Author: linked

Tom Gilbert’s promised two-part series on the sordid history of Domino Sugar turns out to be a three-part series. Part two is here, though there’s not much there.

Jamaica Bay is losing marsh land at a faster rate than previously thought. The (perhaps tenuous) connection to north Brooklyn? As part of the relocation of the Newtown Creek sewage plant’s sludge barge from the East River to the Creek, the City will be filling in a portion of the Creek. This will result in a loss of wetlands at Newtown Creek, which the City proposes to remediate by creating new wetlands in Jamaica Bay.
Somehow, I don’t think that our 1,200 square feet of new wetlands is going fix Jamaica Bay. But at least Greenpoint will get a new waterfront park (and get rid of the shit barge).

Egad.

Despite what the Post says, DOB did not slap Scarano with a stop work order for the Modern – they slapped the SWO on the owner and his contractors. Unless Scarano was digging the hole, its the contractor who is responsible for the work. And if all the posts at GL are any indication, neither the developer nor the contractor give a shit.
(And no, this is not an apologia for Bob Scarano, just a polite reminder that architects design building, they don’t build them.)

The Real Deal:

Some developers pay water taxi operators annual subsidies to guarantee they get docking barges and stops.

I love the water taxi from Schaeffer Landing (it sure beats the L train), but lately its been unreliable as hell. Just last night the boat was 25 minutes late – the boat that finally showed up was a mess, and seemed to be piloted by a someone on a learner’s permit.

Via Curbed, GKA’s latest addition to the neighborhood. This one has potential, if only they’d lose the foolish balconies (are we waiting for a cruise ship to pull up? maybe this one?). And as one commenter has already noted, what’s up with the silly cross bracing at the base of the building? It makes getting in and out a bit of a challenge. Oh, and lose the curved piece at the base.

Last month, the NY State Siting Board ruled that TransGas Energy was required to get NY City approval to use the millions of gallons of East River water necessary to run their proposed electric plant at the Bushwick Inlet (the Bayside Fuel site). The City, which has opposed the project, probably would not grant this permission, thus killing the project (and moving us one step closer to a public park on the site). Trans Gas Electric, not expectedly, has filed an appeal of the Siting Board’s ruling.
Unfortunately, no one seems to be able to put TGE (definitively) out of its misery, so they continue to spend buckets of money on a project that absolutely no one wants to built.

First of a two-parter by Tom Gilbert of The Brooklyn Paper. I’m looking forward to part 2, but I get the feeling that Mr. Gilbert has only just skimmed the surface of the sordidness.
On a related note – the Department of City Planning holds its scoping hearing for the Domino site tomorrow.

[Exxon] has been working hard since 1979 to remediate the site. This information offers a greater understanding of the area, its history, the technology used in remediation, and the progress being made.

Just what Greenpoint needs, a lesson on the technology used in remediation. And there’s nothing like (slooowly) scooping out millions of gallons of spilled oil to help you understand the history of an area.

In September of 1978 the United States Coast Guard on a routine patrol discovered a light sheen on the surface of Newtown Creek…

Yes, “oil slick” is such an ugly phrase – it sounds so much nicer when you say “light sheen”, doesn’t it?

Miss Heather has uncovered some nice evidence of old street names in Greenpoint. When you look at it, it seems as though all of the streets in North Brooklyn were renamed subsequent to the annexation of the Eastern District by the City of Brooklyn in 1855.
Greenpoint’s cross streets were A through Q; they were then renamed Ash through Quay. (Although how this Clinton Street got into the mix, I don’t know – I guess Calyer Street was always an outlier.) Other changes included West Street (which had been Washington), and Manhattan Avenue (which had been Union Place).
The same thing happened in Williamsburg, where the north/south streets had been First through Eleventh Streets; they are now Kent Avenue through Hewes Street.
Miss Heather also discovered that this created a hell of a lot of confusion:

This practice resulted in a slew of duplicate street names* which took years to unsnarl. It was a long and very contentious process. One which, amusingly enough, often saw “North Brooklyn” (AKA: “The Eastern District”) in opposition to “South Brooklyn” on a number of occasions.

The merger of the two cities (Williamsburgh and Brooklyn) also required the renumbering of a lot of streets. This too created a lot of confusion, and revealed the true independent sprit of North Brooklynites. I’ve read elsewhere that most residents just ignored the law requiring them to renumber their houses. This went on quite literally for decades.
In the 1920s, Eugene Armbruster assembled a scorecard of obsolete street names, which can be found here (the link to all of the pages is here).