworthy Long Island estates. But I've never been out on a boat in Manhasset Bay.

Where things get crazy is that from there I absolutely must catch the 4:39pm train out of Port Washington, which, if everything goes right, should get me to the LIRR Woodside (Queens) station in time to get to the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria for a 6pm screening of Lawrence of Arabia in 70mm. (Lawrence is also being screened at 4pm Sunday the 23rd, but in order to do that I would have to leave an MAS tour of Brooklyn's Grand Army Plaza with Francis Morrone after an hour or even less.)

If I were really crazy, I could top the day off with a wild overnight (10pm-1am) Obscura Society of New York outing to "a hidden Chinatown den of iniquity" for "The Cheaters Party -- A School for Scoundrels," where participants will be given demonstrations in the art of card-playing sleight of hand, including, yes, full-fledged cheating, with opportunities (and, yes, permission) to try out this newly acquired, er, skill, not to mention indulging an open bar dispensing "Rat Pack-inspired cocktails"! Actually, what's holding me back isn't so much a lack of craziness as a lack of any known gambling instinct. And even that open bar isn't the lure it might once have been. Also, music is promised, and I would expect that to be both deafening and horrible.)

First Calvary Cemetery, with a view! Photo by Mitch W (click to enlarge)

By the way, Mitch -- wearing his hat as official historian of the Newtown Creek Alliance -- will also be participating in a pair of Open House New York boat trips up his "beloved" creek, along with NCA program manager Will Elkins and representatives of the NYC Department of Environmental Preservation (and I think I read somewhere of the EPA) on Thursday, September 3, at 5pm and 7pm. Scroll down to "Newtown Creek Boat Tour" on the OHNY programs page, or go directly to the ticket and booking info.


"LIFE ON THE L TRAIN" WITH JACK EICHENBAUM

The L train has a fascinating history -- and a booming present and near-term future, as ridership has been undergoing huge increases. (Click to enlarge.)

As regular readers are aware, one of my favorite genres of NYC tours is Jack Eichenbaum's day-long single-subway line explorations -- most famously his "World of the #7 Train" (the Flushing line), which he describes as his "signature" tour, and which he does pretty much every year. Over the length of the route, Jack has picked out half a dozen stops as sites for mini-walking tours of neighborhoods that not only are enormously different from one another but have rich and various histories unto themselves, all scheduled around a long lunch stop at the Flushing end of the line, with all the dining options of Flushing's flourishing Chinatown and Koreatown.

I was delighted finally to get to "do" the #7 train again in June, at which time Jack noted that by the next time he does this tour, it will undergo major changes, starting with the incorporation of the under-construction extension of the #7 from Times Square to the Javits Center at 11th Avenue and 34th Street. (Completion dates have come and gone fairly regularly since the days when then-Mayor Bloomberg liked to terrorize NYC Transit with phone calls demanding to know when it would be done. Mayor Mike really didn't have much interest in improved transit as such, but he wound up deeply immersed not just in the #7 expansion but in the massive East Side Access project that will bring Long Island Rail Road passengers into Grand Central Terminal -- because they're both crucial to multi-zillion-dollar area redevelopments, something our billionaire ex-mayor was very interested in.)

Jack does other subway lines too, though, in that same basic format: usually a half-dozen mini-walking tours along the route, visiting enormously contrasting neighborhoods with even more contrasted histories. In recent years I've had the pleasure of joining Jack in explorations of the J line, which runs from Lower Manhattan across to Brooklyn and on into Queens, and Brooklyn's Brighton Line (now the Q), the descendant of one of the original steam railroads to the resort haven of Coney Island. During the June "World of the #7 Train," Jack announced that he would soon be doing the L train, which actually functions as a crosstown subway in Manhattan, running across 14th Street from Eighth Avenue to First Avenue, then under the East River to Brooklyn's Williamsburg and Bushwick and onward, till it comes to rest in Canarsie, within bus reach of the shore of Jamaica Bay.

Somehow I missed Jack's announcement of the actual date -- Saturday, October 17 -- and by the time I learned the date, I had a schedule conflict, and now that MAS tour prices have increased to $20 for members ($30 for non-members), I'm not as quick to blow off the tour I've registered for as I might once have been. (Besides, I want to do that tour!) So it looks like I'm going to miss:

LIFE ALONG THE L TRAIN
Saturday. October 17, 10am-5:30pm

The L train has a complex history: first as a steam railroad line, later as an elevated BRT train, eventually integrated into the subway system with its expansion to Eighth Avenue in Manhattan in the 1930’s. Beginning in the 1950’s the L train has stimulated artist-spearheaded gentrification along its route. We’ll explore the West Village and meatpacking district— including a portion of the new Highline Park— and then on to the East Village, Williamsburg, East Williamsburg, Bushwick and Ridgewood, noting the status of transformation in each of these neighborhoods.

This tour is limited to 25 participants and requires registration by check of $42/pp to Jack Eichenbaum, 36-20 Bowne St #6C, Flushing, NY 11354. For a prospectus and any questions, contact Jack at jaconet@aol.com

These days, owing in good part to its Williamsburg (and now Bushwick) connection, the L train is the city's fastest-growing, ridership-wise, and has gone from being a stepchild of the system to its proudest prodigy, with much-improved service finally catching up to the dramatic increase in use.


NEW SCHEDULES FROM MAS AND THE TRANSIT
MUSEUM -- AND SOME SURPRISES FROM MAS

I should mention too that both the New York Transit Museum and the Municipal Art Society have announced and begun booking tours for September and October.

As noted, the fall MAS offerings come with the price increase (I mentioned earlier, from $15 to $20 for members, and from $20 to $30 for non-members). On the plus side, tour registrants now get nearest-transit information for the meeting point (not exactly an innovation, since this used to be included in all tour descriptions) and also -- and this is new, and most welcome -- approximate tour end-point information.
All of this was mentioned in a covering e-mail to MAS members. What was not mentioned, and I didn't in fact learn until I registered for five tours that I knew I wanted to do and didn't want to get closed out of, is that tours have been shrunk from two hours to 90 minutes.

Of course we don't buy tours by the minute, but if we did, then the member price has increased not by 33 percent but by 78 percent, and the non-member price not by 50 percent but by a full 100 percent. It's not the price that concerns me, at least not so much, as what represents a radical change in format. A 90-minute tour isn't just shorter than a 120-minute one; it's really a different animal, especially when you consider how long it takes any tour to actually "get going." And while there are undoubtedly tour subjects that are better-suited to a 90-minute format, and would have to be padded out to fill two hours, a two-hour tour that was a proper two-hour tour to begin with is probably going to have to be reconceived to make the cut, and I can't help thinking shrunk in ways other than just time.

In fact, the two-hour format, which has become a much more rigidly enforced time limit since I began doing MAS tours not that many years ago, was really more like two and a half hours back then. I gather, though, that MAS received enough complaints to start cracking the whip about the time limit. This boggles my mind, that people would complain about getting more than they paid for. But there you are.

Clearly the people in charge believe that this is what people want. (I'm pretty sure that I don't count among the "people" they're concerned about.) And the September-October list contains lots of interesting-looking offerings -- I jotted down 17 tours I was interested in, after allowing for known schedule conflicts. As I mentioned, I've already registered for five, and it was when I downloaded my tour info that I discovered that what I registered for are 90-minute tours. Suddenly I found myself thinking that maybe the five tours I've registered for will do it for me.

Like I said, at some point we should probably talk about this. But not now.

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As Mitch Waxman prepares to tramp around his beloved Newtown Creek, we look at a blogpost that shows what blogposts can do

As recently as two years ago, when binary_bob took the top photo, posted on Reddit (click to enlarge), the once-mighty but long-doomed-following-abandonment Domino Sugar plant on Brooklyn's once-industrial waterfront still retained a large measure of its grandeur. The lower image, is a rendering of the redevelopment plan (click to enlarge), courtesy of SHoP Architects, looking east and slightly southward, with the Williamsburg Bridge at the right. Quick: Can you find the refinery building itself?

"One cannot help but drop his jaw whenever the former Havemeyer or Domino Sugar plant site comes into view. It is being redeveloped as a residential structure – more luxury condos for the children of the rich to dwell within. The question of what will happen to these structures when NYC slides backwards into an era of degeneracy and decay is one few ask."

-- from Mitch Waxman's Monday Newtown Pentacle post, "last stages"

by Ken

All week I've been meaning to talk a bit about our pal Mitch Waxman's Monday Newtown Pentacle post, "last stages," which seems to me a textbook-worthy demonstration of what the blog format can do when it's crackling. A blogpost, after all, has two fundamental resources: pictures and words. (Videos seem to me for the most part less a resource than a brain-draining abomination.) And Mitch has a way with both. You may recall that he's a compulsive NYC urban wanderer and photographer with a deep connection to place and time.

In terms of "place," he's based in Astoria, Queens, and along the way has developed a special connection to legendarily pollluted Newtown Creek, which forms the western part of the boundary between the boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens, and which once was the industrial heartland not just of the New York City but of the U.S.A., which after all is how it got so polluted. So before we get to that blogpost, I thought I would mention that there are two immediately upcoming opportunities to take advantage of his obsession with his "beloved" Newtown Creek for anyone who might be in the New York City area tomorrow (August 2 -- kind of late notice on this one, I know; sorry!) and/or next Saturday (August 8), when Mitch is doing two of his signature Newtown Creek-related tours:

THE INSALUBRIOUS VALLEY OF THE NEWTOWN CREEK
Bushwick and Maspeth walking tour

NEWTOWN CREEK ALLIANCE
Sunday, August 2, 10am-12:30pm

Join Newtown Creek Alliance Historian Mitch Waxman for walk through the industrial heartlands of New York City and along the Newtown Creek. Following the currently undefended border of Brooklyn and Queens, we will be exploring the colonial, industrial, and environmental history of the borderland communities. We will encounter century old movable bridges, visit the remains of a 19th century highway, and explore two of the lesser known tributaries of the troubled Newtown Creek watershed. For the vulgarly curious, Conrad Wissell's Dead Animal and Night Soil wharf will be described.

Meet up at the corner of Grand street and Morgan Avenue in Brooklyn. Map: https://goo.gl/psdEEO The L train stops nearby at Bushwick Avenue and Grand Street, and the Q54 and Q59 bus lines stop nearby as well. Check MTA.info the morning of for last minute transit changes.



Be prepared for rough terrain and possible heavy truck traffic. Dress and pack appropriately for hiking and hot weather. Closed-toe shoes are highly recommended. Bathroom opportunities will be found only at the start of the walk.

13 STEPS AROUND DUTCH KILLS
Long Island City walking tour

ATLAS OBSCURA
Saturday, August 8, 10am-1pm

In 13 steps, Newtown Creek Alliance Historian Mitch Waxman will be showing us the then and now of Dutch Kills tributary, once known as the "workshop of the United States."

A central maritime artery of Long Island City, Dutch Kills is surrounded by hundreds of factory buildings, titan rail yards, and crossed by century old bridges - and it's found just a few blocks away from Queens Plaza. During this three hour tour, we will cover three miles of Brooklyn and Queens to see where the industrial revolution actually happened. Bring your camera, as the tour will be revealing an incredible landscape along this section of the troubled Newtown Creek Watershed.

Be prepared for rough terrain and possible heavy truck traffic. Dress and pack appropriately for hiking and for weather. Closed-toe shoes are highly recommended. Bathroom opportunities will be found only at the start of the walk.

Meet up at the Albert E. Short Triangle park found at the corner of Jackson Avenue and 23rd Street in Long Island City, Queens. This is the Court Square MTA station, and served by the 7, G, and M lines. Additionally, the Q39 and B62 buses have nearby stops. Drivers are encouraged to leave their vehicles near the Pulaski Bridge in either Greenpoint or Long Island City.

A "QUINTESSENTIALLY MITCH" TAKE ON THE
EMERGING BROOKLYN-QUEENS WATERFRONT

Now about that blogpost. I was talking a moment ago about Mitch's sense of "place, and for this post, our pal Mitch Waxman he was ensconced in one of his recently favorite places for wandering, the East River Ferry, taking some great shots of what's left of the once-teeming working waterfront of New York City's East River. Note that he hastens to clarify what he means by "a working waterfront," which is to say one "that is engaged in the production of something other than artisanal pickles."

However, he notes that observing "the modern day East River bums me out." And the quote at the top of this post is Mitch deep in bumnation, contemplating the finally-taking-place transformation of the Domino Sugar plant in Williamsburg, just north of the Williamsburg Bridge. Here are two photos he took, one with the bridge and one without (click to enlarge):





Not long ago, Open House New York -- as part of a new series, "Projects in Planning," which aims to "explore the design and planning process of a single project during its early stages of development," to give us a window on the process of a major development project still in the development stage -- offered members a presentation by Vishaan Chakrabarti of SHoP Architects on the "Domino Sugar Refinery Redevelopment" (see the photo above), for which redevelopment plans have been kicking around almost since the plant was shut down in 2004 Here was the description (scroll way down, to April 8, in the "Recent Programs" section of the OHNY programs page):

OHNY members are invited to a presentation of SHoP Architects' master plan for the redevelopment of Brooklyn's iconic Domino Sugar Refinery. With a renovated refinery building as its "nerve center," the project is expected to create a 24/7 mix of creative office space, market-rate and affordable housing, retail shops, community facilities, and public open spaces. The distinctive buildings, which will create a new skyline for Brooklyn, are designed to allow light and air to penetrate through the site into the neighborhood beyond.

Now Vishaan Chakrabarti is one heckuva presentation presenter. After all, while in this instance he was talking to a bunch of people whose only standing came from having ponied up OHNY's modest annual membership fee, he's accustomed to giving presentations to people who are contemplating spending zillions of dollars, or perhaps have the power to turn thumbs up or down on other people's expenditure of said zillions of dollars. And as he described the process that had brought the project to its present state, he persuaded me, at least, that as large-scale development projects go, this one -- which includes an array of new buildings as well as open spaces surrounding the old plant itself (which is one of three buildings on the site that have landmark protection) -- has been planned with unusual sensitivity to the site's history and to the current needs of the nearby community.

Nevertheless, it looks to be a blight on the waterfront (don't you just love that "doughnut hole" building?), and it doesn't matter, because in the end it all comes down to what it all always had to come down to: the triumph of money. Williamsburg, after all, is now NYC's hippest and perhaps also hottest neighborhood, and the whole point of hipness, at least from the commercial standpoint, and it's hard to think of any other standpoint that can be said to matter, is to create hotness, in the real-estate sense, of course. So if the shores of Long Island City (Queens) and Greenpoint (Williamsburg's Brooklyn neighbor to the north) are to be lined with sky-high and sky-high-priced giant glass boxes, and they are, you can be sure that Williamsburg is getting them even glassier and boxier. (The one concession that city has extracted from developers is parkfront development along the riverfront proper and free access to it, which is certainly very different from the waterfront in its old industrial stage.)

Now here's Mitch ruminating on the old Domino site:

Williamsburg is officially lost as a point of interest for me. Bland boxes of steel and glass will extend all along the East River soon enough, stretching from the former industrial heartland once called “America’s Workshop” in Long Island City all the way through the Gold Coast of North Brooklyn to the Williamsburg Bridge.

BUT HE ADDS "QUINTESSENTIALLY MITCH" TOUCHES

First, speaking of this span of high-priced glass-and-steel boxes rising above the Brooklyn-Queens waterfront north of the Williamsburg Bridge, he notes:

Criminals are already beginning to focus their attentions on this area, just as they did in the age of industry. Why? Because predators go where the prey is.

Then he adds another characteristic touch -- a touch, one might say, of bumnation: "It’s cliché to even comment on it anymore, one realizes."

Except that Mitch has a comment on this redevelopment of the Domino site "as a residential structure -- more luxury condos for the children of the rich to dwell within."

The question of what will happen to these structures when NYC slides backwards into an era of degeneracy and decay is one few ask.

Any historian will tell you that it’s a cyclical thing here in the megalopolis, one that flips back and forth on a roughly forty year cycle which can be directly correlated to rates of crime, and that the City’s current upswing began in the late 1990’s – reversing a decline process that started shortly after the Second World War.

Rich people tend to move away from the City center when things get hairy. The rest of us are kind of stuck here.

This, I think, is sweet. Finally, here's Mitch's sendoff for this post:

Scenes long familiar, lost. The wilderness of the oligarchs is upon us, and deep in the woods – wolves howl to celebrate and delight. The nobles will be safe in their keeps, but the peasants – we’re on our own.

WHAT DOES A WORKING WATERFRONT LOOK LIKE?



On his ferry ride, Mitch observed "the Alice Oldendorf bulk cargo ship at work, making a delivery to a concrete plant at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. The ship hosts a series of cranes and conveyors which unload her holds, producing the cyclopean mounds of sand and gravel witnessed above." (Again, click to enlarge.)

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A grand tour of NYC art deco sites includes a close encounter with the All American strain of Talibanism

"Recent restoration efforts, most notably the uncovering of the interior mural 'Flight,' have further enhanced the architectural significance of the building, which is not only a major example of a new building type in the 1930s, but also a superb example of the Art Deco style."

-- from the November 1980 LPC Designation Report on the
"Marine Air Terminal, LaGuardia Airport" -- designated
that year as both an individual and an interior landmark

by Ken

NYC's Mr. Art Deco

I don't usually go looking for trouble across the decades, but sometimes the trouble finds you. So it was for me Sunday at one stop on a monumental all-day art deco hunt promoted by the Art Deco Society of New York as part of its contribution to the celebration of the 50th birthday of New York City's Landmarks Preservation Commission, which as it happens happened on Sunday. It hardly seems necessary to add that presiding over the epic journey was architectural historian Anthony W. Robins, because while Tony put in 20 years at the LPC (serving as director of the Survey department and deputy director of Research), and among his many writings are books about the World Trade Center (both the original 1987 edition and an updated 2012 one) and Grand Central Terminal (2013), to a lot of people he's NYC's Mr. Art Deco. (I myself have done a bunch of deco-themed Municipal Art Society walking tours with him.) For Sunday's odyssey he had plotted art deco targets in all five boroughs, which we reached by bus.

It was an undertaking that by its very nature was bound to enmesh us in a clash of decades, since while all of our sites dated back to the art deco heyday of the '30s, in the history of buildings time never stands still. We saw some that -- some with and some without the benefit of landmarking, and with various combinations of stalwart upkeep and committed restoration -- have stood proudly over those decades, notably apartment buildings on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, in the West Bronx, in the Brighton Beach section of Brooklyn (including the vast Brighton Beach Gardens complex, which offered hot and cold running water not just of the regular kind but of saltwater as well, via pipes tapping into the nearby ocean), and even on Staten Island (the Ambassador Apartments, sitting not just surprisingly but comfortably on the slopes of St. George).


This eye-catching entrance graces the modest-size but beautiful art deco apartment building at 711 Brightwater Court in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn.

We also saw the really fine recent rehab and rebuilding job done by the Parks Department on the sprawling McCarren Play Center and swimming pool in Brooklyn, one of 11 such centers built citywide in the '30s by then-Parks Commissioner Robert Moses. It was finally landmarked in 2007, but by then had suffered decades of neglect -- before being restored to glorious function in 2012 servicing the Williamsburg and Greenpoint communities.

But we also saw buildings that had endured only unkindness at the hands of time, like the former Knickerbocker Laundry building in Woodside, Queens, once proclaimed the most beautiful industrial building in Queens, of which a section remains visible buried under a monstrosity of a building erected on top and around it as a headquarters of the Korean Presbyterian Church of New York.

Even more poignantly, we saw the surviving shell of the once-beautiful Fire Service Pumping Station on the northern (i.e., land-facing) shore of Brooklyn's Coney Island, abandoned by the Fire Department in the early 1970s and never repurposed by the city. It was actually calendared for landmark consideration by the LPC in 1980, but before its hearing time came it suffered a siege of vandalism so extensive that the commissioners were left with really nothing landmarkable -- though it was at least possible to rescue the stone lions that had once watched over the entrance, which despite damage were intact enough to warrant safe removal from the site and are now housed in the Brooklyn Museum, forlornly awaiting a likely never-to-come return to their home, which seems doomed to continue deteriorating to the point where there's no practical alternative to demolition.


The wretched wreck of Coney Island's abandoned Fire Service Pumping Station

It was a wonderful trip through time as well as geography, and also through urban values and priorities. But the site that left the most indelible mark for me was the interior of the Marine Air Terminal of LaGuardia Airport, on Flushing Bay in Queens, home at the time of its opening to the might Clipper planes that crossed the world's oceans in added safety thanks to their design as seaplanes. It's a beautiful little art deco building in its own right, the Marine Air Terminal, well worthy of the landmark status it received in 1980. But at that time it was designated not just as an individual landmark but also as a much rarer interior landmark, largely on the basis of the wonderful WPA-sponsored murals called Flight, painted by James Brooks in 1939-40, the last mural project commissioned and completed under the WPA, filling almost 360 degrees' worth of the second level of the interior wedding-cake-shaped main portion of the building.


The art deco exterior of LaGuardia Airport's Marine Air Terminal

Which brings us to a clash of decades that is first appalling and later somewhat hope-restoring, though it's the appalling one that has lodge in my memory, because it's the sort of Tallibanesque act of official vandalism that seems to me quintessentially American and perfectly in tune with the Talibanesque impulses of the American Right of the 2000s. Here's how Harriet Baskas tells the story in an October 2013 post based on Glenn Palmer-Smith's then-new book Murals of New York City: The Best of New York’s Public Paintings from Bemelmans to Parrish:

Flight was the last and largest mural produced under the auspices of the WPA and is 237 feet long by 12 feet high and, appropriately enough, tells the story of the history of flight.

Here’s Palmer-Smith’s description:

The narrative flows from the mythology of Icarus and Daedalus to the genius of da Vinci and the Wright brothers. Pre–World War II aerial navigators are shown plotting their routes with paper maps and rulers. The culmination of man’s dream arrives at the golden age of the "flying boat," when glamorous Pan Am Clipper seaplanes would land on water after a flight from Lisbon, Rio, or any city with a sheltered harbor, and taxi up to the Marine Air Terminal dock.

In 1952, after being on the wall for just a decade, the mural was painted over. It was the height of the McCarthy era and officials at the Port Authority thought the imagery somehow looked too socialist.

“In particular, these self-appointed art critics took exception to the mural’s suggestion that air travel would be available one day for ordinary people and not just the military and the rich,” notes Palmer-Smith.

Lucky for us, the mural had been sealed in varnish and was eventually discovered, restored and finally rededicated in 1980. It’s now listed in the National Register of Historic Places.

When I shared a hasty, hashed version of this story with Howie, he brought up the famous case of the Diego Rivera murals originally installed in the lobby of Rockefeller Center's grand skyscraper, 30 Rock, which were destroyed on orders of John D. Rockefeller Jr. This was appalling too, especially since discussions were underway to remove the murals, which John D. Jr. found so upsetting (for understandable reasons, he really did find them communistic), and relocate them offsite. But it's also different. John D. Jr. had commissioned and paid for those murals, as part of the large quantity of art he commissioned for display around Rockefeller Center, a totally private site. No, he didn't have to destroy the murals, but the fact is, they were his property, and it wasn't hard to see why he didn't want them displayed on his premises.

The WPA murals, however, were paid for by the public and belonged to the public, and were displayed in a public space. Yet some gutless ignoramus of a bureaucrat saw fit to "improve" the Marine Air Terminal by blacking out James Brooks's work. Does anyone believe that such a course of action would be displeasing to the titans of imbecility and intolerance who now constitute the thinkers and seers of the American Right?

The redeeming part of the story came as the Marine Air Terminal was slogging its way through the landmark consideration process. Largely by dint of the efforts of a heroic advocate, aviation historian Geoffrey Arend, and then with the help of money from Laurance Rockefeller -- yes, a Rockefeller! -- and Reader's Digest's DeWitt Wallace, it was determined that the Flight murals could be restored, and by gosh they were restored! By great good fortune James Brooks was still around four decades after he finished the murals, and after a quarter-century in which his work was presumed gone for good, he, along with Mayor LaGuardia's widow, Marie, was able to attend its rededication on September 18, 1980. (In the photo Brooks is seen between then LaGuardia Airport manager Tim Peirce and Geoffrey Arend.)

It's an unexpectedly, even miraculously happy ending to an awful story that for me has deeply disturbing relevance to the America of the 2010s.

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