Queen Mary 2

As far as working ships on the Hudson go, I feel this is undoubtedly one of the largest ever. While technically not the biggest cruise ship in the world, it is the biggest ocean liner. It has a capacity of 2,620 passengers and 1, 254 crew members, and cost an approximate 900 million dollars to construct. It boasts the distinction of having the only planetarium at sea, and is complete with 14 decks, 5 pools, dining rooms, theatres, and other spaces befitting a luxury cruise liner. It runs regular passage between New York and Southampton, England. It is 1131 feet long, making it just 117 feet shorter that the height of the Empire State Building. The ship was designed to bear likeness with previous Cunard ships of the "Gilded Age" of sea travel, however the QM2's funnel had to stray from the older style's height due to the lack of clearance under the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge at high tide. It is the flagship of the Cunard line, which began transatlantic crossings in 1840 with its first ship Brittania. The concept of transatlantic travel became an arena for competition amongst shipbuilders from the US, UK, France, Italy, and other nations to make the journey to New York in the fastest time with the grandest passenger vessels.

Green-Wood Cemetery

Mentioned in the reading as an early example of the rural cemetery in the Downing tradition, the Green-Wood Cemetery is an impressive resting place. It was created in 1838 and it was designed to be as naturalistic as possible, with views overlooking the harbor, grassy hills, and full-crowned trees. Many constructions in the cemetery were created by architects in a sort of gothic revival style, typified by ornate spires and detailing meant to fit with the beauty of the hilly land. The mausoleums were all very impressive and possessed a wide range of architectural styles, I guess as to be expected with shifts in time. It was a tranquil place, a fine spot to be buried in. Which I'm sure is why so many well-to-do people are interred there, such as artists, politicians, soldiers, and businessmen from the 19th century onwards. It is still very much a working cemetery, and many people were visiting graves when I poked around. I read that there is apparently a nesting colony of monk parakeets that have been cemetery residents since the 1960s, but I couldn't find any to take photos of.

The Knickerbocker Club: Frederick Townsend Martin

Frederick Townsend Martin was a writer and prominent member of the gentlemen's Knickerbocker Club, living from 1849 to 1914. After serving as a colonel in the state National Guard, Martin became an outspoken critic of excess and wealth, instead taking an interest in the plight of the impoverished of New York City. He spent much time in missions and halfway houses in the Lower East Side, where his opposition to the ills of wealth solidified. Frederick Townsend Martin was a member of a variety of exclusive social clubs both in and out of New York, like the Metropolitan Club, the Aero Club, the Wellington Club of London, and the Traveler's Club of Paris, to name a few. Upon the death of his socialite brother Bradley Martin, Frederick received a substantial amount of money in inheritance.

EAT in Greenpoint

The Slow Food movement is centered around ensuring the quality, authenticity, and sustainability of the food on the modern dinner table. The organization offers food and beverage producers who meet the stringent requirements for clean, ethical, and fair agricultural and business practices an award called the "snail of approval." The New York City chapter has an extensive directory of all businesses holding such distinction, which I've been going through and finding restaurants to go to. One of which is the restaurant called EAT, in Greenpoint. It's a small place on Meserole Ave which is wholeheartedly committed to selling only sustainable, local produce, preparing food for a menu that changes daily depending on what they have in the kitchen. EAT has a great relationship with Rooftop Farms, the massive agricultural project on the roof of a warehouse in Greenpoint. The restaurant's furnishings are made by the brother of the guy who owns the place, it's got a wonderfully homey feel. I think this sort of restaurant can become too hip for it's own good, but EAT seems to have its head on straight and offers a small but delicious choice of food at a fair price.

Dutch New York-Peter Stuyvesant

This guy is an important figure in the history of New York, and his last name adorns many streets and businesses, so a short biography seems in order. He was the last Director-General of New Netherland, holding office for nearly 20 years until the territory was lost to the English in 1664. He had a wooden prosthetic in place of a right leg due to wounds sustained in attacking Spanish territories in the Caribbean. He seems to have been a stubborn and impassioned man, exercising his power to redraw the borders of the Dutch colony as he pleased. He was known to have persecuted Quakers and restricted some liberties of Jews entering the colony, leading some contemporary historians to think these injustices may have helped influence the addition of the religious freedom clause in the Constitution. 

Newtown Creek canoe trip

This past friday I went canoeing up and down the Newtown Creek with rob, hardy, and a few people from the Long Island Boating club. Having read so much about the waterway but only rarely getting a glimpse, it was a fabulous means of interaction with this federal superfund site. We were on the water by 10, and paddled all the way to the end of the creek near the Morgan Ave L train stop. We paddled into a strong headwind going up, so it took just over 2 hours to complete about 1.5 miles. On the way back it took no more than 45 minutes. The water was very murky and turbid, complete with various types of garbage. I appreciated the opportunity to go on this trip because the Newtown Creek is almost inaccessible by land because the shoreline has been so heavily developed and industrialized. This site of massive waste dumping isn't supposed to be easily visible to the average citizen, being on the canoe allowed firsthand experience of an important New York waterway.

As far as animal sightings go around Newtown Creek, one would be best positioned if one was nearest the mouth, as crabs, fish, oysters, and a variety of birds are present there. I hang out towards the end of the creek though, so my opportunities for observing visible fauna are somewhat limited by the environmental conditions preventing substantial species population growth.

There was a visible population of what I believe to be ring-billed gulls inhabiting this area, identifiable from a thin black ring coloring around the bill. Most of them were standing on a wooden structure jutting out from underneath the Grand Street Bridge. At any one time between 4 and 5pm there were no more than seven, but no less than three gulls on this large construction, all of them solitary and facing the sun. The birds would occasionally open their wings in a stretching motion, but would generally stay still. Intermittent shrieks were heard, but I couldn’t discern a pattern or cause of such. I only saw one ripple in the creek that betrayed the presence of larger fish, but the gulls seemed to be surveying the water nonetheless. When they chose to fly away from the perch, the almost invariably flew further south down the creek to a location around the bend. There was dried bird excrement on the ledge I was sitting, and I did spy some gulls standing on the tops of wooden poles, but the wooden structure (which I realized was part of an entrenchment for the rotating pivot pin of the swing bridge) seemed to be the main point of avian congregation. I can only surmise that these gulls were using the structure as a resting point before pressing onwards to a further location. The fact that there wasn't even any edible garbage around this industrial area puzzled me. 

Newtown Creek at the Grand Street Bridge

The bridge traverses part of the southernmost stretch of Newtown Creek on the eastern branch after it splits, and is located in an Industrial Business Zone. Busses, trucks, cargo vans, and other automobiles lumbered across the old swing bridge all the time; the 108 year-old bridge is an important thoroughfare for workers in the various warehouses and storage facilities of the area. Every 2-5 minutes a large passenger jet burgeoned overhead to its destination of LaGuardia airport, flying low enough to distinctly recognize the airline logos. The exhaust from all these vehicles, coupled with the various industrial smells of the surrounding businesses, made the air nauseating and acrid.                                                                                           I had walked along earlier stretches of the creek to get to this particular spot, and what immediately struck me about this body of water was the perpetual rising of bubbles to the surface. The whole creek looked as if it was being rained on, or it was carbonated like a soda because of the many thousands of ripples caused by popping bubbles. I learned from the Newtown Creek Alliance website that these bubbles were the result of a combination of an increase in hydrogen sulfide and a lack of oxygen in the water. the phenomenon primarily happens in the English Kills section of Newtown Creek, dissipating the further one travels away from Brooklyn. Hydrogen sulfide is released as a byproduct of industrial processes such as petroleum refining, paper product manufacturing, and leather processing, all of said industries at one time prevalent on the shores of Newtown Creek. It also has a distinctive smell of rotten eggs. Newtown Creek is a stagnant estuary with no current, so the stench of chemical reactions in the water compounded the malodorous mixture of scent caused by the automobile traffic. The water itself was extremely murky and blackish-brown in color, with various bits of waste suspended in the turbid creek. I must say, it was an unpleasant experience to just sit and observe this portion of the waterway.

 

response to first prompt

In 1609 Bushwick Brooklyn was a region with no more Western development than it having a name. Recognized by Dutch settler Peter Stuyvesant in 1661 as Boswijck, meaning heavy woods, my area probably lived up to the label as a densely forested region. I doubt New York natives had traversed the space apart from an occasional hunting foray, and my specific city block can be assumed to have taken shape two centuries after Stuyvesant's land annexation. 

My rudimentary knowledge of trees and climate tell me that perhaps oak grew here. It appears to be a populous tree on the island of Manhattan according to the Welikia Project, so I assume soil composition didn't vary enough between there and Bushwick to inhibit oak growth. Newtown Creek drained a section of Bushwick nearby where I live now, the tidal body of water serving as an ecosystem boundary and edge for some varieties of fauna. Heavy rains would swell Newtown Creek and provide a fertile place for all manner of plant species, negating the acidic soil caused by oak tree growth.